Pretentious

"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans" (John Lennon). And one of the worst waste of time is pretending and arranging your life to impress a crowd (even a small crowd like an extended family or your office).

There is nothing wrong with achieving, working, buying, selling, saving, building, procreating, nurturing, educating, learning, investing, hedging, gaming, gambling and any way of living that will definitely be invented. In and out of religion, anything that helps us find God and our true self is great.

Yet, any activity and the result cannot fulfill us. For our fulfillment is either there or not. Most people have this in reverse, thinking that achievement can define us. I have learned that who I am, defines my work, love, life and what I create.

So if all the nice things we buy, the beautiful children we were given, the work we have done and the safety we have built become our only pride of life, the foundation is like sand. For all of this will disappear one day. Who I am is there until I die.

Life happens inside. And what is there expresses the image we show to the world. Ignore the feeling our body, mind and soul tell us each day, we really will miss out on what we actually value most.

I realize what I have written and the thinking behind it will not be popular. The trend is just to take words at their most common and often superficial meaning. To use words to imply, reflect, create new meaning is really not that common. We have no time for anything but instant gratification. A movie line actually pokes fun at this: "instant gratification takes too long".

Yet one of the greatest novelist in French literature (some think of all time) is Marcel Proust in "À la recherche du temps perdu." Inadequately translated as "remembrance of things past" or "in search of lost time". When I read it 30 years ago, I was bored by the train of thought and the lack of intrigue or Hollywood or even Shakespearean plots. Yet the images and thinking continue to reflect truth to this day. But I doubt if many will be able to get through it. He actually questions the reality behind the aristocratic life which we all seem to want. The main character married a woman because of the ambiance created by the elegant music, the decor, and others who surrounded her at their first encounter. 

To over simplify, it is an exploration of pretension at it's most extreme 100 years ago.   

And this is so with pretension which is the fad in Hong Kong (and most of the world). It seems enough to have a job, home, religion, family, a schedule, money so we can be somebody. Like I said, all this is OK. But let them become who we are ignoring the real person inside, more like the child we once were, and it is nothing more than being pretentious. Another movie line "an ounce of pretension is worth an ounce of manure."