Second Death

Grief is a normal human emotion. It is evoked whenever something or someone dear that was once available suddenly becomes unavailable, forever.

Before I flew off to the US, Leonard Nimoy passed away. When I returned from the US, LKY passed away.

One affected a large part of the anglo world, the other affected mostly a tiny island-nation with light ripples elsewhere.

No, this is not going to be a tribute piece to either men. The objective of this piece is to talk about grief. Grief is the predominant emotion that is present now, particularly in the case of the demise of Singapore's de facto strongman. Among the people that are best known for their general lack of emotion whatsoever (other than bitching about how things are broken), there is an almost universal deadness that comes about from national grief.

Universal deadness -- I can find no other way of expressing this. Almost all official government business is practically stopped, the usual propaganda machines are now churning out praises, memoirs, and eulogies from personalities who have had close contact with the former strongman instead of their usual selection of revenue-generating advertisements or even materials that help promulgate the particular merits of the latest public policy that has been published. The people I talk to seem more lacklustre than usual, as though their life had been sucked out of them. Everyone's thinking about attending the wake of the former strongman, and how to maintain things in the most sombre way possible.

Well, that's how they express their grief for the final loss of an era of nation building as epitomised by the actions of this one man.

If it's not obvious enough, I don't share in the same way of expressing such grief, not because I do not respect the man, but because I prefer a more active and positive form of expressing grief.

I celebrate the person's achievements, I celebrate the person's vision. I do not wallow about the losses, but try to look forward to the future.

Just in my last post, I mentioned about the second death. One only truly dies when the second death comes. And for LKY, that second death isn't about to come for a very very long time.

Is it a loss for us that he is gone now? No.

Look around. The man is mortal, but what he had done is still here. No loss. Celebrate what he did, look forward to the future, share in his vision. Mourn not the loss of the mortal flesh. That's how I choose to handle grief.

Rituals and funerals are for the living and not the dead. Let everyone have their rituals and funerals to provide the closure, but wallow not in the past. The future is already here, and we need to keep things going if we want our little island-nation to keep punching above our weight.

Most importantly though, when the dust settles, it is time to put away the glowing memories of the man, and to examine critically what it is that we need to do for our survival into the future. This may even mean having to tear apart the assumptions and arguments that were put forth in the policies by the strongman himself. It takes courage for sure to do that, courage and time specifically, but it has always taken courage to live for the future.

Living in the past glories is the sure way of ensuring our demise, and that is the single most disrespectful thing that we can do to the man that we claim to bring us up to where we are now.