monday morning...today was one of those days i find myself waking up, my hand grasping for the alarm clock that is beeping...i've been anticipating the 'beep' for possibly an hour, trying to stay asleep...i can hear the sound of soft rain by my window...i've all but given up hope. these days my body automatically 'switches on' at about 6am...the first thought on my mind is the last one i had just before i dozed off last night. i know this doesn't happen everyday...why it does sometimes, and at other times, not, remains a mystery...we don't get to pick or choose our thoughts the moment we awake.

making my way to work, scanning the landscape of KL from my vantage, through the train's window, i couldn't help but realize how predictable human habits actually are...come on...all of us travel in vehicles shaped like little boxes, all filing in and out of the same asphalt roads, day in, day out...all of us dress the same too...most...i hasten to qualify. but even the anomalies are quite a uniform group, guys and girls in blue jeans and t-shirt...the rest of us 'office-types', well...you get the drift...

how is it that modern men and women, who so pride themselves as rational 'choice-makers', we the possessors of freedom of choice, still end up so uniform, so 'normal'...if we are such free creatures, our innate creativities should actually be expressed in ways more diverse or more original than the range of adopted life-styles that we see around us...yuppies, networkers, 'the youth', senior citizens etc.

the conspiracy theorists will tell you that our choices are not actually 'real' in the first place...much like the choices that mcdonald's or burger king would give to its customers : meal 1, meal 2 or meal 3 etc. powerful business interests dictate what we can actually choose...the TV channels we get to watch, what kind of products would make you happier, or even the kind of jobs you should aspire to...

to dwell on this thought...i feel helpless...what if we, as a civilization, as society, is heading the wrong direction? we have so ingeniously set up structures and technology to advance as a race, but now we find it hard to control; these 'powers and principalities' are controlling us instead...we can't seem to be able to change our course, our destination...

i am no pessimist nor a doomsday prophet...even if such observations of our daily lives are true, to a certain extent, this does not mean acquiescence and surrender to the inevitable. the christian, the follower of christ, is the last person who should or need submit to such a logical reading of our history, to be 'conformed to the pattern of this present age'. the christian is the true revolutionary, only if we understand our place at this historical moment, to derail this world's logic or inevitability in the light of the eschaton, the judgment of Christ of every human project and ambition in the light of the NEW WORLD he is constructing...

i will be heading back to class...i ask myself 'how can christ be present here?'; 'how does the kingdom of god manifest here?'...not tomorrow, not through telling people that when we all die, we get to be heaven... that kind of gospel is hollow to me, and i suspect, also to many of my friends and the young... we, 'postmoderns', have an intuition...something's not right...something's amiss...in ourselves, our families, our nation, our churches, our government...

today, i hear his words: " change your life/redefine your priorities...God's radical kingdom is confronting your life, here and now..."

is a different world or future still possible?