Of late I have been receiving many friendship requests from strangers mostly Malays in their middle age and most seem well educated and established in their lives and careers. I accepted quite a few thus far simply out of respect and curtsy lest I be deemed a fb snob. I also accepted these request out of curiosity to discover their story, what they have in mind, expect out me; their intentions. Most thus far are regular polite gentlemen and a few are most probably have the same reasons as I. I am slowly seeing an image of a middle class Malay men who perhaps bored like the rest of us for having to pretty much stay home due to COVID19 and have made the Face Book as well as other Internet links to while their time away. Some are genuinely looking for new friendships but most are out to check out as many characters that captures their curiosity, while many are showing off their place and positions, prowess and accomplishments in the Malay society. For me it is becoming a great cross cultural study and so I am choosing to entertain as many as i can afford to to add to fb collections of strangers who wish to know me. I get to to have a peek at their lifestyle and their personal characters, theri interests and how well informed they are and how well they communicate as middle aged, middle class working Malays.
As son as I have accepted them they would promptly message me to get to know me better, pry into my personal life with personal questions like, still married, how many children, still working? What nationality exactly, and this they do right off the bat and I feel often like I was being interrogated by a country bumpkin. So I decided to poish up on my poor Malay and the art of communication with total strangers while in some small way try to educate them into observing some etiquette, or decorum when communicating especially with an elderly gentleman like myself. Where or when else do i get a chance to better myself at interpersonal communication especially with the Malay men who are mostly introverts, reserved in nature when talking about themselves to strangers, are very inquisitive about wanting to know about you and they pry almost rudely by Western standing. However i dont think this is done consciously and this is perhaps because of their lack of communicative experience when it comes to online meeting.
I am beginning t enjoy the age factor of being the elder in society which simply put,I dont give a hot what you think of me but mind your manners when you address me cause this age comes with a whole lot of knowledge and experiences both good and ugly and survived. Sometimes I forget what a demon I was and allow for the little petty tyrants of today run my life for me with their petty bullshit of trying to hoodwink the unfortunate and get away with it. However there is the other side of the coin that what a spiritual practice is hinged upon and that is detachment from all that is external in whatever colors shapes and forms; lest i forget. And so I am involved but detached from the involvement - detached involvement, plucking the lotus without getting my fingers wet, For the sake of the well being of the rest of sentient beings in this real of existence i will play the role of the ignorant clown and mingle with the crowd who knows one or two of God's creatures might be enlightened by my idiocy or inadvertently even find the door to liberation from this realm of delusion.
"If manners maketh man, as someone says,
Then he is the hero of the day,
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile,
Be yourself no matter what they say."...An Englishman in New York
-Sting.
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