It's the age of being curious.

Do you sometimes feel empty? Days when your existence doesn't seem to matter? Like your life is a robotic sequence of set events; a template of movements which appear to be repeating themselves but which does not carry much sense to you?

If you do feel like life is an empty existence, you should feel glad.

Glad because not many people are blessed with that inner sense of self. Be glad that you find life lacking. Be very glad.

Because once you have discovered that, that's when life starts.

It's the age of being curious!

Sadness teaches me acceptance

There are some people, probably due to the nature of their job or its their nature, to always appear optimistic about life. They will claim that there is a reason for everything, a purpose for things to happen when they happened. I too, like to make the claim myself, many times. Every time, if I can help it. Life is after all, what you make of it.  How you respond to situation in your life. You make your decision. To be happy. To be sad. There is a populist belief that you can create your own happiness. That it is a choice.

Most times, of course its easier said than done.

Try to be happy when you want something, desperately and you can't have it. And there will be people out there who try to persuade you to believe that things do not make you happy. They will say associating happiness to ownership of things, or a particular experience is putting happiness in objects and circumstances. External. They will argue that happiness is from within - how you see your life, how you create value for yourself. Their notion is that happiness is an internal thing.

Yeah. Easy to say, right?

Happiness may decidedly be the point where you have arrived. When you realize that to live is not to be happy, all the time. Happiness is good but happiness is subjective. Sadness on the other hand, is real living. To be sad means to really know how to live.

I don't mind being sad, sometimes.
Sadness teaches me kindness.
Sadness teaches me compassion.
Sadness teaches me tolerance.
Sadness teaches me balance.
But most importantly,
Sadness teaches me acceptance.

Long Panai 2010

Dear God.

dear
God.

There is too much pain in the world today.
People dying. Egypt. Syria.
People are fighting people.
Too much bad blood.
We need a healing.

The wisdom of living.

Live your life,
Do not spend too much time,
living in the shadows of others.

This minute, now.
Live this moment.
this is your
life.

Live this moment, now.

A good reason to live.

I believe almost everyone starts their day with a prayer. Regardless of what religion and which God, starting a day without that silent whispers to the powers that be, would be almost sacrilegious: an ignorance of the purpose for one's reason to be alive.

Regardless of how one lives their days, to have lived them is a reason fulfilled. Let the days be filled with kind deeds, good words, and love.

See people as you see yourself. Regardless. Really see them as human: a father, mother, sister, brother, son and daughter to someone, as you are too to your own family. Treat them kindly. They too have a family and are beloved. Say good things to them. Love them as you would your own.

When you do that,
And when you whisper to God each morning,
You know that you are worthy of your purpose.
A life lived to affect lives.
Is a good reason to live.

A new year begins, but it doesn't feel new

This blog has been dormant. I know, and far too long. I am not going to give those cliched excuses and am not apologetic about it. This is how it is with life. Some people have too much to say. Some too little, and some none at all.

So what is new about the new year? Did you see it coming? Did you wait in anticipated breath for its arrival?

Or did it just come and go with you the wiser not to bother about it?

Does your life feel different in the new year? I wonder. To be fair I did feel a little bit different for a few days; I could say a new optimism for life was building. There was an extra gait to my walk, I might even suggest I wanted to run. For a while. Just a little while. But like the swallowed rush of excitement one normally feels for something new,it did not last. When the novelty of it wore off, the excitement withers away nonetheless.

Life could be such a bland sometimes. As bland as I am feeling now.

I do not feel new in the new year. Do you?

Little things

How can we impact the world we live in?

I wonder how many have asked this of themselves and if they have already found the answers which suit their notion of impacting life and the world. Most of us live such an ordinary life; surely we thought, nothing of significance happens in my life and there couldn't be anything I do that would matter except to myself.

To think that our lives are so insignificant is saying that God had made a mistake in our creation.

Appreciating your own life, and seeing its worth - even to yourself - is already evidence of how you have impacted the world. You are after all, a part of the world. Every single little thing that you do - smile, touch, speak and listen - are sending ripples to the lives around you.

You are touching lives. You are therefore impacting the world.

What does it mean to live?

I wonder how many times we stop to ask the question, Am I living? I mean, really "living" in the real sense of the word. Do we just exist; moving from one day to the next and the next, and the next... going through our daily routine like the day before and the days before that.

Are we so tight down with the days activities to appreciate perhaps the real meaning of "living"?

STOP for a minute. Ok, breathe in - hold - feel your senses, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 let go slowly. Good.

But that's only the physical sense of living. You know you are still alive; and you are living.

My contention here is the other sense -- the non physical. The thoughts that go into the every act of living. The spiritual as some people would like to call it. Do we stop to ask ourselves, ok I am doing this now, this is me alive. I want to experience this with all the senses that I am feeling. This is me alive, doing this.

Savor this moment. Be grateful for this moment. It is happening now. This minute. When this minute is passed, we move to the next and that minute is gone forever. There's no getting it back. Be engaged. Be appreciative. Be grateful. Be sad.

This is what is meant by really living.

New Year 2010

My first documented imprint for the year 2010 was this morning when I signed on the Express Mail. I had to appeal for my son's placement in a boarding school you see, having been unsuccessful in the first application. I had been quite guilty of slackness, I must admit. With two girls already in boarding school, I thought it would be a breeze to get my son in. After all, he's a straight A's, right? (WRONG) There hadn't been any problem with the sisters earlier (or, I wonder, was that because we were in Sarawak then, and getting in is not difficult due to less competition?...I don't know). Well, what I do know now is to not ever take things for granted. Nothing worth having comes easy.

Writing down the date, 2010 was an experience. With the pen poised at 20..., I suddenly felt an unsettling sense of dejavu. That I was actually - right there, on that piece of form, at that particular moment - saying goodbye. To something; to life, to the past, to memories, to experiences. Maybe, to a part of myself. It's sad, really. I didn't want to pen it down. Writing it, 20--, is like a betrayal to the past. I didn't want to betray my past. That whole year, that was my life. To write the new year on that piece of paper is to erase somehow that part of my life, those incredible experiences that was me in 2009. Well, I had to write it down quickly though. I was in a queue, in the post office. There were people behind me, inching to finish their business and I was holding them up. This is weird I thought, struggling to say goodbye in a post office, not wanting to let go by not daring to write down the new year on the form! Gosh...

I stood there
On the threshold of a new tomorrow
For there's hope yet:

For me,
For you.
For him and her.
For them.
For us.

God Bless everyone in 2010!

Bye 2010

It's the eve of the new year. Goodbye to 2009, and WHAT A YEAR!! that was. Take a pause, retrieve that step, and take stock of those past ones. Count them, compare them. Have there been more happy steps than sad ones? Then look ahead, see that road you're walking in? Contemplate. Pause. Maybe, this is time to look up. To the heavens. God! this is the new year. Bless the road I am on. Be there when I am taking the steps; that the happy steps are there for me to make.

Here
On the eve of 2010
I say my last goodbye

Here
For the very last time
The final goodbye:

to indecisions
to doubts
to pain.

Come on
Step ahead:
Run, if you may
There's hope yet!



Personal Note: This is a very personal blog; randoms thoughts on life, living and probably death.