12.23am

I remember a friend of my sister's asking me, sometime late last year:

"Jeen, do you find that things get more complicated as you grow older?"

The answer is obvious enough. We grow older, we collect more experiences, more memories. We learn that people, things aren't always or even usually the way we think they should be. Our preconceptions get challenged, our ideals get broken. It's not a bad thing, that's just the way it is. You become richer for the experiences you have had, but they come at a cost too. Moral decisions become difficult to make when you see other people lapsing, "if everyone else is doing that, there's nothing wrong". Peer pressure, the tyranny of the masses, but the masses is composed of individuals like yourself. It's a vicious cycle, the one reinforcing the other.

But learning more and having more empathy for the position of others also contributes to this complication. When you learn to see how the other side feels, imagine what the other must be going through, simple decisions driven by self-interest become un-simple. Who is at fault? What if no one is to blame? Who do you put first? Must you put anyone first? Is there a solution to satisfy both parties? Black/white ceases to exist.



(I like being able to write short short sentences. Such a contrast from those 5 line long ones in IT)