Category: Shouts

The little girl writes a love story about a cat and a dog. The story, interestingly, does not have a happy ending: “Will you please marry me?” The dog says to the cat, “Oh! No! No way!” The cat scoffs and walks away. And I am amused by the innocent “cruelty” of this childish play.

It’s fortunate that they are still so young and under the protection of loving adults.

We adults, every one of us, being treated to an experience like this, if we laugh, it must be laughing with tears. Stand-up comedy has this effect. We know that everyday life is mundane, we know that there are many hurt, everyone of us has hurt others and has been hurt, and we, being sensitive humans, all have one thing or another gnaws at our hearts. The comedians, instead of crying, make jokes out of the dullness or the sadness of it.

It might be the indifference of one, or the coarseness of another. It might be a pettiness, it might be a miscommunication, because the self almost inevitably gets in the way.

It might be the realization, at a mature age, that romance and love is not exactly as books or movies have portrayed or we have imagined it would be, that even if we have it, maybe especially when we have it, to hold on fast to oneself and all one’s other roles are as important, to know oneself, examine oneself and pursuit happiness and self-realization does not end at “live happily after”.

Or it’s the severe self-criticism comes with the gnaws: Am I showing off? (but what is there in my life to show off?) Am I being insincere? Have I done this or that wrong? Am I being too self-absorbed to notice the feelings of others? Am I being indelicate?

If, say, we are created by our circumstances, we are this or that because we were born in this or that family, at a certain time in history, at a certain place in this world, we went to this school and read that book, all of these have made us who we are. Your father’s ambition has almost certainly helped to make you an extra anxious person, or your mother’s vanity has caused a hyper-sensitiveness in you. You could argue this way.

I, myself, indeed who is not at one time or another, being pushed, cornered by one thing or another, startle to find the poison, the venom, in my thought.

Then I believe, in general situations, we always have a choice. We always have the choice of self-examination, of getting a better self-knowledge and loving others. We always have the choice of communicating health and ease and courage.

选择爱 xuǎnzé ài (choose love): it is a choice. 选 has the “walking radical”, 择 the “hand radical”: it is a verb, it is an act. 恨 hèn, the word for “hatred” in Chinese, interestingly, also has the meaning of “sad, complain, rankle, grudge, regret, resentment”. Beware, beware, that it should stew and become poisonous.

He has green eyes and a little pretty face which always softens my heart whenever I enter the room or lift the bathroom curtain and see it looking straight at me (for he always anticipates my coming as he hears me before he sees me) with the innocent and graceful look of a child.

But, I meditate on my amusement, he cares not a straw of his green eyes and his pretty little face, not a straw. As little as I know the mind of a cat, I know that he spends not a second in a day considering if he is beautiful or not. Our concept of beauty, a social concept of human society, does not mean a thing to him. Or rather, they do not have this concept. This dumb animal, but how strange it is I feel closer to him at times than human beings that could utter words to tell, this mute animal’s instincts are on the survival level.

I have become very interested in cats since this one came across my path: it’s an accident and I share no responsibility for him. I am grateful for that freedom. The thought of being depended upon irritates me a little and makes me feel chained and bonded.

Still, I begin to think of him when I am out of the house and hope he will be well taken care of and not too lonely. I feel pity because I could not explain to him beforehand that I am going to be out of the house for two days and he will have to be on his own. He has no choice and he has no defense. He just has to take whatever that’s thrown to him. He will just have to live with the uncertainty that I, who begins to live in this house and sees him day in and day out, disappears one day and might never come back.

For all that, he shows no resentment (though it does affect him). He might hold back for a little while, then he will come and sit next to me. He does not resent either that sometimes I pay no attention to him. He just lies besides me napping and often when he wakes, diligently licking his fur. I began to learn that’s mainly what cats do with their time: napping and licking their furs. And I remember that a student had a cat. When asked what your cat likes to do, he always says, with a fond smile that tells his affection, that he likes sleeping. Now I really understand what he means.

I have not spent, in the seven years in New York, or probably since my adult life after university, such an amount of time with any human being than with this cat in the past month. He is always here in my presence. Asks for virtually nothing except my company. He, unlike a human companion, disturbs not my solitude. I feel no judgment from him, I feel no demand. If there is no perfection in human affairs, and every human relationship has its disappointments, it’s a comfort to think that this green-eyed cat won’t open his mouth to me to judge and tell and demand.

Cats sleep to conserve its energy, it says. The things they do are from basic instincts, the scientists would say. Then love must be a basic instinct for them too. And for them, love is companionship, is presence, is touching, is seeing, is an essential need.

But philosophers and scientists and intellectuals may know nothing about cats. I know nothing. This piece of wisdom from Socrates sometimes comes to me as the cat sits ( in such a pretty manner) next to me at my desk.

How many things could we learn from this little cat? But it’s to humans I go to, every one of them flawed just as I am, with words to communicate, at times not to our advantage.

圣诞快乐！Shèngdàn kuàilè！The first word 圣 means holy as in 圣人, a holy person. The second word 诞 is a formal way to say “be born” as a phrase we often use in school as children 新中国的诞生, the birth of new China. The third word 快 means “fast” (it has a heart radical on the left, interesting that Chinese sees so objective a thing subjectively), the fourth word 乐 means happy and music (one sees a connection between music and happiness in this language). 快 and 乐 together form the word for “happy”. We are not surprised that the word for “happy” should have “fast” in it. We do feel time goes fast when we are happy.

But the cat comes, he sits on my lap, and cares not a straw that it’s Christmas.