some conflicts

 There is a conflict between two forces that moves life. One: wanting to live the present, as it is, committed to everything that is visible and tangible. The desire to commit to immediate life, away from most uncertainties. Another: wanting to change the big current, seeing much to improve in the present life, leaving space for uncertainty to play its potential out, not deciding that the current condition to be final. The desire to wait for a better life, sacrificing the immediate for its realization. 

  There are blind spots for both forces. The first underestimates the power of accumulation of limited resources. They will add up eventually, building up into something greater than imagined, taking on new meanings and holding more possibilities. The second overlooks the power of commitment, its ability to discover new meaning to what seemed limited and definite, thus unintentionally elevating life closer to the ideal. 

  The two forces are combined, and interplay as one encounters various situations that require judgment in life. For life is an endless field of bargaining, one will feel this interplay in the seemingly simple(but endlessly complex, if you let it be) act of shopping. 

(to be continued...duty calls)

+ 7/7 : I was fascinated by the ethical dilemma Ibrahim faced, determined to make his own way in the world yet keenly aware of his filial obligations. At stake here is the Oedipal project-the need to sever one's exclusive attachments to parents in order to enter a phase of generalized attachments to peers, 'to know life, to discover society,' as Ibrahim put it. These extrafamilial attachments and friendships may be quite transitory and loyalties short-lived until, with marriage, a new phase of focused attachment begins. 

  This transition from being a child in one's parents' household to being an adult in a home of one's own also anticipates the transition that is mediated by migration. Both involve initiatory ordeals. Both entail symbolic death and rebirth. And the ethos of filial piety is often at odds with the imperative of self-definition. When I broached this matter with Ibrahim, he readily acknowledged the potential double bind. (171-172, The Wherewithal of Life, Jackson)