The Present comes before the Past
By Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng
July 2010 EDITORIAL
A friend once desperately and exasperatedly wished to know what he had been in earlier lives.“Why?“ I asked him with half a mind.“Well,” he said (with a look that effectively transformed ‘Well’ into ‘Duh’). “I need to know who I really am”.Now, thinking back on that dialogue years later, two things still puzzle me.First, if we do reincarnate, how is he ever going to know for sure what his earlier lives were? No wonder he was exasperated. Second, why would...
Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng
is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His latest book is Signals in the Noise: Notes on Penang, Malaysia and the World (Singapore: Faction Press) Homepage: wikibeng.com.
