Acceptance

Emotions are a state of mind. You feel and therefore you are. What you feel often have little to do with your physical state of being.

A battered housewife, lying in bed with her husband at night, has anxiety, heart palpitations with the imagined fear of being harm. But she is not in anyway being harm, well, not that exact moment at least.

Think about a interview, a meeting with a prospective employer or client and you will remember the fear of the unknown acutely. But the fear does not impair you in anyway physically, but render you to a nervous pulp internally.

When someone breaks your heart, it is like standing in the shallows of the beach, ankle-deep in the soft sand. The waves comes and washes over you, somehow you are knocked off your feet, surprised at the force of it all. Astonished at how much it hurts.

You are the same person you are a moment ago, a day ago. Physically, nothing changes. But inside, you become so small. Diminished by the affections with held from you.

How do we align our internal to the external? How do we overcome that immense hollow that swallows up all the light?

I think acceptance is key. This is what I've learn. Do not fight or resist the situation.

I am powerless to stop you from falling in love with someone else.

Do not wish for the situation to be other than it is. Do not desire things to go your way. Do not seek to control. This is what causes the pain. Instead, take it in, hold it like a black cloud of poison in your gut and when it threatens to overwhelm you, let it out with your breath and expunge this negative emotion.

Remind yourself, I am as beautiful, as gracious and as worthy of love as before. Nothing's changed. In this moment, choose to be happy and regret nothing. Everything happens for a reason.

Perhaps the healer needs to be healed, and his healer in turn will be healed by another. The tapestry of the big picture is probably the mural that lined the hallway to heaven. Because, only at the end of our lives, will all be revealed.

Namasté, my friend.

The Man and the Mountain

There is man who lives in a village near a mountain. He has a good life. He works hard and God rewards him with abundant food and water. He has a satisfying family life with a spouse that loves him and 2 children who adore him.

He has, seemingly, a wonderful existence. After all, besides food and water and family and love, what else do we need?

But there is a hunger in the man; he wants to unravel the mystery of the mountain. The mountain, that he sees every time he looks out the window. The mountain, whose shadow covers the village and his home every afternoon from 3pm. The mountain, that’s etched onto his very consciousness. The man wants to know what’s on the other side.

Is it fair that he wants to strike out on his own, leaving behind his family? Simply because he wants to know where the mountain, where life can take him. Should he quash that unceasing desire that burns inside him?

Already, he can feel himself changing. The food that he eats no longer fills him; the joy he used to derive from being around his family has diminished. Strangely, there is a sense of loss for something that he never had. Perhaps, he mourns the passing of time? He has never plan for this to happen. And he is covered with guilt for feeling this way.

He doesn't know what to do. Does he go or does he stay? Can the love of his family douse the fire that the mountain has ignited in him? Or will he go with his life, never able to fully live it, regreting the step that he never took.


"Just melodramatically, metaphorially wondering, of course."
- Cat

Connections

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.
Anne Frank (1929-1945)

I was in my teens when I started reading “The Diary of Anne Frank”. My filial piety centered, modern Singaporean life cannot be more different from this German born Jewish girl that lived 30-odd years before me. Yet, I find myself laughing and crying along with her journey towards her teens. Her angst were my own, her tentative overtures toward the opposite sex were reminisces of my own awkwardness and her inability to make her own mother understand her were echoes of my own torment. In the reading of that book, I stumbled upon a great truth; that we are all the same.

And perhaps the elusive happiness that we all seek is simply a connection to someone, something outside of ourselves.

We’ve all have had that experience when we are presented with a majestic view, say from the top of a hill. Or when we hear a soaring piece of music that just bring tears to our eyes for no reason. There is that moment like the “eye” of the storm where everything goes still and you are just at the pinnacle of your conciseness, where nothing matters; not your unfinished work or your troubled family life. The moment where you are simply you. Unfailingly, we always take in a long breath and try to hold to that moment because I believe in that moment, we can feel God.

In my search for myself, I have come to desire spirituality. Not the usual guilt-ridden religious dogma that I had been ingesting all these years, but a seeking of the spirit of the God of my heart.

The thing is, I do believe in God, or Spirit, or Consciousness, whatever word we choose to use. I’ve always feel that there is something unexplainable out there, greater than my miserable, self-absorbed life. And there is a yearning in all of us for it, because God made us to want to connect with him.

Having attended church almost all my teen and adult life, I have to admit to an indifference to spirituality. Much of my religious experience involves a lot critique on how much time I spend praying, reading the bible and how I have sinned. Guilt was an ever present emotion in my relationship with God, much like how I am with my mum. There seem to be just no pleasing them. I just felt weary all the time. And I struggle with how I feel because I felt… guilty again for not being “full of the spirit” and not being “joyful in God”. So many catch phrases that meant nothing to me.

This is not to say that my time was utterly wasted while in church, because it was not. Being there kept me on the straight and narrow for quite a while; else I would have self-destruct long ago.

In spite of the many disappointment, I had have glimpses of the God of my heart. I had wonderful experiences during times of quietness and prayer where I feel a real sense of peace and wonderment. And that God is one that is accepting of all my flaws and failings, never asking that I have to live my life a certain way, or to ostracize a certain group of people. That is the God I wanna to get to know.

When we moved to Australia, it was almost a relief to be free from the burden of church attendance. But because my soul remain vacuous, I never stop seeking the “something” that I know is out there.

I choose to fill my void with worship at the altar of the god of commercialism. I simply went shopping. I won’t go into the length and breath of my depravity, suffice to say that I squandered quite a pretty sum. Money that could have been otherwise been put to good use.

In the recent months, through reading a wonderful book, a very simple concept has rekindled my longing for the God of my heart; That God is already within us and all we need to do is reach in and connect with him. It is the how that baffles most of us.

I can’t claim to have found the way. But I do pretty well on my own, with my reading and mediations and prayers. The sense of peace lets me know that I can’t be that far off. I may not be in a conventional church as such, but I do believe I am as close to my God as I can possibly be.

I do think that everyone has their way of reaching God. We have to be open to the possibility that Christian don’t have all the answers and that the “other” religion may not be wrong either. There is no definitive proof one way or the other. We have faith, but so does everyone else. It is a big, round, circular argument that cannot be won.

I don’t know if I’m verging on being sacrilegious, especially to my ex-church mates, but I like us to be a little open minded and consider that there may be other ways of connecting with God, and not just through Jesus.

Thy Truest Self

Someone said this recently, “When your life isn’t exactly truthful, you strive very hard to maintain a façade of perfection, as if, somehow you can fool yourself.”

Through some sad misadventure, my Google account got revoke. That means I can’t get access to The Accidental Migrant anymore. My photos on the blog are gone as well as my account on Picassa got revoked too. So, after many frustrated hours, I decided to stop banging my head against the brick wall that is Google Help and start a new blog. If you are reading this, thanks!

If you are a believer, than you know everything happens for a reason, even those incidents we deem as “bad” things. Perhaps, I was meant to start a new blog because, truth be told, I feel like a different person from a year ago, when I started The Accidental Migrant.

This flowering of my awakening was triggered by my approaching 35th birthday. The number in itself is meaningless. It is the value that I attached to it that made it a monstrosity in my head. I just felt so old and full of regrets for the things that I didn’t quite achieve. I was feeling really despondent until after my trip back to Singapore in March.

There is something about being surrounded by the people you love and who loves you that is really life-affirming. My trip wasn’t good just for the company of friends and family; it was the assurance that I still have a place in this world that I thought somehow, has pass me by.

What is thy truest self? To me, it means being able to live in my most authentic persona. To be able to speak my mind, to articulate my feelings, make my intentions known to anyone, to the world. I desire to be free to be me.

We all have our roles in life. Daughter, spouse, mother, carer, lunch-maker, bum-cleaner and drudge. But that’s not who we are. It is simply what we do. What defines us is who we are on the inside. I lost sight, or perhaps have never really grasp it before. I struggle very hard with my roles because I thought if I somehow succeed at them, I will finally be happy. But nothing ever really work. I’ve had intermittent success, but something was always missing.

You see, “I” was missing. How did I lose my way? I blame the bread crumbs of choices. Small, seeming inconsequential decisions at a time, that how I lost myself.

“Move to Australia? Sure, that sounds like fun”

“Have a baby at 26? Sure, why wait?”

Buy a house, mortgage our asses to the bank, have another baby. When you string them all together, they lead to a diabolic ginger bread house of domestic stronghold. The choices I’ve made are not bad decisions. But I made them impulsively, without consideration and always guided by my emotions rather than my mind. I didn’t see the big picture at all. And now, my picture isn’t turning out the way I want.

But I am going to reclaim myself. This is my year. I’m waiting to blossom into the person I know is somewhere inside.