a (longer) army rant.

and while i must say that to even have the liberty to be blogging at this day and hour is testiment to the awesome army life i have, it still takes alot to mentally block out the imagery of camouflaged uniform, the fixed hierachy, the entire culture in such a working place that all seem to culminate to remind you that you are still in a 2year long servitude to your nation. which is of course not at all patriotic because what kind of patriotism is institutionalised in your country’s laws and described with words like “chargeable” and “punishable” which of course is fully acceptable again given the contextual culture of the army. the feeling of futility doesn’t quite help either when one, fully immersed into the army’s system, can see plainly (or feel painfully) the fundamental economic inefficiencies inherent in the army.

so in my attempt to make the most of things, i have done plenty. i worked my way up and prayed so very very hard to attain a life that many of my friends would covet. i gained many working experiences, many times going beyond the call of duty not for the organisation, but for the people who’s welfare i am/was directly accountable for, and through my hard work and good intentions, besides the many lessons learnt, i believe i have gained the respect of my peers as well as superiors, which has led me here, with enough liberty to be at home.

i have wasted no time with that strange concept of a newfound liberty in the army. i set myself a set of goals, of which i have been actively working towards. reasonably, some of these have been dropped, but otherwise, my pursuit to update myself on the world’s status, to deepen my understanding of God, to find my feelings having a closer relationship with my instruments of expression, to find out all those things i always wanted to but found myself chained by national servitude instead, and more recently, having found a new whole turn of meaningful things to do (which sounds so matter-of-factly) has been the reason why you will not find me bored and purposeless.

i believe i have more or less, probably to the best of my ability, made the best of my army life. but doing that and knowing that i am going somewhere, while loosening the reigns superimposed upon us even before our known existence doesn’t change the fact that the reigns still are there. it is to my knowledge that through certain twists and turns, some i already have undertaken, i can furhter loosen these reigns to an almost negligeable amount in which case i will be free, but not from my own guilty conscience. because even with the freedom granted to me (sidetrack: why does freedom have to be granted?) i am still bound by the responsibility of the people under me, the people who work alongside me and even the people whom i work for, since they too are soveriegn human beings, mostly in a similar attempt to break free. i believe it is quite evident in my writting that the ‘freedom’ i talk about hardly refers to the time one is ‘free’ but a ‘culture of freedom’ where as sidetracked, is not granted by a group of unnamed people refered to as ‘an organisation,’ but is bestowed by God.

ok, so i am fully aware at this point that such a freedom hardly exists except in the longing minds of idealists, sometimes refered to as escaptists. i do not think i can ever be free from responsibility, although in a world closer to freedom than my world now, my realm of responsibility will be freely chosen. and i suppose that the one thing more important than freedom, as i learnt in my first few weeks of enlistment, that even while being moved around like dumb animals (this refers to marching) and forced into submission (sometimes beaten), and even with the outward removal of individuality (wearing blank shirts as blank as the personality they wanted us to have, heads as shaven as the personality they wanted us to have, all of us looking hardly distinguishible from the other) that they can take our freedom, but they can never take our dignity. and i think that that was what hughes refered to when he said (wrote?!?):

“Rain plastered the land till it was shining
Like hammered lead …

Some still had their shape,
Had their pride with it; hung, chins on chests,
Patient to outwait these worst days that beat
Their crowns bare and dripped from their feet.”

and as we all know, November, “The month of the drowned dog” does eventually come to an end..

ohhhhhhh ORDDDDD
please come quicklyyyyy!

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~ by moz on June 19, 2008.