Countering Denial

"The world of pretence is a cage, not a cocoon."

You know that thing with American shows? The voice over that ties all the loose ends at the end of each episode and remind you of the week's theme?

Watching Grey's Anatomy just now, I wasn't just reminded how local shows doesn't make me think as much as American ones do, but also asking myself whether I am in a state of denial and whether I am denying that I am in one?

Before you go on and think I am doing a Foucauldian analysis of my thoughts, I think the issue that first comes to mind is my academic performance.

The Yale rejection made me feel like I was the most useless thing in the world. And this past year, I have been trying to keep my CAP talk to not more than 5 seconds a day.

Whether or not I have been successful with it is hardly the point here, what struck me was how while this act may have been an effective suppressant of my inherent desire to hit that elusive 4.0, on hindsight, it had not done any thing to address the issue at hand.

Maybe it's the examinations in slightly over a fortnight that are getting to me, but it's like prevention is better than cure, and I have done nothing but try to cure it, rather than preventing it.

Maybe A was right today when I met her to talk about that shocking thing - maybe I am too hard about myself.

She also said some things I already know about myself - that while for some, mistakes are opportunities for them to learn and be better; for me, it seems the spectre of my past failure seems to be doing the opposite for me.

I have this mental picture of how good, how perfect I must be and I must constantly meet up to this mental picture. Why I can't just be like people who do not identify with their own notion of self, but God's notion of self for them?

And to think, this thing came at a time when I had convinced myself that I am not up to this job, that my strengths lie elsewhere, that maybe after establishing my social anchor in VCF, it is really time to go back to my original calling.

To go and do my journalism thing in a secular context and be that voice that is not over-indulgently Christian, but represents everything that God could possibly have done in ensuring, in this case, an authentic students' voice be heard.

And at the root of it all, am I in denial of what reality might really be? But at the same time, what exactly entails not denying that reality? Am I just overwhelmed with how embracing and not denying might overwhelm me in the eyes of Man?

I really don't know. I am probably very clear about not taking up the editorship of Epi - to be it would be a comfort zone, but more importantly, I sense that I am called to the market place.

But for that to be effective, I need to be very sure of myself in Him.

Am I?