Shavasan

What I found out recently : I couldn't keep my mind not to fly to somewhere else.

So on last Friday on Vesak Day, I went to a temple to listen to a Dharma talk. At the end of the talk, we're asked to meditate for a few minutes.

During the school life, I'd known I've a serious problem in focusing on verbal communication. Whatever the lecturer explained about something, I could immediately decide on keeping 'this time I really need to listen' firm promise, but found myself being in somewhere else much more immediate that you could ever imagine. That's why my self learning and studying always involved a lot of visualization instead. For me, the most effective way to get an A grade is by repeating readings and repeating practices to those science subjects. Why did I have to repeat? Because my ability to memorize is just as bad as my concentration on words flying in the air. So on and so forth, I never tried to memorize sentences in the book but invent on ways to translate the same meanings in those sentences into words, not because I liked to create my own trouble, but what seems much easier to some people is way so difficult for me.

During working life, there are no more long hours of a pair of sitting-listening required on daily basis. But the five days in a week, almost 10 hours spent in the office, are like a cycle that never ends. Time is a luxury. And that's when the problem starts to arise : when you think time is so much precious, and because of that, you want to do a lot of things at one time, you want to have the full use of yourself on the light day. What's that for after all?

I went home and threw myself into the bed. I closed and rested my eyes. In a second, my mind began to make some noises. "Open the tv, perhaps some good shows is in the air.", "Turn on the laptop. Play!", "Or eat dinner first?", "What time is it? Soon your day is over and tomorrow is another working day. Utilize it!" The busy world seems so promising. I've forgotten about the art of doing nothing, the significance of resting in peacefulness, and the must to make it as a priority each day. If time is that precious, resting my mind should be on the top of the list to spend.

I'd gone to several places in thousand miles away during my meditation, searched for a way back, returned to another place, and it's been a loop before it's forced to come back when the meditation is over. The journey is short but enough to make me mad at myself, "CAN YOU LISTEN TO ME AND JUST STAY AT YOUR PLACE, please??" I soon torn down my priority list. Re-build. And ready for a big revolution!

How many times should you forgive someone?

Always, one more time.

As much as I know I've been lying to myself and feigned ignorance all this while, it'd take much more a naked eye to see beyond all of that.

It takes a big heart to admit defeat. I think I can forgive myself after that.

A Mother's Love

My friend just delivered a baby girl last week and hence is officially a mother now. As for me (besides an answer to the most anticipated curiosity of mine that tightened two rows of my teeth of whether giving birth is really really scary and painful...), I've come to see a little deeper what motherly love is about.... though I'm still not fully convinced that all the maternal's behaviour relies solely on a sense of responsibility or nature's call.

When she still stayed at the hospital, she always woke up very early in the morning to see her baby. Even she couldn't wait to return home because there were restricted visiting hours there. Now she's at home, not fully recovered, awake almost every night because of the baby, but she also told me, she's very happy to spend 24/7 time with her new love (when you're talking to someone who who has settled down..., not many things really matter and you hardly see lots of desires).

Perhaps the gap between us has been too deep due to the loss of time and space. Whenever I hear the graduation song, it reminded me one more time of past and the imagination of future. How someone you know becomes someone you knew. The process that I've been missing : how she lived her life all the while, courting, betrayal, dark periods, trust, marriage, making adjustment to new environment, first time she got to know she's pregnant, or the struggling in the operation room, of all seem not that important to me as we're not too close actually, but at the same time, I know everyone is equally valuable in this life. She's someone's most precious thing. So are her moments of life.

As everyone is important, everyone also knows he is important. And it can be seen everyday. When help is so much needed and no one is willing to help, the question of 'why don't they just help me?' arises. The same reason why a colleague doesn't not hesitate at all to show her irritating face just because you by chance make her work a bit more difficult, or a very simple everyday's thing why all people rush to be number one up to the bus, or why some friends always find excuses not to meet you because they claim they are busy. Yes, there's nothing wrong about that. Told you, we know we are important and it's our own instinct to love ourselves more than any other persons and we have to maintain our importance in order to survive and to live better.

There were few times in my life that I helped friends at one of their most difficult times. Almost all do not include money matters but only a pair of loyal ears, trying-to-think-hard-for-solutions mind, time, and willingness. Most of the time, I get a thank you. As for the remaining, they offered me the same things I gave to them or gave me a treat or even once a love confession. A very important lesson I have learnt since long time ago, the best time to help someone is when he needs us the most, and the best way to help him is by one that gives him inability to pay the kindness back, of course without spoiling him.

I've been wondering where is the big love of a mother coming from. If not from the movies, I've never really seen such love from a lover to a lover. It's from a mother to child only. My landlord's younger sister passed away in a bus accident trying to protect her daughter and husband. Some of people I know are quite bad enough but their mother still love them so much and cannot get angry of them. Or some parents that are willing to spend the hard earned of money on their children to good education and proper standard of living, I can't think of another better reason but only love, above responsibility or just for the sake of status and pride, for such a huge sacrifice. I'm so much wanting to see when water is thicker than blood.

A freaking engineer is a bad storyteller

A : I'm bored to death. Save me...
B : Ctrl + S?
A : 0.O'
B : How to save you?
A : Tell me a nice story.
B : Hm.. okay. One time, there was a bird. It used to fly off to the south.
A : Then?
B : Then it died.
A : Huh?
B : Yes. It died, in a mysterious death.
A : Some explanations please...
B : It's still in investigation. Have been months, but no one can confirm how exactly it died. Mysterious, right?
A : Yes... yes...
B : I have another one.
A : What is it?
B : A little girl went out and sat on a swing.
A : Then? She died?
B : No. The swing broke. The girl died.
A : CAN YOU STOP KILLING YOUR CHARACTERS?
B : Hey, it's not my fault. It's the swing which broke.
A : .......

How Comfortable is Comfortable?

Feeling comfortable is one of the main reasons I used to hear when two people decide to see each other. But I often wonder : How comfortable is it then you can say it's comfortable? What and where is the line? Even when I go out with my close friend, I still see it awkward when there isn't much conversation between us and there is a lot of silence. That situation made me uncomfortable. Not only that. I couldn't get what's wrong with silence actually and why it could make me feel that way.

First of all, let me brush up my definition for 'comfortable'.

Enjoying a conversation with someone, being able to drop all the formalities, not afraid of showing him your good and your bad, are some ways of how I define 'comfortable.' With these answers, dang dong..., in exam I got A liao lah..

But I really really believe in this as well. When two people can sit together for long hours with not so many words uttered, enjoy the moment of the hectic world in their own solitude parts of mind, without worries that another side will get bored of him/her or question the reasons of his silence, but just feel happy and content only by the presence of another person, and has the confidence that the someone feels the same thing, and if they can choose how long the moment lasts, they will want it to last like forever, they hence have brought the 'comfortable' to a higher level. The most comfortable feeling exists by the most successful communication which would may happen only when two people talk with heart.

An 'A' grade is always good. However today I got a chance to witness the extra mile definition of comfortable which surpasses that particular grade.

In the end, silence did no wrongs at all. Perhaps the only reason is, all the while the words were either misused or over used way too often and too easily till they become habits and attached to oneself. The uncomfortable feeling rises every time one feels left by words and it's the beginning of the question, "Why don't you talk?"