Skip to main content

Zombified

You know, I have never really thought much about zombies previously. Well yeah, I grew up listening to 'Zombie' by The Cranberries thanks to my uncle who played it rather frequently back in our old house and I loved how they repeatedly sang "zombie-eh-eh-eh", but I never really wondered what the heck zombies are. Not that they truly or predominantly exist (but then again, I can never be sure). But I was introduced to a game of zombies sometime last year and I learnt that they are these people who are ironically alive while being dead, walking around, soulless. Pretty terrifying creatures with stains of cold, hardened blood on their decaying clothes who walk weird and make weird noises. With this, I suppose all the more you feel motivated to shoot them in L4D2. Anyway, sometime ago I caught the movie 'World War Z' and learnt that the dead cannot be any dead-er so it is pretty hard to kill 'em and pretty recently, I finally succumbed to watching 'Warm Bodies'. I thought the latter was really good from which lessons can be drawn. I like how fictional films and books carry much underlying truths about life in general.

So 'Warm Bodies' is about the de-zombifying experience of this particular zombie character, who upon chancing into this girl (ah, typical ey?), began to understand and feel love in itself and gradually, started showing signs of being human - to be able to make out words, to experience what cold feels like while walking in the rain, to regain strength, speed and vitality, to feel love, to feel pain, to bleed, to connect with others, to be able to sleep and dream, to be motivated, to think, to share his thoughts and to inspire others to strive and aspire for the betterment. In essence, the zombie was becoming human; his heart started beating, he was radiating warmth and he has something to fight for - he had a purpose.

Now, after watching this reverse process makes me realize truly the true blessings of being alive. I was watching this in the comforts of being away from home while on vacation and within close proximity to nature and could not help but to reflect the experience of being zombified upon my own life and to further make sense of some general observations I make at work and experiences shared by people. I think that sometimes we have fallen into this risk of being zombified, or heck, I think perhaps sometimes we are zombified. Not that we are dead, but our spirit is dead. Our heart is beating, but we are not skipping to its beat. The beating becomes mere rhythms of just mere existence without meaning. Don't we feel that way sometimes? So caught up with pursuits after pursuits, so busy, so exhausted and we feel like we run on auto-pilot that we lose our senses and feelings. All of a sudden we are clueless with what excites us anymore. Sometimes we lose the joy with what we once thought was the source of joy and inspiration for us. And then we scramble in search of meaning. In the process, we might encounter a dead-end, and we start falling into helplessness and despair. And then we started asking ourselves, what the heck am I doing with my life?

So if there is a debate if zombies truly exist, I would say I think they do. We humans, if we don't inculcate this habit of meaning-making, can potentially be zombies. But let's try not to be zombies.

The process of meaning-making is not an easy one; it requires concerted efforts. We need to try. With whatever ways we can. To awaken our souls. To detach, to let go and feel free. To de-stress. To shop around for what excites us. To be passionate about something. To feel deeply about something. To nurture existing friendships. To do acts of kindness. To be creative and do things differently. To take risks. To sing. to dance. Whatever.

Anything, anything to make ourselves feel alive.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hitam Manis

This is difficult to write, but it's definitely an important one amidst all the conversations we've been having lately. Growing up being brown/Malay wasn't easy, especially when it became ingrained in me that having a darker skin tone by default, is less desired than fairer skin tones. In childhood, I couldn't recall having to endure comments about my skin colour. Thankfully amongst children, these values ascribed to lightness and darkness didn't yet come to the fore. This consciousness became more obvious since secondary school. And it was tough and painful.  I've been in a sports CCA since secondary school and I couldn't really avoid not becoming tanned. What hurts the most was even my peers at that time would make comments about my skin colour without even realising the damage caused from these words. These comments I recall, were sometimes made under the guise of humour. I was called 'budak hitam' (literally means 'black child') and even ...

Free

What does it mean to be free? It is to manage expectations and to let life unravel the way it is suppose to. Managing expectations does not equate to minimising responsible behaviour. Such would be impractical as the system of this life runs on the principle of accountability. We are accountable for our own happiness, for our successes, for our future and to a certain extent, the outcome of our decisions and actions. To be accountable means to take charge of our life within our capabilities and the means we have access to. To be accountable is recognising that we are proactive actors in our own lives. And hence to be free is to understand that we are gifted with this free will. And that we exercise our free will properly to make informed choices and to channel our energy for the desired outcome. May or may not happen the way as planned, but the beauty of this is to give it all it, and then to let nature take its course. Because if we don't and we dodge what is to come and ...

Living day-by-day, week-by-week

It has been an incredibly different year, and now we are seeing second waves in many parts of the country. The summer was great while it lasted, and now as I'm writing this, it is a gloomy, cool, rainy season. It's been raining cats and dogs for a week now, so I haven't been stepping out of my house as much. With the surge of cases, there will be stricter measures put in place as well, so it's been difficult to make plans ahead. If it is anything that defines the year, it is really about living life day-by-day, week-by-week. Taking life one step at a time. And despite so, life tries to go by as per normal. And once again I'm feeling another season of uncertainty, lack of motivation for constant self-directed behaviour and keeping up with energy. Maybe it is the turnover of season, with shortening of daylight hours, maybe it's my job, and maybe it is the effects of using social media, making me feel like my simple life is boring and pales in comparison, being awa...