The gist of this following post is not from me (marked in bold), but there is so much wisdom in it, I wish to share it with anyone and everyone who visits this place. When I take notes, I would mark out important lines with a small asterisk, when it strikes a chord with me; I double the number of asterisks, or draw big stars beside the lines. Today, my notebook is covered with so many asterisks, great big stars, exclamation marks, boxed up words, underlined and re-underlined.
I am not one who embrace changes. I guess it is natural for most to prefer lingering in the realm of familiarity to swimming in the unfamiliar. My resistance to change is that- but to a greater intensity, I detest and disregard change. Change is the hyphen between the old and the new and I view this ambiguous dash with a tinge of weariness. Perhaps, I fear change so much that sometimes I choose to remain ignorant in order to continue in the usual conventional accustomed manner.
And perhaps, this ignorance has even led me to believe that there is nothing wrong with stagnancy. In fact, it might even be romantic, being sentimental and reminiscent, thinking about good o’ times that has passed and gone, or living the present days in the days that are over.
In this mood of reminiscence as we cross over to 2008, lamenting how time flies, we also make New Year resolutions once again. Some have stopped doing so since we never seem to follow those goals anyway, such that they remain as fiercely determined alphabets and words on pages of diaries and journals.
The way we leave determines the way we enter. As we stumble or stride into a new year, it is not just a difference of the last digit, we are confronted with a brand new set of threehundredandsixtyfive days, new circumstances, new people, new opportunities.
Yet, to allow these opportunities to knock on our doors, we do not just wait, or even just pray, we make decisions for ourselves for all change begins with a decision and change is necessary for growth. Since our whole entire life is one continuous change after another, there is no reason to be obstinate.
Fools won’t change,
Dead Men can’t change.
And because we are neither, let us all be courageous and lead the change, before it leads us.
I just read what I have written and I can’t help but feel that this is such a diluted version of what I experienced. I wish I could reproduce the same but I can’t and I shall end on this note: We are where we are because of the decisions we make.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Kitkat days
He went out to the field one evening to meditate. Days during the vacation are played out with one outing after another such that there is very little solitary time.
I enjoy companionship a lot and so I always have difficulty dealing with partings. I love camps, how everyone goes to sleep together, wakes up together, eats together, as with overseas trips, how no moment is individualised.
When I learnt that people with low social solidarity have a higher inclination to committing suicide, I thought Of course!
But recently, I realised that too much time spent with others can be unhealthy when it robs you of your personal time for quiet meditation. Spending time in isolation is like a calm retreat that everyone ought to have.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Orange Warmth
Finally, after Christmas, I have found the time to sit in front of my laptop to think about the last few weeks. December has been a month of rushing and also of unhurried reflections during journeys, long coach rides in Taiwan and to Selangor.
This has also been a month of the most precious conversations, propping heads up in a foreign MacDonalds, in another land having our Life Journeys played out all over again, part three, four, five, six, drawing closer to each other as we have conversations beyond plastered polite smiles, about religion, family, love, topics that carry past fatigue. Conversations that disregard place and surrounding, in a random food outlet in Bugis, Sarah and I gushing, laughing, listening to each other, parting with a tight hug, an intimacy that leaves the double syllabic friend-ship understated and weak. Conversations that ignore time, at two am in a Prata Coffeeshop with my mother, placing past secrets on the table over cups and more cups of tea, drinking into a night of revelations and also acceptance. So much emotion is evoked in these placid sharing and exchanges, it is incredible how the small human heart muscle can hold it all.
How else can or shall I document this month when there is so much to write about but when every thought that runs through my head seems indescribable. Last night, I could not follow the rhythm of handclaps because there was a joy that I could not contain. Last night, I turned around to see a beautiful sight where orange glows lifted the darkness. Cold fingers clasped around white wax, flames that held every single heart, friends around me, I could almost feel them beaming in the peaceful serenity.
Old Man Charles wrote in a Christmas card, “For this Christmas and the coming New Year, I wish that you retain the virtues of sentimentality but throw away the vices of indecisiveness.” I guess ambivalence always accompanies memory because with memory there is a desire to return, like how I could just continue on endlessly about the past, instead of summarizing it into neat paragraphs like these.
I was writing short notes the other day, with every card speaking of the New Year to come, “May 2008 be your best year yet”, and I am truly looking forward to this new year, a year of possibilities with renewed strength.
This has also been a month of the most precious conversations, propping heads up in a foreign MacDonalds, in another land having our Life Journeys played out all over again, part three, four, five, six, drawing closer to each other as we have conversations beyond plastered polite smiles, about religion, family, love, topics that carry past fatigue. Conversations that disregard place and surrounding, in a random food outlet in Bugis, Sarah and I gushing, laughing, listening to each other, parting with a tight hug, an intimacy that leaves the double syllabic friend-ship understated and weak. Conversations that ignore time, at two am in a Prata Coffeeshop with my mother, placing past secrets on the table over cups and more cups of tea, drinking into a night of revelations and also acceptance. So much emotion is evoked in these placid sharing and exchanges, it is incredible how the small human heart muscle can hold it all.
How else can or shall I document this month when there is so much to write about but when every thought that runs through my head seems indescribable. Last night, I could not follow the rhythm of handclaps because there was a joy that I could not contain. Last night, I turned around to see a beautiful sight where orange glows lifted the darkness. Cold fingers clasped around white wax, flames that held every single heart, friends around me, I could almost feel them beaming in the peaceful serenity.
Old Man Charles wrote in a Christmas card, “For this Christmas and the coming New Year, I wish that you retain the virtues of sentimentality but throw away the vices of indecisiveness.” I guess ambivalence always accompanies memory because with memory there is a desire to return, like how I could just continue on endlessly about the past, instead of summarizing it into neat paragraphs like these.
I was writing short notes the other day, with every card speaking of the New Year to come, “May 2008 be your best year yet”, and I am truly looking forward to this new year, a year of possibilities with renewed strength.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Love me tender
I have a way of writing in ambiguity such that most of what is documented becomes unfathomable, it feels personal yet detached, it seems clear yet incomprehensible. I never cared whether people reading this understood what I was talking about, whether they could relate to shared accounts, because writing, to me, is very much for the self.
But this entry shall be different; I have an experience to share and I am going to do so as explicitly as I can.
I began my semester wondering what love is. In one of my older entries in August, this is how I felt:
What is love, really? I am starting to believe, that love is made of emotions rising at certain moments, it is made of impulsiveness, it is made of sonnets that romanticize the mysterious thing that nobody knows, of songs that sing, “He fills my soul with so much love that anywhere I go I am never lonely”. But how long does it last, that after the years that passed, that you still could be passionately swept away.
Characterizing love is not difficult. In love, there is some care and concern, pain and tears, happiness and sadness. And love is varied, holding different kinds of relations together, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers and brothers, sisters and sisters, men and women. I seem to be able to tell what love is. Yet, to look at a scene of tenderness or to feel a certain emotion, realizing that is love and telling myself this is love is something I have difficulty doing. I think I know what love is, yet I am unable to pinpoint it.
These few weeks have been days of small discoveries and growing. I do not have clear answers but it is a notion that is becoming less vague. The biggest revelation to me is actually very simple: To feel love, one must allow to be loved.
I went to church a couple of Saturdays ago after a long hiatus and made a choice to open my heart. Service was scary as much as it was impactful. I was amazed by the level of faith and belief that others held, and I was more aware of the huge disparity that lay between me and them. Stepping up and taking a leap of faith was definitely not a moment of awakening, of certainty or conviction. As I stood, the only thoughts that were running through my mind was that it is very cold, am I ready for this choice, I ought to be more prepared this time round, it is really freezing.
This bout of doubt and uncertainty comes from the mindset that one’s level of faith has to reach a certain benchmark for the threshold of something new. In faith that dwindled, and amongst faith that appears unwaveringly strong, I felt I was not ready. But I had made a decision, a second one, and within insecurities and doubts, I decided to give myself a chance. On Sunday night, the same night I wrote an entry and said, “Tonight I will try”, I took out the bible that has been kept away for years and read it. I was expecting revelations, tears, an impact, a great one, I was bent on looking for the breakthrough force that people always talk about. There was none, I read it, it was comforting, but there was none.
When I related this to a friend the next day, he said many things, but the one thing that struck me was this, “Faith is like a muscle, you’ve to exercise it. Love is a choice.” I reaffirmed my choice that same night, in reading and in prayers in the nights that follow; I only wanted to reach out.
But sometimes, it is difficult. Stepping into and out of church is, like what another friend told me, “crossing between two worlds”. Returning home and going back into the world of realities feels like leaving something behind. Sometimes, in this sphere, within the walls of my room, in school, in between journeys, all that I really long for it to recreate that same experience in church, feeling His presence. So in faith that is on a constant fluctuation, some days big and other days small, I did the same thing I have been doing since the first night: reading and keeping in prayer.
And when I say the notion of love is becoming less vague to me, it is because I am able to pinpoint it, even as intangible, as invisible as it may seem, I find myself moved.
Last night I was confronted with the same feeling of loss that comes from leaving church and returning home. I fell asleep with “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”
He works in ways we least expect. This morning, I received a letter, it is truly through God’s grace that I received it and in my shocked happiness, as I read the words on the letter, the only words that registered are those I read last night. As the letter is perhaps a new beginning of sorts, that Saturday is definitely a new beginning.
To feel love, one must allow to be loved.
But this entry shall be different; I have an experience to share and I am going to do so as explicitly as I can.
I began my semester wondering what love is. In one of my older entries in August, this is how I felt:
What is love, really? I am starting to believe, that love is made of emotions rising at certain moments, it is made of impulsiveness, it is made of sonnets that romanticize the mysterious thing that nobody knows, of songs that sing, “He fills my soul with so much love that anywhere I go I am never lonely”. But how long does it last, that after the years that passed, that you still could be passionately swept away.
Characterizing love is not difficult. In love, there is some care and concern, pain and tears, happiness and sadness. And love is varied, holding different kinds of relations together, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers and brothers, sisters and sisters, men and women. I seem to be able to tell what love is. Yet, to look at a scene of tenderness or to feel a certain emotion, realizing that is love and telling myself this is love is something I have difficulty doing. I think I know what love is, yet I am unable to pinpoint it.
These few weeks have been days of small discoveries and growing. I do not have clear answers but it is a notion that is becoming less vague. The biggest revelation to me is actually very simple: To feel love, one must allow to be loved.
I went to church a couple of Saturdays ago after a long hiatus and made a choice to open my heart. Service was scary as much as it was impactful. I was amazed by the level of faith and belief that others held, and I was more aware of the huge disparity that lay between me and them. Stepping up and taking a leap of faith was definitely not a moment of awakening, of certainty or conviction. As I stood, the only thoughts that were running through my mind was that it is very cold, am I ready for this choice, I ought to be more prepared this time round, it is really freezing.
This bout of doubt and uncertainty comes from the mindset that one’s level of faith has to reach a certain benchmark for the threshold of something new. In faith that dwindled, and amongst faith that appears unwaveringly strong, I felt I was not ready. But I had made a decision, a second one, and within insecurities and doubts, I decided to give myself a chance. On Sunday night, the same night I wrote an entry and said, “Tonight I will try”, I took out the bible that has been kept away for years and read it. I was expecting revelations, tears, an impact, a great one, I was bent on looking for the breakthrough force that people always talk about. There was none, I read it, it was comforting, but there was none.
When I related this to a friend the next day, he said many things, but the one thing that struck me was this, “Faith is like a muscle, you’ve to exercise it. Love is a choice.” I reaffirmed my choice that same night, in reading and in prayers in the nights that follow; I only wanted to reach out.
But sometimes, it is difficult. Stepping into and out of church is, like what another friend told me, “crossing between two worlds”. Returning home and going back into the world of realities feels like leaving something behind. Sometimes, in this sphere, within the walls of my room, in school, in between journeys, all that I really long for it to recreate that same experience in church, feeling His presence. So in faith that is on a constant fluctuation, some days big and other days small, I did the same thing I have been doing since the first night: reading and keeping in prayer.
And when I say the notion of love is becoming less vague to me, it is because I am able to pinpoint it, even as intangible, as invisible as it may seem, I find myself moved.
Last night I was confronted with the same feeling of loss that comes from leaving church and returning home. I fell asleep with “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”
He works in ways we least expect. This morning, I received a letter, it is truly through God’s grace that I received it and in my shocked happiness, as I read the words on the letter, the only words that registered are those I read last night. As the letter is perhaps a new beginning of sorts, that Saturday is definitely a new beginning.
To feel love, one must allow to be loved.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
where paths meet
Between everything else and listening to Sundial Dreams and realizing that today is the first day of December and that the year is coming to a close and soon it will be new goals new plans new resolutions, I must mark down certain things, not in fear of forgetting, but because, just because- their relevance speaks out to me.
Drapes of conversations with different people, lines from text messages, online chats, I don’t think talk is all that empty. It is bountiful, typing these; I feel like I am transported back to that moment and space where the conversations are played through again.
“You don’t need to expect anything; you just need an open heart.”
“I felt like tearing.”
“Faith is like a muscle, you’ve to exercise it. Love is a choice.”
“Your one step equals to ten steps.”
“I guess it is about merging the two worlds together everyday.”
“I can go on arguing and probably make a good argument but nobody can argue with you about the experience you felt.”
Drapes of conversations with different people, lines from text messages, online chats, I don’t think talk is all that empty. It is bountiful, typing these; I feel like I am transported back to that moment and space where the conversations are played through again.
“You don’t need to expect anything; you just need an open heart.”
“I felt like tearing.”
“Faith is like a muscle, you’ve to exercise it. Love is a choice.”
“Your one step equals to ten steps.”
“I guess it is about merging the two worlds together everyday.”
“I can go on arguing and probably make a good argument but nobody can argue with you about the experience you felt.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
