What should 60 years of Rafflesians look like?

When technology enables us to bring 60 years of community to interact across time, carrying in it the history, nuances, characters, moods and sheats of shared experiences, one piling right on top of the next, of thousands of individuals whose lives have traversed the same doors, what do we get? What sense do we make of it? What would we call our own and what will we not recognise? Will any of it be useful?

What is this brand called Raffles Hall? What emotions is it designed to evoke? Are those emotions valid or are they contrived? Can we walk away from our past, because it is not necessarily joined to that of the others in this community? Is there a hope that we can pass down to future members, so that they too would volunteer to become part of this timeless tribe?

All of these are choices we make. None of them have meanings in themselves, except for that which we allow them to give us, to help us mark our own passage through time. Because time in itself is cruel, it respects no one, it waits for no one, it flows silently and carries all of us, sometimes screaming and protesting, sometime resigned to a fate that is still a choice, to let the stream carry us along nonchalantly.

To construct that meaning, we tell stories, of moments, of experiences, of things we did because we wanted to and things we did because we did them, of people we liked and did not like. Somehow, as stories get told, things that don't necessarily belong to each other get connected, sometimes over time, sometimes across the little valley that sat in front of the hall, to the other side which really did not have anything to do with what we did on this side.

The problem in trying to find an identity that transcends is that it all makes sense if the period we define is a self-contained one. But 60 years carries us across periods. Part of Malaysia. Then not part of Malaysia. British troops, and then no British troops. American multinationals. Then Asian multinationals. Then the internet. Then the budget airlines. Strong politicians, then not so strong politicians. Foreigners, meaning Malaysians from across the causeway. Foreigners, meaning Chinese nationals from even further away. All things that give characters to different periods that do not wish to be bent or tied to a chain of any shared meaning at all.

What should 60 years of Rafflesians mean? It will mean what we bestow on it to mean. We can all walk away and it will mean nothing. We can each come back and say I recognise something that is undeniably me, and it will mean just that, and nothing more, and still mean everything it can usefully mean. It can possibly mean many things, but it will usefully mean only that which we allow it to mean to us, and that is the light of the candle that we pass on to the next Rafflesian and the next and the next until it means something each of us come to believe is our shared experiences, across time.

I write this way because to give a meaning in other way will be contrived. There was a time, when the technology was not as developed as it is today, that Raffles Hall could only mean what was given to us to mean. It had a boisterous, hormonal charge to it because the meaning was waved like a flag from the fort.

But today technology helps us personalise our meanings. We can choose to meet or choose not to meet and still be very connected. We can choose to relate, to take and to give, without anyone else in the network even knowing we exist. Against all this, the brand still needs to be shared, it still needs to mean something all of us recognise, never mind accept.

It will be not to respect the Rafflesians to whom any of these meant anything at all. Or two groups of Rafflesians who don't want to have anything to do with what it means to the other. Yet it is possible to let them all go, and still find that meaning, shared across time and people, because 60 years of Rafflesians can only look like me and what I want it to mean.

The real test, of course, will be if future generations, the ones that time will flow past these same words, would want to moor their ropes and call this theirs as well. They would want something that is both familiar and aspirational, not in a physical way as it used to be. We keep referring to Raffles Hall as a place at a certain time. Meaning for the next generation cannot carry values that are time or property bound because the economics of their values will carry neither as the underlying asset.

In order to transcend into the future, we have to have dreams of our own, and aspirations of our own. Dreams are like the torch that the past pass on to the future, and aspiration is the fire in that torch. For without dreams, there is no future, and without a future, there is no need for meaning.