Tuesday, March 13th, 2007
There are a few moments in my life when it feels like I have become enlightened. This is one of those moments. Things have never seemed more crystal and there is no time to eat and sleep.
I, at the forefront of my 28th birthday have discovered all the pitfalls and disillusionment that I have suffered during my life so far, has been the direct result of my fathers mistakes. I initially had thought about the fact that I was in total control of what I had done or felt during my life, but in fact it seems I wasn’t at all.
My vivid memories; what do they suggest?.
Well, my uncle lecturing me on the phone about debt owed by my father, sitting at the porch of my recently repossessed home, living in two or three hostels, witnessing my mother losing her mind to severe depression, not recognising who I am, ‘father’ never being at home and I do not remember one happy memory with my father. The truth of course is he was never my father. By blood yes, everything else he was a total stranger to me. Other than the facts that were known to all, he is a gambler, an adulterer, who probably drinks too, he lies, cheats and ignores all responsibility towards his wife and five children. I would bet all of us have been badly scarred in different ways by ‘the gambler’.
I, in my life so far, had thought that making money was the way out of the financial mess we were in. I remember telling mum not to worry, that one day her son’s name would be on a tall building and all these problems would disappear. And with this thought I put my mind to a successful education and dreams of becoming Richard Branson.
After quitting my degree due to how boring business theory was I started a few very small businesses myself, which all were abondoned in the short term, never due to financial losses but perculier reasons like selling for a profit early or supply running out. It seemed I didn’t have the patience for business. To my dreaded end (and enlightenment) I then took an interest in gambling, something my father and brother had been dreadfully unsuccessful addicts at. I became one too. In the hope of becoming a Richard Branson I felt that one must take big leaps; regretfully I hadn’t thought about the fact that my eldest brother had overcome the financial crisis that my father created. There was a roof, good food and good clothing. There was no crisis. Yet I had been away, university then settling away from home. Somehow I never managed to understand this need for urgent money was a total myth. On top of it all I was young and naive, my education had told me I was intelligent, but I was arrogant wanting to prove to the world how rich I could become. This was my biggest undoing and first enlightenment in one. The biggest regret was the dragging down of my bestest friend, my brother. In one fowl(sp?) swoop I nearly destroyed the only honest and genuine friendship i’ve ever had and became almost bankrupt. I had become an animal.
This is the lowest I have ever been in my life. I took refuge in my elder brothers house in Pakistan. I had nowhere else to go. I even created happy families with my father as at that time no family member was on speaking terms with him. I gave in thinking about his age and blood relationship. I regret this awfully now. Now that the shutters are open I can see how horrible this man has been to my family. My mother is a body with no real opinions because of my father, two brothers had become addicts in gambling probably due to him, my eldest brother reverted to the cane to discipline the younger brother, he was forced to get married and become the father of the family.
My father was non-existent physically, but in all other ways he has directly affected all of us in the worst ways possible, probably the worst was my mum. He even threw a tea cup at her head once. Every young child when hearing his father being disgraced thinks he is being disgraced. Me too. I remember all those moments when cowards aimed their hellfire at me. The easiest target in the world, a helpless child.
I witnessed my mothers silence and lies at the humiliation my father brought home. I’ve witnessed her become a corpse before she has died. My mother has paid the highest price for the sake of her marriage, and I blame Pakistans Dark Age traditions for this. I blame Pakistan for breeding such a mind set as my fathers and he isn’t alone.
Yesterday I had another bow thrown at me in the name of my father, I was so stunned it didn’t sink in for 6 hours. I’ve been awake all night thinking of all the rational reasons as to why my aunt was the biggest of all cowards and an accomplice of some of her family members in aiming at the target’s son and never the target. I have a long list of her worst habits that are hidden behind her empty religion and false values and virtues.
I got heated and spat the truth at her (in my head) ‘without fault you aimed your bow for my heart but the name on the bow was my father’s, I more than the world put together, know my father’s undoings and they are many including an adulterer, which is what you humiliated me for, my father is an adulterer, absolutely’.
But what are you? queen gossip of Pakistan, someone who spreads lies and gossip of all other people including your own blood but never your own husband and child. Someone who benefits every five minutes from someone else being humiliated, ’you’re a pimp for lies and deceit’ and yes the respect and religion you walk with would laugh at you if your judgement ever arrives. She is a gutless, money hungry gossiper with little intellect. After I had calmed down I realised the most beautiful yet most hurtful truth (enlightenment), regardless of how hurtful her comment was and how cowardice, it was the truth.
And more than that I HAD BEEN A TARGET FOR MY FATHERS MISTAKES ALL MY LIFE. I had planned my route as if I was supposed to correct those mistakes. And my route so far in life has brought much misery and regret. And most of all; Dissillusionment about myself, who I am, what I want fom life etc.
I had been living my fathers life and by coming to Pakistan, my fathers birthplace I have discovered the only route to live my own life. I must completely lose touch with all connections leading to my father, which includes my mother. Something I was never willing to do. She is my greatest love. Yet, curiously this is what my bestest friend has done , my brother and he seems far from the hole I am in.
Isn’t it heartbreaking my brother had my corrective measure all the time, and he even suggested it many a time. Maybe it shows how deep those childhood scars really were. My Aunt, what about her; A big thank you for waking me up. And my brother, I’ll be with you in the short term future, I have a lot to thank you for.
And my father, I’ve dislodged his shovel, no more pitfalls created by him. The future, I will try and be everything that my father was not. Amen to the past. Long live the Future.
Free will and my father: (oct 25th 2007) An Update by Alex Somei Yoshino.
Are we products of our nurture and nature, have we a pre-determined path, depending on what we encounter on our journey?
Can we over-ride this predisposition, do we possess free will?
“Modern compatibilists”, such as Harry Frankfurt and Daniel Dennett, argue that there are cases where a coerced agent’s choices are still free because such coercion coincides with the agent’s personal intentions and desires.[13][14] Frankfurt, in particular, argues for a version of compatibilism called the “hierarchical mesh”. The idea is that an individual can have conflicting desires at a first-order level and also have a desire about the various first-order desires (a second-order desire) to the effect that one of the desires prevail over the others. A person’s will is to be identified with her effective first-order desire, i.e., the one that she acts on. So, for example, there are “wanton addicts”, “unwilling addicts” and “willing addicts.” All three groups may have the conflicting first-order desires to want to take the drug to which they are addicted and to not want to take it. The first group, “wanton addicts”, has no second-order desire not to take the drug. The second group, “unwilling addicts”, has a second-order desire not to take the drug, while the third group, “willing addicts”, has a second-order desire to take it. According to Frankfurt, the members of the first group are to be considered devoid of will and therefore no longer persons. The members of the second group freely desire not to take the drug, but their will is overcome by the addiction. Finally, the members of the third group willingly take the drug to which they are addicted. Frankfurt’s theory can ramify to any number of levels. Critics of the theory point out that there is no certainty that conflicts will not arise even at the higher-order levels of desire and preference.[15] Others argue that Frankfurt offers no adequate explanation of how the various levels in the hierarchy mesh together.[16]
In Elbow Room, Dennett presents an argument for a compatibilist theory of free will, which he further elaborated in the book Freedom Evolves.[17] The basic reasoning is that, if one excludes God, an infinitely powerful demon, and other such possibilities, then because of chaos and quantum randomness, the future is ill-defined for all finite beings. The only well-defined things are “expectations”. The ability to do “otherwise” only makes sense when dealing with these expectations, and not with some unknown and unknowable future. Since individuals have the ability to act differently from what anyone expects, free will can exist.[17] Incompatibilists claim the problem with this idea is that we may be mere “automata responding in predictable ways to stimuli in our environment”. Therefore, all of our actions are controlled by forces outside ourselves, or by random chance.
After witnessing poverty, the real need for financial security coupled with the backward culture of my parents (believing that money and status was everything in life); I reacted in life as they did, I thought money was everything, I tried to grab it all , and all at once. I was left on the floor with nothing, not even a soul; I had sold it to the devil.
Free will is possible, but we need to buy back our soul from the devil. Then we can start understanding and accepting what makes us do, what we do, and start doing things differently.
The longer we have been carrying these insecurities, the deeper they hide and do not want to be examined.
