Anger

Last Friday to Sunday, I joined the MSA FOC senior camp as a programmer sub-comm. The camp was a trial before the actual MSA FOC camp next week and I specifically came back to Singapore early just for this camp. The senior camp itself began on a quite cheerful note for me as we went to Sentosa Island and Terror Sea Scout campsite on the first day. The second day, the orientation groups traveled around Singapore playing station games from morning to evening and I was stationed at Orchard as the programmer for the station with Poh Ai, my fellow CBE coursemate.

Things started to turn a bit frustrating on the night of the second day. First, I went back to my room for a shower and discovered that my body shower and shampoo were stolen because I left it outside my room. Then, I was stationed as a programmer to replace one person for the Human Pinball game where two teams try to hit a soft ball into a goal using plastic bottle. Perhaps I was affected by the earlier incident where I discovered my body shower and shampoo were stolen, I was a bit aggressive and shouted when I was trying to control the situation in the midst of all the noise during the Human Pinball game. 

To my utter surprise, during the debriefing of the second game, one person pointed out during the Human Pinball game, one of the programmers(did not mention name) is a bit too aggressive, which literally means putting me on the spot during the debriefing session. My initial reaction was putting an oblivious face and kept playing with my smartphone. However, when I thought of other main comm people shouting to control the crowd when it's too noisy to give instructions, I felt anger towards that person who put me on the spot in front of everyone. I retaliated by giving back the instruction booklet for the station games on the 3rd day that are not part of my job scope to the chief programmer in charge. 

Of course the news of my retaliation spread among the main comm(at least) since my retaliation occurred in front of all the chief programmers. The chief programmer who asked me favor to take on additional roles outside my job scope is one of my OG people from last year, and he tried to convince me to forget about the debriefing incident and said I did my part well in contributing to the camp as a whole. He also tried to persuade my to take back the role for the station games on the third day but I was having none of it because the anger is still very much there. 

The night after the debriefing incident, I had lots of thinking about the incident and why I acted/reacted in the way I did. I concluded that it might be due to the fact that I was feeling unsatisfied about my current life, be it academically,socially or personally, and the dissatisfaction bottled up in me. No matter how much I convinced myself to accept my current life(which I did not) and face it(which I have no choice), the dissatisfaction just won't do away and it bounds to cease out of my control sometimes like during the Human Pinball game. 

I have come to accept the fact that I need to face my current life whether I like it or not. But it's obvious that it's not a healthy method since I still could not come to terms with the life I'm living now and the life that I thought I deserved to have. I am merely turning all this hard feelings on myself and telling myself that I need to achieve great things, no matter I'm happy or not. Friends have been telling me to be happy while chasing my dreams and goals but the fact that I'm not doing as well in life as I would wish for just make it tough to feel happy. 

Anyway, the debriefing incident actually got me into considering whether I should went back to my university counselling to talk about the way I'm feeling towards my life and for anger management. Of course, I have a friend in university now who is always willing to listen to my stories and I'm very grateful for that. I also told this particular friend about the debriefing incident and I felt much better after that. So, I am still torn between whether the debriefing incident that got me losing my emotional control is significant enough to have a confidence crisis about my mental and emotional health. 

Ironically, before the senior camp, I managed to find a book titled: The Pursuit of Happiness - How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life by Tal Ben-Shahar. The book talked about the characteristics of a Perfectionist and how perfectionism shapes the thinking of Perfectionist towards success, emotion and reality. It resonates with me so much because many of the things mentioned in the book fits my personality and the way I see things in perspective. I would have love to do my first book review on my blog about this book but I doubt that I have the patience and time to review the book. 

Anyway, the main reason I'm mentioning this book is that this book is exactly what I feel many people would think it's a perfect book for me to read and learn from it how to start living my happy life. The book talked about how to change from a Perfectionist to an Optimalist in order to live a richer and happier life. Like the book mentions, no one is 100% Perfectionist or Optimalist. The idea of being a bit more Optimalist seems enticing to me considering the state of unhappiness in my life now but after having some reflection, I still think I would prefer to be more of a Perfectionist than an Optimalist because perfectionism got me all the achievements that I worked for and I'm willing to trade happiness for success by continue following the Perfectionist's mindset.