Monday Blues

To kickstart the week:

coming through, bursting fourth

Choosing to think the best of everyone, and to see love in everyone cushions the world.

Someday we'll know

A friend gave me a bar of chocolate on a night when I needed comfort, only he didn’t know I needed it.

I am quite a master of emotions, I have learnt to artfully show whatever I want to be presented. I control the tone of my voice, the questions I ask, the thoughts that seem to be in my mind. It is not a pretentious attempt, but a desire to remain functional when everyone continues running along. There are roles to be played, responsibilities to be fulfilled, and I can’t stop short at the side of the tracks, waiting for my eyes to no longer sting each time a fresh supply of wind arrives. Managing emotions so skillfully also means the pain hits doubly hard in solitude. The immediate remembrance of sadness after companionship reminds me of this line I’ve read somewhere, “I know I am living because I have a heart and I feel it breaking”.

I think the only time I don’t have a firm hold of my emotions is when I sing a worship song, and feel the tears coming before I know there are tears to be shed. Then I know that everything only builds me up to be stronger.

If I were a confused passenger taken on a long ride, the biggest relief is that I am not lost in the jungle. I get off the swirls and turns of the journey simply by hopping off the train, and walking to my destination. Perhaps I still don’t know where I am heading, but I’m doing the directing now. The scenery captured along the way, the rows of trees that flashed past through the glass windows, the feel of the pebbles and little rocks that the train grinds through are over. Now walking, I enjoy the feel of the soles of my shoes touching the tarmac road and study the different greenness of the trees for as long as I want to.

That night, I kept the bar of chocolate in my fridge, announcing that this is my comfort food reserved for the next time I feel sad again.

My first day of school begins tomorrow. I am excited, and full of genuine anticipation. Every single one of the modules I am doing this semester is of interest to me, and I am back to doing the things I love and enjoy. I've decided to peel off the silver foil for the next time I feel an immeasurable amount of joy because from behind I heard, “there is no again, and no more sadness”.

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Last year was lived mostly in a haze, everything feels surreal, all that I remember are random bits, my memory of the whole year is choppy and fragmented. I was tired mostly, living one day and stumbling over to the next. Whatever good that happened was truly by God's grace and love. Whatever bad that happened, I'm also thankful for, for it drew me closer to Him.

I have allowed your earthly comforters to fail you, so that by turning to Me you may receive "eternal encouragement and good hope" (2 Thess. 2:16)

If anything, I'm just glad that this is a new year, clean records, fresh starts.

Don't fool yourself

I like it from 1:04 onwards...

Just fall in, right?

What is so alluring about love that makes it such a popular conversation topic? Something on love life, or the lack of, would definitely find its way on dinner tables or over coffee. It is the instant connector that bridges time spent apart among old friends, the magical ingredient that binds strangers into feeling a lifetime of familiarity. The question is rhetorical, the answer quite a rude awakening: in the heart of hearts, we’re all looking for love, whether we realize it, whether we confess it, it is a desire that sits on everyone’s mind. Particularly so in this stage of life, before marriage when nothing is cast in stone diamond ring, after days of immaturity when we think we’re a little wiser, a little more discerning, the need to be in love with another human is- ever present.

So, we talk about it all the time, the ideal guy, the ideal girl. We listen to lyrics that promise of fairytale endings, watch movies with gorgeous couples having candlelight dinners, read books that describe an experience so amazing, it carves a hole within us that enlarges the more we purposefully set out to find Love and pocket it.

Sitting on the sidelines of love, all I speak about is the difficulty of falling in love. All the other benchwarmers excluded from this capital L game agree. This unison and certainty in their replies unsettles me and makes me quite sick and tired of all this discussion. All talk and more talk makes the desire to be in love stronger.

I have come to realize that we can be in love, with possibly anyone, any person in this world. Our emotions are simply a concoction of various factors, our then state of mind, the people around, the environment.

But one thing puzzles me greatly…if you never know what love is, how will you know you are in love?