London in transition
If you asked me two days ago why I am going back to London, I would have said, "My friends are graduating and I want to be there!"
During a conversation with my Dad two weeks ago, I told him confidently, "I have two homes, one here in Singapore and one in London."
With my Mom, I assured her, "They are like my second family. We are that close."
I am questioning my words now. As with reading a book, I am now taking a step back to assess it. One should not be stagnant. I am moving to a new country soon, and along with it I should take my attachments. Memories are for keepsake, and interactions are dynamic. They do not stay still - they degenerate or improve. It is hardly possible to permanently keep a balance. I awaken to plain facts, that I should no longer take situations as they were before. As with the fall of empires, there is no perfect group dynamics that will last forever.
I myself am still confused over the definiton of QuGee. I should not see it as a group, as a whole, but the individual interactions between people. The absence of communication causes stagnation. Physical absence combined with that of communication causes interactions to stagnate, and depending on the strength of the bonds, they wane over time to varying degrees. Other factors that influence such bonds would be that of personality change.
What is dangerous though is the absence of communication without a physical absence, ie. actions unexplained. Like a vacuum, it creates a force strong enough to suck its surroundings into it just to fill the void. The surroundings of such a vacuum is finite, and when too much is lost to fill the void, everything else caves in. Such is my view of the interactions between people. Patience and vitality is finite. And what is often required to prevent the leeching of such elements that contribute to integrity would be that of other elements such as consideration, sensitivity, honesty and responsibility.
The interactions between two people are built upon such principles. No individual would like to always be in the position to give and be taken from. Even if there are no expectations, one would grow weary. Liken it to the biological definitions of parasitism, commensalism and mutualism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis). After all, human beings are social animals, and in my opinion no state of parasitism and even commensalism will last, commensalism itself being exceptionally fragile in terms of human interactions. To this end, I contribute my view that no individual should see an obligation in maintaining an interaction that is obviously degenerating.
If one should zoom out of the picture and look at the dynamics of a group of people, one should see a network of the interactions between every two people in the group. Factions arise when the bonds between two or more people and the rest of the group have been strained. An ideal group relationship could only exist if each individual treats every other individual equally. Unfortunately, utopian societies do not exist in this world. I myself have been guilty of putting some (or someone) before others, and going as far as to ignore the needs of everyone else I deemed unimportant.
As I've mentioned, it is time to reassess these interactions. One would then know better how to sort out priorities, and since there is a limit to one's energy, it would only make things more efficient.
