The doom of light

Something that a lot of people do not know about me is how young I was when I was exposed to the world of Malaysian politics. Since I was nine, politics was one of the major discussions at dinner. Some may have had passionate interest in this field since their UPSR years, but I’ve had to swallow, and deal with, the reality of this power game at an age when all I really cared about was if the Spice Girls will make a new album.

I’m not saying that it could have been better otherwise, but I’m saying it could have been better otherwise. Yes, it was good to learn about how the country is managed from different perspectives; yet, because of the high exposure, there was a point when I automatically switched on a Britney Spears’ song in my head whenever politics is mentioned, the same way my friends used to turn away everytime I started to preach the P word. Rather than die of an overdose, let me be blissed by ignorance, I thought. It is such a dirty field that I have no respect for NEITHER side. In retrospect, I admit that I was biased, simply because I was brainwashed. At nine, even by reading both Harakah and Utusan Malaysia, my mind was not sophisticated enough to make the distinction between fanaticism and truth. Plus, I felt like I could not voice my opinion because apparently, I was too young. Everything I said was shot down, without a second acknowledgement of my effort to make sense of reality. Thus, I lost interest.

Nine years later, I had to decide between Political Science and International Relations (because being the person that I am, when JPA wrote on their website that only three options are available for a scholarship in the social sciences, it meant to me that ONLY THREE OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE). Immediately, I was brought back to the memories of my love-hate relationship with politicians and their biased supporters, so I chose IR. However, a few months later, after being reacquainted with world politics, I saw that there are still a few rare, but genuinely caring, politicians who do want more than a quick buck (not in Malaysia, obviously). My faith in world leaders was restored. Yet, I deliberately choose to avoid Malaysian politics because of the cheap and dirty strategy both sides pursue. How I was made to believe one was better than the other is a miracle when I think of it now.

Some may say, “Tough it up! THIS is politics!” My response is, “No, that’s YOUR pessimist version of what could have been an amazing scientific field.” I would like to think that the idealist in me is still on fire, and it is not going to burn out anytime soon. I try to be as positive a person as I can be in any way possible – no storm or heat can make me grunt; in fact, I hate nay-sayers. Life is so wonderful if only more people would put on their rainbow glasses. I may be weak and live in an alternate reality that does not exist, but let me be, because your reality is fit only to those who had not taken off their biased glasses to take a walk outside. To really take a step outside.

-C-