Rationality

Although it might sound paradoxical, I wouldn’t hesitate to admit my love for rationality. In the beginning, the feeling of enlightenment  rationality brought dominated my attention, reminiscent of how I felt as a kid when I unraveled the labyrinth of a paper maze. Falling in so deeply, I subliminally killed my emotions and gradually detached myself from the surrounding physical confinement. The world of rationality somehow outshined the world of reality and became the center of my life. Rationality was my needle that weaved my understanding into a belief that made my uncertainty certain and elucidated my wonders guiding me to live a life I understood.

However, my belief had rendered me vulnerable as it isolated me from my community. I became uncomfortable with being myself and interacting with other individuals, not because I didn’t know them, but because I didn’t understand them, not completely. I thought I was rational, but I was afraid of uncertainty, of oblivion, of the intangible future in which each of my actions would lead to countless unpredictable ramifications. I was able to speak to the public; however, I wasn’t able to speak for my own self but on the behalf of someone else or just ‘righteousness’, and so I joined Model United Nations, in which I could represent a country instead of myself. Model United Nations, surprisingly, continued to amaze me as I witnessed arguments seemingly falling in accordance with the rules in my world of science, and I liked it.

What I disliked was the fact that my arguments, or in the world of MUN we call them ‘clauses’ and ‘resolutions, were never fully accepted, even when the other delegates seemed entirely unable to repudiate my words. At first I attributed my failure to my possible logical flaws or ineloquence, or even to my unintended mispronunciation, so I worked so restlessly to fix them all that spending hours practicing speaking in front of a mirror and repeatedly questioning my own arguments were just a few things I didn’t even think of grumbling about. But my second MUN conference confirmed that it was something else that simply disallowed the expression of my belief as I failed to even join a discussion group during lobbying. Despite knowing I had all the knowledge and information needed, I still couldn’t speak out with my own voice. Sweating, eyesight roaming over the entire conference room and shunning any direct eye contact so impulsively yet counter-intuitively, feet faltering and finally stopping in midstride, for the very first time I noticed my social seclusion so directly that I felt lost. I didn’t understand. It was like a barrier, or a wall, standing in between me and the other delegates, we speaking the same language but incommunicable.

And so it was, a wall. I had subconsciously built a wall separating myself from the community. Along the way of pursuing a sense of security and averting uncertainty like kids insisting on keeping the lights on at night, I have burnt up the wire fuse that at once connected me to the society and the humanity. I had forgotten how to show my true self to people and be one of them.

I had to break the wall, and I made my first stride in my third MUN conference with an awkward smile and a clumsy introduction of myself, which took me tons of effort and didn’t show much result. It wasn’t easy to weld the broken fuses back in connection. For some reasons the ‘rational’ person in me never ceased to impugn my urge for a sense of communality, but this time I decided to let my emotion and intuition guide my way. As I started opening up myself to other people, I realized that I understood each stranger more than I used to, piece by piece, and found that we had so much in common. I noticed that I could feel what they were feeling, and I could understand what they were thinking and why they thought in certain ways. My words were valued in a different way, an intimate one, and I was one of them! The lost child didn’t need the light on anymore, because he could cuddle with the other kids and feel safe.

Ever since my epiphany I have always allocated my time to be with multiple groups of people, let they be orchestra, research group, tennis team, or MUN club. I also found a way to make my belief compatible with communality and emotion; I co-founded our school’s first debate club, hoping to create a cordial environment for people who share my belief to learn from each other and most importantly understand each other. Starting from the summer of 2013, I have been helping to organize local MUN conferences for Taiwanese public high school students who would otherwise never receive a chance to experience what I have experienced and to learn how to speak not only for the member states but also for themselves. There was a time that I could only know but not feel, but now I am truly aware and connected.