There are no accidents, Yi Lian.
If it’s appeared on your life radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what’s broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you’re already the person you dreamed you’d become.
And believe me, that was one heck of a dream.
There are no accidents, Yi Lian.
Tallyho,
The Universe
It’s been said that new landscapes bring forth new thoughts. It does. So much so that I think the process paralyses me. The intriguing new landscape would instigate me to just stare at it and when you get captivated into a moment so beautiful, all thoughts leave your mind at that very moment and all you can manage is to marvel.
This may not be my first experience with Shanghai. But somehow it feels new. I sit here wondering while staring at the Pearl Tower and started the self-questioning.
While waiting at the airport’s arrival hall, instead of getting flustered by the typically inconsiderate behaviour of most locals, my eyes and mind went into frenzy – admiring the slew of fashion treats around me. So the behaviours may not have changed when I last came here but the sartorial choices sure have. Proportionate silhouettes, attention to interesting details and understated designer pieces – I must admit I was a little bowled over as I looked on.
Then the car took us past The Bund. Instead of focusing on the ever-gloomy weather of the city, I mused how breathtakingly beautiful the heritage buildings along the water are. An imaginary scene of flappers with shapely bobs and fine-looking dandies mingling in the early 20th century flashed across my mind and it made me smiled.
So the people and landscape have remained since my last presence two years ago so what changed? Then I realised the inner landscape of my mind and heart have. And I guess that may not be such a bad thing after all.
Hello Shanghai. Nice meeting you. Again.
It must have started with my intrigue with psychology and the arts. And of course, Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender. I’d been waiting for “A Dangerous Method” to be released for ages and when it did, I couldn’t help but was quite disappointed with the story. It was more about Carl Jung’s love life (though I was rather captivated by his open marriage) and less about the history of psychology.
Dissatisfied with the storyline, I went on to Wikipedia Sigmund Freud and then with his grandson Lucian Freud’s recent death, I’d been reading a bit about the latter in several publications. The more I read, the more intrigued I got. Beside the comparison on both Freud’s roles (a patient sit on a couch to be psychoanalysed by Sigmund while a sitter poses on a couch to be painted by Lucian, which is very similar to being psychoanalysed too, no?), I was also drawn by Lucian’s (and Jung’s, while we are at it…) inability to commit.
I think it was in the latest UK edition of Vogue where in an article on the younger Freud, an ex-lover said something along the lines of: “It wasn’t so much that Lucian was unable to commit to a woman, it was more that he wanted to have a baby with every woman he met.”
I sat alone, enthralled by that comment. And I stared into space for a bit. A little dazed. A little bewildered.
And I wondered, “so who the hell equated love to commitment?”
Didn’t some very wise people said freedom is the heart of love?
What’s wrong with Lucian’s behaviour? Because society said so? Isn’t the ability to love more more beautiful than the simplistic ability to commit? How can we have the audacity to promise forever when we can’t even promise what tomorrow will bring?
Why is it that when I insist breakups and divorces are quite necessary sometimes, I was named a cynic? Why must we insist all the ‘good’ things last forever? It’s kinda greedy, no? It’ll be awesome if the love stays forever but when it doesn’t, you call that 10-year relationship/marriage a waste of your time and claim yourself a fool when only the last quarter of the time together was challenging. How about the happy times in the beginning? Was that all forgotten?
Now, who’s the cynic?
My point being… Why do we get so fixated on getting the future ‘right’ when all we can be sure of is the here and now?
So we can’t promise we’ll live together happily ever after. But we can promise we’ll live together happily right here and right now. Sometimes, that’s all we can promise but we know that’s the best we’ve got.
Does that make us love each other any less?
Absolutely not.
Is it the coming-of-age feeling that gets us so pensive as we turn another year older? Or is it the combination of that and the proximity of the arrival of a new year?
I left the office today at an untypical hour where the sun still shone. That perpetual guilt of “I could have done more” plagued me but I had to go. I wanted to spend the evening before my birthday with my family and I was adamant I didn’t usher in my birthday at my work desk.
Thanks to good ol’ Stars, my mood lifted a little as I plugged in and walked and I realised it’s been a while since I had this persistent sense of… unhappiness – if that’s the right way to describe it. You know, the feeling that you want more out of your life yet you know you may not entirely deserve it because you ain’t giving more anyway.
It’s probably a combination of factors. First, a relentless flu bug that threw me off track physically and professionally. From there, it was a downward spiral of feeling demoralised and in a state of isolation and self-disappointment. This whole journey is almost… expected. I’d been in a great place for months now and when I recognised its presence, I chuckled a little to myself. Life is all but a cycle, no?
Then when you ain’t feeling so invincible anymore, suddenly different sets of truth seem to make themselves more apparent. And that sense of “I could have done more” persists… I could have been a better friend, daughter, sister and aunt. I’m not caring enough. I don’t communicate enough. I’m not selfless enough. I don’t spend enough time with them. Hell, I’m not even a good enough yogi, what with just a weekly practice…
And as I witness some friendships and relationships die a slow death, I cry a little to myself as I debate between being a victim and a student. I tell myself nothing lasts forever and I can only be grateful they once were but it’s a hard pill to swallow…
I don’t mind all these pensiveness, really. And no, I don’t quite mind turning another year older either. I was telling KT last night that it’s hard to hate ageing when you love the lessons you’d learnt that could only come with age.
We all complain a little as the number scales up bit by bit, but will we really exchange what we have right now for where we were five years ago or even two years ago? I’d loved my life then but I love new lessons too much to wanna stay forever 25.
So, here I go… A happy little birthday to myself. :)
PS: Sorry if you’re expecting the usual uplifting post. I’m sure I’ll be back in no time. ;)
I was sipping my glass of moscato with a group of old and new friends tonight when I caught myself off-guard for a moment. There I was, laughing and fooling around with a bunch of people I didn’t even know this time last year (other than one old friend. But as Sue always say, “an oldie but a goldie.”) and I found myself smiling to myself as Keane was playing at the background.
I’ve been saying this for months but sometimes I still want to pinch myself. I’m happy. I’m so truly happy right here and now that everything seems so perfect at the moment. (well, other than the impending deadlines that are scaring the hell outta me…) I’ve came a long way this year. I really have.
I may not have gotten married or pop yet another baby like some of my peers. And despite not having these generic milestones the past year, there are still so many things I’m grateful for. So many. Even the seemingly bad moments.
Right now, I’m grateful for:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I woke up with a startle this morning. The last few scenes of my dream stayed with me for the rest of the day. I was surprised, and I remain so, that it could still stir up such emotions in me.
I continued with my day in a hazy state. I felt disconnected. And while most of us unwind as the year comes to an end, I’m panicking inside about next year’s Feb and Mar issues (job hazard). Self-doubts sunk in.
When the work day ended, I didn’t even want to head to yoga, a first for me in a long time. I didn’t even have the patience I usually have with public transport. I had envisioned that little imaginary cave I’d dug and I wanted to be there right away.
And I am there now. Listening to music that feeds the soul. Barzin is hauntingly good:
The day does get better. It always does. This too shall pass. But while that we’re here, why not relish the moment for a bit? It’s all for good reasons.
XX
“Detours, challenges, and crisis, Yi Lian, are simply covers for miracles that had no other way of reaching you.
It’s all good,
The Universe”
It’s pelting rain out there right now and it makes for a melancholic mood.
And it doesn’t help that I’ve just watched the latest episode of my all-time favourite TV series Grey’s Anatomy. Ahhh, that show always get me all emotional! But in a good way. (Because, apparently, the word ‘emotional’ has earned quite a bad rep over the years…)
The episode started off with: “‘I had a terrible day,’ we say it all the time. A fight with the boss. Stomach flu. Traffic. That’s what we describe as terrible when nothing terrible is happening.”
Don’t we do that all the time?
We’re resistant to any thing, relationship or situation that is seemingly negative so when such things, relationships and situations happen against our will, we complain. We protest. We blame and blame. We become guarded. We assumed the worst of every one we meet for the first time and if they turn out to be even slightly better than our original expectations, we get surprised.
“He’s an asshole.”
“She’s psychotic.”
How many times have we heard ourselves saying that of our exes? So are all exes assholes and psychos? Then, doesn’t that make all of us assholes and psychos?
Maybe we were at some points of our lives but just like how time will always keep ticking, our psyches are also constantly evolving.
Or we continually believe that the future will be better than the present so we just put up with what we have to bear now in the hope that that future we envision will come soon.
But what if it doesn’t? It’s good to keep the faith that the future will always get better. But we gotta remember that the well-lived presence can ascertain that than just blind faith without being active in ensuring that.
It’s not just about positive thinking and feeding yourself positive affirmations. What good do they do if we don’t grasp the fundamentals of those so-called positive thinking?
Why don’t we not realise that right now is the best that we’ve got? That happiness is really not a destination. But it’s available right here and right now.
Those bad breakups or challenging work situations we’re now experiencing will only serve to teach us invaluable lessons about ourselves we can’t otherwise learn. So they’re all actually really really good things to happen right now!
Really. It’s really not that bad. ;)
can really make all the difference to our lives.
It could be the day you decided to wake up for morning yoga and met someone you would have never met if you hadn’t gone. Or it could be the day you missed your usual 8am train and bumped into an old friend who became your bestie for the rest of your life.
I caught the movie One Day, starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, in the cinemas two weeks ago and it roused up a feeling I hadn’t felt for a long time.
After a mentally and emotionally satisfying movie that I’d just watched for the first time, I would become a recluse, retreating into my own little space – albeit imaginary, as more often than not, I would have company. And don’t mind me, it’s not a bad kinda retreat. I’m often just spotted in silence, smiling to myself. I just need to further relish in the afterglow of a good story alone. Because… no matter how much you and I enjoy the same film, we take different things away from a story and I’m a little bit of an oddball…
The last times I felt that way were with Big Fish, Finding Neverland, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Blueberry Nights, Lost in Translation, 2046, Closer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Revolutionary Road, Amelie and of course, my all-time favourite Before Sunrise. If you’re a movie buff, you’ll know the most current film on my list is three years old so it’s been a long time since I felt this way.
So when I walked out of the theatre after One Day, this feeling came rushing back into me and it was a little like, “Oh hello old friend, it’s been a while!” It was a Friday night but I kinda wanna soak in that moment alone so I parted from my movie companions and plugged into my happy tunes.
From then on, I wasn’t quite in this world. I hopped onto my bus which took me past our city’s beautiful landscape and I felt like such a kid, marvelling at the breathtaking architecture of the ArtScience Museum, Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, Double Helix Bridge. Stars, Kate Nash and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart got me grinning and tapping to their music. I felt like such a kid again, suddenly seeing all the beauty that surrounded me.
I know One Day doesn’t necessarily have the happiest ending but as you can tell from my list above, it’s apparent my preferred movie genre is, fundamentally, love stories with, more often than not, unhappy or open endings. They always have a touch of whimsy and surreality. I like them that way because that’s how real life is to me.
Most people have a black-and-white and right-and-wrong view of seeing the world but I’m afraid sometimes Life is not so straightforward. I’m OK that the world is more grey than black or white. And I’m OK that our actions are not always right or wrong. I’ve accepted that nothing lasts forever and neither does every one stays the same forever so now, I see the immense beauty in the restraint and short-lived.
And that explains my love for movies of such genre. Why pray for forever when sometimes, a touchstone of something temporary changes your life for good more than something of permanence?
And that’s how I currently see the relationships in my life. Instead of brushing each other off as someone “unsuitable”, I see that you’re meant to be in my life for a few days or weeks, providing me with a few good conversations. Then we part. That’s it. Is it sad? Of course not. How can something so pure and beautiful be sad? Just because it’s fleeting doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing.
Who knows whatever will happen to us the next moment? That’s the beauty of being alive.
You can change the ending of this chapter and decide how you want to start the next. Amazing, ain't it? :D
“Most think that perception works a lot like a flashlight in the dark, illuminating whatever it’s aimed at.
The truth, however, Yi Lian, is that instead of revealing what’s there, it creates it.
Ain’t it so? Praise be -
The Universe”
PS: Yeah, our perceptions are not always quite others’ realities. And that’s the rule of thumb to Life!
