prose: On why my body mass refuses to grow

While everybody I know has obtained a certain ‘secondary growth’ (as in stem of plants do) in abdominal girth (not that I want a protruding belly, only that I want more body mass), I have maintained my lanky, slim, proportions through the years since childhood. I have tried eating much, cramming as much diary based and fatty meat products every mealtime during my 3-month-end-of-semester break. I have gained 2 kg, only to have the mass evaporate into the atmosphere the moment the semester starts.

I think I have thought of something to blame for my body’s lack of tendency to grow.

Re-evaluating conventional thought, equilibrium is not the result of appeasing chaos. Instead, equilibrium is the result of the collision of contradicting chaos(es) (or, opposing forces) that cancels out each other, thus achieving equilibrium.

There would be two sides to everything. Two extremes. On one extreme would be the deemed negative side, and on the other would be the deemed positive side. Like the Taoist concept of yin and yang. Why I said ‘deemed’? Because to each his own. Example, one would find black to be more desirable than white. Thus, black (even though white is conventionally positive) can be on the positive side.



Take for example – economy. On one side would be the totally free market, and on the other extreme would be totally social economy, or communism (I have to check this back and edit). On one side there is no limit to the economy, driven by the profit motive and on the other hand the economy is controlled, the profits shared equally by means of government intervention. Of course, in the so-called ‘real world’ there is no such thing as anything that is ‘totally’ something. Such conditions would only exist hypothetically, because no system is fool-proof. Therefore what exists in the ‘real’ world’ is only found in between these two extremes, whether it is nearer to one end or the other. Malaysia, for example is considered a free market, because it leans towards that extreme, even though there is some kind of government intervention like the duty on imported cars and such.

What about a 50-50 condition? This is when one reaches equilibrium. If an election comes out with a 50-50 result there would be mixed government. One would see this as undesirable because progress would be slow, or no progress at all, for every action the governing party is to take, there would be an equally opposing action from the ‘opposition party’.

Or like an unmoving, static object. In order for it to be moved, a force would have to be applied to it. But according to Newton’s Law, every force would have an opposing force, like say, friction. For the object to move the driving force must be greater than the opposing force. Thus the state of equilibrium is broken and the object progresses.

People say war makes progress (in fact, many historians marked developments with reference to the World Wars). I tend to find some truth in this, because of the explanation beforehand. War is chaos. Tension is chaos. Peace makes people idle.

That being said, let’s get back to my psycho analysis of myself. I am self-contradicting. I think in every personal thoughts that I have or want for myself would always be contradicted, for reasons of humility, modesty or even to conform to social perceptions, conventional stereotypes and what people expect of me.

For example, if I am mad at somebody, I would always think that is it really substantial to be mad? What are the socially accepted conditions for me to be mad? I would search from memory a precedence of a person in my immediate community that was mad and relate the incident to mine and evaluate, is it ok to be mad? And in the end I would not be mad or I would suppress my anger because I find this particular incident is not too big a deal for me to blow my hats off.

Another example (in the line of thinking) - “Ornaments give character, for the onlooker to appreciate details at a closer range”
But,
“Ornaments are a crime. The more people get civilized, the more people do away with ornaments because they appreciate the purity of something”
But then,
“Ornaments are what make old shop houses so beautiful, even till this day, compared to the Spartan modern ones devoid of decoration”
But then again,
“Simple lines are best, kerawang kerawang is so kampung”

Or,
“it is unfair to ask so much out of a single person”
But,
“with love, you get all of the above”

So in every decision I would always find that there would always be a contradicting thought to hold me back. In other words, I have problems of making decisions. I am always taking the middle road. I do the swiss. Thus I am in equilibrium. Thus I do not progress.

In chaos theory there is also a concept called fractals. The concept is that we can view a fragment of something and it describes the bigger picture in the same way. For example, the fluctuations on a market price graph for cotton in a day would be the same as the graph for a month and a year. Or, the profile of a rock from a mountain would be same as the profile of the mountain itself.

I would think that, if I, as a whole, would not progress, my thoughts always contradicting itself, then the building blocks of my body, my cells would also dictate a similar path. They would not progress. They do not expand. They are introverted. They fear the environment. They are static. They are idle.

And that is why I think, ladies and gentlemen, my body refuses to grow.

Hehe.