Our understanding of the solitary soul is the epitome of self-awareness vis a vis wholeness, whether in hedonistic sensuality, the self-affirming sense of merging with the One among the mystics and desert monastics, the self-negating Buddhist chant, or the self-surrender to Nothing that is core in Islam.<\/p>\n
After numerous terminations of intimate relationships, I\u2019ve taken to the solitary lifestyle without any problem. Being solitary, however, is not necessarily being single. It is an understanding that sees one\u2019s being as totally and profoundly being alone!<\/p>\n
China has an addiction to numbers\u2019 games, including repetitions of markings in time. For instance, Yuan Dan, one-one, is New Year\u2019s; Qi Qi, seven-seven, is the day of hearts, like Valentine\u2019s; Jiu-jiu is nine-nine, for elders; 10-10 was Sun Yat Sen\u2019s national movement, taken by Chiang Kai Shek to Taipei, downplayed though not ignored in Beijing. There are others. Eleven-eleven is auspiciously Guang Gun Jie, a parents\u2019 day to look for a suitable partner for their \u201csingle\u201d offspring.<\/p>\n
The romantic impulse in marital pairings is new in Chinese marriages. With \u201cone child only\u201d in China\u2019s urban centers in the last two decades, and where girls by 18 are socially pressured to be child bearing, tomorrow\u2019s Single\u2019s Day sees organized efforts at public parks by parents promoting to other parents the gifts and virtues of their children. Romance is fine but parents still command their children\u2019s \u201csay so.\u201d Marriage fits into that category, though not for long.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The \u201cselfie\u201d is the art form of the times. The art is technically possible by default in the smartphone industry, universally welcomed though often condemned in some quarters for their focus on the \u201cself,\u201d a biased that is deeply rooted in missionary-led civilizations from the day Eve grabbed the apple in the Garden of Eden story, later evolving into the thinking that preoccupation with self is similar to \u201coriginal sin\u201d.<\/p>\n
I am not a fan of Joel Osteen\u2019s Lakewood Church in Houston, though a foray into Texas\u2019 Sugarland through the old Compaq Center introduced me to the megachurch he pastors with his wife. The zeal Victoria recently articulated got them some press ink. She said: \u201cWhen you come to church, when you worship Him, you\u2019re not doing it for God really. You\u2019re doing it for yourself, because that\u2019s what makes God happy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Critics dubbed their ministry as \u201cme-centered,\u201d a version of cheap Christianity since the Osteens injected pentecostal emotions into their Southern Baptist-dom. Maybe. But \u201cme\u201d as today\u2019s operating context is no longer as vilified as it was in the previous era of Western psychology where \u201cego\u201d was a no-no.<\/p>\n
Of his jail cell, the late Nelson Mandela wrote: \u201cThe cell is an ideal place to know yourself. People tend to measure themselves by external accomplishments, but jail allows a person to focus on internal ones, such as honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, generosity and an absence of variety. You learn to look into yourself.\u201d Religious intensity in the molding of self-consciousness is a welcome phenomenon.<\/p>\n
I am a student of the human journey seen in world religions and cultures. It is clear that previous description of \u201cgodhead,\u201d couched in the language of eternity and infinity, in celebration of a culture as golden age or utopia, redounds to the rich texture of \u201cselfhood.\u201d In post-Vatican II, names like Bultmann, Tillich, Bonheoffer, and the Niebuhr brothers among Protestants are mentioned with Chardin, Rahner, Gutierrez, Illich, Kung, Rahner, and Schillebeeckx of our Roman Catholic familiarity, quoted as individuals in varied traditions expounding an existential understanding of human profundity vs. the previous pious collective groupie-ness.<\/p>\n
The \u201cself\u201d denigrated by a term like \u201cselfish\u201d misses the point of the authenticity of human experience. We do not aim to glorify ego; we recognize self-consciousness as the beginning point of knowing anything; otherwise there is no wisdom at all.<\/p>\n
Shopping Da\u00a5 started in China on 11-11 four years ago, replacing the Single\u2019s Day frenzy. Crass commercialism is now unmistakable, as the young are more anxious if they will have enough money for the \u201csale\u201d that they hope to spend their earnings on, rather than locate a mate. Spending day now has the single\u2019s heart!<\/p>\n
Friends are steeped in the language of eternity and profundity against a veiled self-deprecating, apologetic tone on self-awareness. A necessary task for most religions still treads on the \u201cother world\u201d dream, a promise of heavenly bliss, or in the \u201cspirit\u201d of condemning matter as evil. It is time to move out of the \u201cother world in the midst of this world\u201d language and celebrate the boundaries of selfhood directly within the walls of one\u2019s finitude.<\/p>\n
The frenzy tomorrow is to shop \u2019til you drop. I prefer focusing on the single self. To be is. Simply. In time, location, and role. That\u2019s my story and I am sticking to it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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