Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Nothing drives us.  No thing  drives us. Of course the one who does the driving is never a What but a Who .  How can it be otherwise? This is no high philosophy or mere play on words.  A child can see that but most of us have effectively chased away the child. "What drives you?"  Again that's the question.  Career?  Ambition?  A will to survive?  Lust for life? The one who does the driving is never a What ; I feel silly to state something so obvious.  To say our life is fueled by, for example, ambition is to say a car is driven by gasoline, maybe the law of physics, maybe even human ingenuity. No.  A car is driven by a Creator who purposes the car's moving to achieve an end meaningful to the Creator.  If the Creator finds no reason to move, no meaning to go from A to B, there would have never been a car, not even the idea of giving something a "drive."  The Creator is driven; the drivenness in t...

Dear Eugene, "What drives you?" I was asked this question this past weekend, a question, I suppose, we've all been asked, in different settings, by different people, under different shades of moonlight. It's about time I give an answer.  I'd usually question the questioner's question, at least three questions thrown back his/her way; but none of that evasion today. I came up with something worse. My answer is: This question ( not the questioner) disgusts me, that whenever I hear it I feel this strong repulsion in me to expose its wrongheadedness, by doing exactly the opposite of what it suggests I should be doing to wake up meaningful the next morning, specifically by resisting what proposes to make claim on my will and hope and energy and the very next step I take, and I would slam on the brake to grind my every action to a halt and see if my non-drivenness would kill me.  And if it does, then I shall meet the Person who drives me in my dying. ...

Dear Eugene, I usually don't hunt for stuffs to write about and they'd just come to me when I walk up the hill with Sumi.  Nothing in my head is that interesting compared to all the things happening out there. Like this morning: There was sun; there was breeze.  Then the breeze became wind and the sun no more, and with that came a sudden shower.  I tried to connect the events and misunderstood--the shower was from a lawn sprinkler.  Sumi grunted. Always be wary of a man who thinks a world only out of his head and means it only out of his heart--even his whole heart.  He's a magician; he shows what seems to be interesting but hides what's even more interesting.  Soon he forgets where he hides his truly interesting things and becomes a true illusionist. " First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see ," your translation of the very first words in the Bible. The words are not giving us a "scientific" account....

Dear Eugene, If you can pick a season to experience a life-changing tragedy (that you must face by the end of the year), what would your choice be? Hopeful spring?  Youthful summer?  Dreamy autumn?  Cosy winter? Around Valentine's?  Just before/after Christmas?  Back to school week?  Tax season?  Mother's Day? Don't worry, I have nothing heavy or profound to say today; it only sounds like so.  In fact, I think the weight of this question (which I personally have not heard asked) is in how matter-of-fact it all is when tragedy strikes. It just happens; what are you going to do about it? Not that you have not heard of something like this happening before.  Not that anyone has pledged to make you the exception.  Not that the possibility never crossed your mind.  It kind of just happens, like in the final scene of " The Departed ," which in the script reads: COLIN (accepting it, sort of,but only in a COLIN way) ...

Dear Eugene, The sun is brilliant today, best time of year, not too hot, not too cold, not too anything , a good life hangs finely in the balance of a myriad of capricious elements, mostly hidden, many I won't even come to identify let alone make sense of before my little life ends. Two mornings ago I read in the news that a suicide bomber attacked a voter registration center in Afghanistan, killing 31 people.  Yesterday morning the headline was gone, and I had to search online to see the casualty was then more than doubled. If I didn't quickly scan the headlines Sunday morning I would not even know something like this had happened, like the registering voters knew not a bomb was in their midst, and by the time they knew for sure there would be no point in knowing, let alone trying to make sense of the blast or piecing smithereens back together.  A line was drawn to divide before and after, life and death, hope and despair; a line that gives and takes away the meaning of...

Dear Eugene, On a day like today I walked out of the door with Sumi early in the morning and wondered if we could reach the end of the world if we find no reason to stop. Like a road movie.  Like the man who walks in the desert in " Paris, Texas ," possibly the greatest American movie ever made not by an American.  My heart is aching just now, thinking about this movie. Sometimes I think if I am to turn on a tape recorder and collect everything that has gone through my head during my long walks I could have written a book by the end of it. But ain't that true about everyone else's life?  Every life deserves its cinéma vérité treatment. What makes a story a story is that it has meaning. Even if we say the point of capturing a day in a life is to say how meaningless it all is, we are already trying to mount a meaningful narrative on the "meaningless" life and turn nihilism on its head. The "Preacher" of Ecclesiastes meant to say som...

Dear Eugene, What is the biggest human tragedy you've heard of?  I know this sounds very much like a rhetorical question to unveil what I think I know but others don't.  But, no, it is not like that. Maybe let me ask the question again: What is the worst tragedy you've experienced?---but hold there, I am not talking about a single personal experience, or an isolated incident.  I am asking, What is the biggest human tragedy as you experienced it ? In my line of work and various off-work involvements, I talk to people all the time.  And I listen more than I talk.  The question above emerged out of a more positive one--actually, probably the mother of all positive questions: "What is the meaning of life?" Let me tell you, my dear pastor, a sick joke.  Someone told me this; I have my own varied rendition.  But let me tell you the original...my way. There was this tough university professor who was handing out the toughest exam in the toughest ...