end

in photo: nahal and hannah, le vieux port


Alas.

The walls are caving in and we are trying to push them back out, but their narrowness has created a channel, a pathway, of which we are habitually blind to.

I am writing a research paper on regional integration and ASEAN. I wanted to assess sustained regional development by looking at traditional conditions for a successful security community. Economic interdependence is a common proviso. And of course, I started obsessing about statistics and numbers and everything under the umbrella. Inflation. Gross Domestic Product. Exchange Rates. Etc. Little by little, the graphs, the numbers, the traditional statistics- everything started to have little impact on my argument. The walls were caving. ASEAN is a very successful regional grouping. And I couldn’t figure out why the numbers didn’t seem, well, spectacular and amazing and perceptibly shocking. Why the traditional stats weren’t the most salient proof of the development that has taken place in the region over the last 40 years. Now, it very well could be that I am statistically illiterate (that is a three-dimensional phrase). But right before I almost died from suffocation, I saw it. The tiny crack. The streams of light. The blue sky. The little path which would lead me aright! It was in the form of a question. Why is ASEAN a successful grouping? That was fact. But it was unquestioned and assumed to be answered by common conditions. This turned out to be hardly the case. ASEAN is successful I’ve learned because of very non-traditional conditions such as collective identity, recognition, regional socialization and ASEAN norms as opposed to the institutionalization of economic (and military) blocs. There is more to it, but for the sake of simplicity I will cease my explanation of ASEAN success.

I wonder about all the times I unconsciously forced myself to go with what was traditionally accepted. Equations, solutions, views. When did I stop questioning the approach? When did the theories awaken from their slumber? When did they leave their bedsides to seat themselves on the Throne of my mind? They can be guides, but be weary friends, lest you make them your trusted sovereigns. Sometimes we need to see through things in order to see them for what they are. I needed to see through the tradition as opposed to seeing only it. This probably sounds basic, but as human beings we are always being conditioned to think a certain way. Somehow though, I truly believe it we let go a bit, and if we are willing to accept the failure in our logic, we can find the growing expanse of blue. Evaluate the nonsenses. Leave them to their compartmentalized blocks. Conquer failure. Accept truth without tagging it. Thrive in the openness of possibilities that have been with us since the initial mixture of creation.

Thank you my dear E.
flaws are beautiful.