29th December 1999

3am, 29th Dec 99. I was talking on the phone today, rather yesterday with a remarkable person and she said something that really struck a chord with me - well, most of the things she says striike chords with me due to bizarrly similar thought processes, but this was something so true-to-life that I've decided to share it with you my readers - presuming I have any left.

She asked many "why"s, among them "why do people wear masks to hide their true natures? Why are people so preoccupied with their external appearances, to the extent that they create 'shells' larger than who they are?" She went on to state that she was proud of who she is, although she saw her imperfections and shortfalls and was trying to correct them, but that she wouldn't wear a mask to hide them.

And that gave me pause for thought. How many of us can truly say that we're proud of who we are? How many of us hide secret guilts behind the shiny veneers we put on? How many of us have wronged our friends or used people for personal gain? How many of us hide selfishness behind smooth charm and magnamity?

That's what it all boils down to, ultimately. Selfishness. Personal gain. All the things that define our nation. Materialism. Kiasuness, lack of empathy for other people. A burning desire, a desperate drive, to "succeed". Envy of richer, prettier people. Envy of people wearing shinier, more wholesome masks. Need for oneself to match, or better those other people at all costs. Selfishness.

At the risk of public ridicule, at the risk of being branded a "preacher boy" by the too-cool poseurs out there, I proclaim that I don't wear a mask either. I've seen and heard too much to be bothered to pretend that I'm more than who I am. I'm sickened by the selfishness I've seen out there, and yes, I am proud of who I am as well. Don't get me wrong. There isn't that much of me to be proud of. I have my own achievements behind my belt - but so do all of you. I have the good fortune to be studying medicine in London - but that's all it is. Good fortune and circumstance. I'm no better or worse a person than half the world out there, I get angry occasionally and think dark thoughts, and have the same sad primitive urges as the male subspecies... and the female. We're all equally sad. Don't you women try to deny it.

So what's to be proud of? Simply this - I try to do what is right, or what feels right to me. Go ahead, scoff, go ahead, brand me as a didactic idiot - but I do. Those of you who know me will know it's true. Sure, I've screwed up spectacularly before. Sure, I've had unexpected repercussions from what seemd "right" come back and slap me in the face, sure I've eeven been wrong about what really was right and what wasn't before - but that doesn't change that I try, and it doesn't stop me from trying. That's partly why I really want to be a doctor - it feels right.

In a nutshell it's about following your heart and not your head. Not the base, vile urges that we so often mistake for "heart", but "heart" as in all that feels good and proper, all that's fast becoming cast aside with the turn of the century. All that's becoming passe and old-world in this age of autonomy and self-sufficiency. Uncool stuff.

So let's look at this "external appearance" my friend talked about. I'm not sure she meant it literally - this particular friend dresses simply and elegantly and has an "external appearance" that's definitely not unkempt or unappealing - not by a long shot. Of course, obsessing excessively over one's external appearance is silly (think jewellery bedecked ah-lians and ah-sohs preening on the steps of far-east plaza) but almost everything carried to excess is.

No. This external appearance is about "face", about the illusion we cast about ourselves, the obsessive need we have, almost instinctively to project ourselves as great guys and wonderful women to the world. Consider your suave savvy buaya working his charm on a girl. He almost always has that "gentlemanly" aura shining brightly around him - practiced to a T. He's well-groomed -- slick, almost. He's a nice guy, he beelieves wonderful things and does the most touching things oh-so-nonchalantly. He opens doors, pulls up chairs, walks downstairs first and upstairs second, stands on the outside of the pavement, helps with coats, pays the bill - everything that makes a girl feel special. Here's news for you ladies - it's a mask. You really think he's doing it to make you feel good? You really think it's from his heart? Think twice. You really think he's a sensitive new-age philosophical contemplative literate poetic rugged structural engineer who finds even your dumbest jokes funny? Think twice. But don't dismiss him oiut of hand - just think twice. He might be for reall. It's a crazy world out there with all those masks around.

Likewise for the guys. You really think she hasn't got a clue/ You really think she's as elegant and sophisticated as she's pretending to be? You really think she's interested in your ramblings about the good old army-days when men were men and boys were recruits? You really think that charming naivety is for real? Think twice.

But what's the harm in wearing a mask, or in being selfish you wonder. You've done it so many times its second nature. It's a "me" world out there and we've heard it said oh-so-often that you can't survive unless it's every man for himself. What's this "so much selfishness" this guy speaks of seeing and is ranting about?

Have you seen last week's "The Ride Home" about that girl who's been raped by her dream date? Well it sickens me. Not because it's about rape, but because it sensationalises it. It's trying to make us empathise with this poor girl who's been raped and is lying on her bed with that little tear trickling prettily out the corner of her eye. In effect it's making rape public entertainment. All sorts of deviant guys will have watched the show just to catch the rape scene, I'm sure.

Well, first off, I didn't catch the show. I was somewhere on Orchard Road trying to make sure a friend survived a nasty breakup okay. So this may be taken completely out of context. Trailers rarely do justice to movies or TV shows.

But the stark reality is there are people out there getting raped - by people they know. By stepfathers. By mothers' boyfriends. By their own boyfriends. By ex-boyfriends, God alone knows. And it's not a once-off for them but a daily hell of living in fear, of paranoia, of getting by day-to-day on tiny windows of hope offered to them once in a blue moon. Of being terrorized emotionally and physically by sick, sick individuals who are so bloody selfish that all they can see is their own immediate gratification, their own pleasure. Who aer so selfish they can't even begin to empathise with the girl they're beating into submission, who are so selfish they do it almost every day and get some strange warped thrill that they're getting away with it. They they they. It's an egocentric world.

So rape's a harsh example. Let's try another. Somewhere out there there's a family grieving for an old woman who died, alone surrounded by four doctors, a registrar and a medical student. Let's say she died in horrible pain, and this, but not the dying truobled the medical student (dying's part of living after all) so much that he asked his registrar if there wasn't any way to have stopped the pain, only to be faced with a blank wall and technical considerations that she would most likely have died anyway even if she had made it into Theatre, which she didn't for a host of poor reasons. It's a job. Forget her. Selfishness again, to the extent that the point was missed completely. Yes, the doctors got to practice setting up a central line on her, bully for them. What about the incredible pain she was in, so much so that she didn't even feel the central line being put in?

Selfishness. Some new age guy "comes clean" with his recently made girlfriend and admits to her he's going out with someone new on the continent he's now studying on, and it's all over between us now, let's not talk about it. Are you ok, let's still be friends. How benevolent and magnaminous of him. How touching to still want the friendship. But after thinking it over she decides she needs a final resolution, a final face-to-face confrontation to get all her truths said, to tell him NO it's bloody NOT okay and yes I am hurt and I am bloody well not ok. The bloke tries to squirm his way out of it, does his best to avoid the confrontation from happening, gets his mum in on it? It'll hurt him you see. Selfishness.

And on the outside all these selfish sods are charming individuals. The serial rapist is a successful professional who shows up at work clean and well-pressed and a wonderful family man to boot, no doubt. The insensitive registrar is a wonderful clinician. The cowardly ex-beau is an earnest, earnest chap who talks to people about his "current" love with childish abandon and winning wide-eyed boyishness. The chao-buaya who casts "girlfriends" aside once he's had his fill of their beds is a slick charming rich kid with elegant ways and practiced mannerisms. The loud-mouthed poseur who condemns others without knowing half the truth is a witty chap who lives with carefree abandon and tells everyone what a great chap he is.

And they walk amonst us, everyday, "extreme cases" who aren't in truth that extreme. And they walk in us for our entire lifetimes, unless we cast aside our masks and live life for the living and not for ourselves. And they charm us daily with their wiles and smiles and make it impossible for us to see the Real good from the false, and so we slowly, slowly slide into paranoia.

Are you proud of who you are? Can you walk with your head in the air under the weight of that beautiful mask with the painted-on sunny smile you wear? Can you preach to others what they should say, and how they should react to things, and pretend to solve their problems when you're just doing it to be seen as a selfless martyr?

A number of people suggested to me that I harden myself to all the sob-stories I hear, that I disbelieve in them or distance myself and stop myself from feeling personally involved; that I stop whatever it is I do that makes people confide in me. In truth don't do much; I just listen. I let people speak their minds and make their own decisions. And yes it gets tiring and depressing hearing so much crap, and I know where you're all coming from and I'm really, sincerely grateful for your concern and advice - but I can't distance myself or stop listening because that would just be being selfish and donning a mask of invulnerability, of putting myself ahead of the other people, who need so much more than myself. And in a strange way I'm honoured that people tell me this crap, and if it helps I'll do what little I can to help, even if it's just listening and empathising with them.

As for you who talked to me on the phone... I'm proud of who you are too. Don't for an instant imagine I can't see you "flaws" and shortfalls either. I'm not blinkered to the real you just because, well, whatever. You're doing well on almost all fronts... except one and you know what that is. So stop running and go and work even if you feel like you don't want to or that you can't because of circumstances, or if you feel afraid at the sheer bulk and enormity of it all. And don't just say okay, yeah, stop etc... go and DO it. Your jailer still has faith in you. :)