It is generally recognised, particularly in liberal arts universities and colleges in the West, that a person should have nodding acquaintance with the literature and philosophy of the ancient Greek civilisation. There lies the source of much of what we consider to be good in the "Western civilisation" today.

Therefore, a person in learned circles would hardly be regarded as truly educated and refined unless he also has nodding acquaintance with Sophocles, especially his celebrated play Oedipus Rex . At least, he must have heard of Oedipus as that unfortunate chap driven by fate to kill his father and marry his mother.

The story relevant to our topic goes like this: Having killed a stranger without realising that the stranger was his father, Oedipus came to Thebes.

The land of Thebes happened to be terrorised by a monster, the Sphinx, a hybrid creature with the head of a woman, the body of a lioness with wings, who destroyed all who could not solve the riddle.

Sophocles did not give us details about the riddle, but other writers tell us that it was "which animal has one voice, but 2, 3, or 4 feet, being weakest and slowest on 3?" Oedipus answered that the animal was "Man". The sphinx then leapt to its death off a cliff. Oedipus married the widowed queen of Thebes, his biological mother, and became king. When he finally learned the truth, he blinded himself and his mother-cum-wife committed suicide out of shame.

(There are good English translations of the play in KL bookstores. I have also watched it performed, and the power of the play has to be experienced in order to derive the greatest impact from the genius of Sophocles speaking to us from 25 centuries ago. Perhaps the theatre groups in KL should give it a try.)

This is more than just a good story. It shows you the intuitive wisdom of the ancient Greeks. Oedipus, the man who solved the riddle of man's journey through the passage of time in life, knew nothing about himself, his true identity, and his destiny. The irony is deepened when you learn that the word "Oedipus" in the ancient Greek language also means something like "the man with the deformed feet". Oedipus' feet were pinioned at birth. It is strange irony that the only person in Thebes with the deformed feet should solve the ultimate puzzle about man with feet as the only clue!

Fate a terrible thing

Fate is a terrible thing. In monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam, everything is pre-determined by God. If that is the case, then all the choices made by individuals would have been pre-determined by the Almighty, rendering the idea of "free choice" completely self-delusory. The natural response would be then if: all matters of choice are meaningless, so why choose at all? This debate between free will and determinism has haunted Christian theology for a long time, and I am not sure if their response is entirely satisfactory to die-hard sceptics.

In daily life, many people do believe that what is fated to happen will happen. This is especially so when a tragedy strikes. A friend has died in an accident at the prime of his life. We try to ameliorate our grief by blaming fate; we say," Cruel Fate has taken him".

Nowadays, the vogue is very much the American Dream, typified by the dictum: "You can be whatever you want to be, as long as you know what you want, and know how to get it."

Perhaps it is a logical facet of the corporate culture that filters down to people working in the business world. The big emphasis is on living a designer life, setting long and short term career and personal goals, and going about reaching those goals over the various stages of one's life. Happiness, they say, will be assured if you manage your life's journey like you manage your bank accounts.

In Malaysia, many parents would chart this course of life for their children, determining what schools they go to, what kind of university courses they will take regardless of their special needs and talents, and what professions they will enter into upon adult life.

I find that kind of approach rather unsatisfying. It makes for a dull life, by taking the surprise element out of living a life. In any case, as the existentialists will tell you, living a life like a train going on a predetermined track may not always work. The human will may be free in some sense, but the experienced traveller can tell you the train can be derailed at the least expected moments. Too much superstitious faith in your puny human will may be a sure path to a life of self-deception.

We will never know

Consider this. If you reflect upon the course of your life, say after you have reached 40 or 50, you would realise that what and who you are now would have been inconceivable when you were 20.

There is also the question of "knowing" what we really want. We want different things at various stages of our life. It is often the case that after we get what we want, we feel vaguely disappointed, as if the satisfaction of our desire is inevitably accompanied by a bitter after taste. More often then not, after getting what we want, we discovered that the object of our desire is not what we have expected. Worse still, after a long life of getting what we want, we look back with some vague regret, and watch the sunset with remorse.

At the end of the day, perhaps we will never know what we really want in life. Ultimately, we know what we do not want. For many, they do not want to die. The odd powerful individuals hanker after immortality. The Egyptian Pharaohs and the Chinese Emperors of old made a big deal out of looking for the Elixir of Life, or the tomb that will ensure their rebirth. Less powerful people like you and me go for the second best option: we have children.

It is hard to know what we really want in life, because it is well nigh impossible to know the "I" in the first place, just as it is well nigh impossible to know another person.

Here, we must revisit Zuang Tze, arguably the most perceptive Chinese philosopher who flourished at the Spring Autumn warring period 25 centuries ago. One day, Zuang Tze was admiring some fish swimming happily in the water in the company of his friend and critic, Hui Tze. The dialogue goes like this:

Z: "Look at those fish. How happy they are swimming in the river!"

H: "You are not the fish. How do you know they are happy or not?"

Z: "You are not me. How do you know whether I know the fish are happy or not?"

H: "You are not me. How do you know whether I know you know about the fish or

not?"

This is not the kind of rhetorical sophistry rampant among college students taking Metaphysic 101. This is the sort of thing that bothered Wittgenstein to no end. How can any one feel the painfulness of my tooth ache? By extension, how can any one feel my inner anguish? Then, why engage in conversation at all?

We cannot live alone

We look at a person's face, and it is difficult to fathom his "I", even if he turns out to be a spouse of many years, or he is a good old friend. Just when we think we know him well, he goes and does something completely out of character.

The prominent German philosopher Martin Heidegger goes one step further. He claims in Being and Time that when anybody says he knows who he is, he is furthest from whom he is. This is because when a person lives in the everyday mode of public existence together with others, he has been averaged out, and levelled down, and his true self has been dispersed in the "they". The "they-self" is everybody and nobody. It is an inauthentic mode of being.

Like all great philosophers, Heidegger is not easily accessible. But this much is clear. If we live entirely in the realm of our social togetherness with others, and if we allow others to define our mode of existence in all ways, then our "Self" cannot be authentic.

At the same time though, we also know that we cannot live all alone, and man is a social animal. We are what Heidegger calls "Being-in-the-world proximally and for the most part". No wonder those Buddhist monks wander off to live in a cave in the wilderness for many years if they want to achieve the enlightenment of Nirvana. Mortal fools like you and me will be condemned never to achieve our authentic "Self".

The presence of some ideas of Fate in all cultures, and at all times, sometimes personified in the image of a personalised God, sometimes represented by the Heavens, is the mirror image of man's incompleteness, his limitedness, his deficiency, and his yearning to assuage his cosmic loneliness.

Perhaps the question "who am I?" is not to be answered at all!

To be continued.but at another time