Just don't.

“There are and will be a lot of things in life that you don’t want to do, but doesn’t mean that you don’t need to do them!” Said my mom, always. 

Being raised with the teaching of the inevitability of hardship, what will always seem like “unbearable” difficulties, the unacceptability of running away from problems, and the necessity to face it and suck it up (and expected to do a good job along the way) has shaped the excellent quality of self-discipline with minimal complaints in me. It wasn’t easy, especially as a child, to hear the blatant words coming — maybe spitting — out of my mother’s mouth, wide-eyed and matter-of-fact; but that is how it was. I had lessons for piano, ballet, drawing, mathematics, Mandarin, Chinese calligraphy, and swimming outside of school. I was one talented kid, at least for however long I had to put up with these extracurricular activities that I did not take particular, voluntary interest in. But every time I complained, asked to quit, I would get the “life” spiel thrown at me, mostly in slightly exaggerated dramatic seriousness on my mom’s part. But that’s also how I got extra tutoring on all those things. I don’t do half of the list in my daily life now, but knowing deeply that there are and will always be things that I don’t want to do but will have to do has not only stuck with me but become part of me — in my responses to obstacles, my reactions to others’ complaints over, say, work, and my way of dealing with things. 

However, I’m not writing to tell you the valuable lesson that my tiger mother has taught me, albeit it being genuinely an important knowledge I’ve gained. I want to say how much I’ve learned to do otherwise. 

It is true that things which make us unhappy or stressed will continue to exist and not dealing with problems is escapism, immaturity. But there are circumstances where things are simply broken and different. It doesn’t always mean that it calls for an immediate restore or solution. Yes, perhaps time is the go-to when it comes to healing, but sometimes, try leaving the broken pieces on the floor and move on. There is no need to force yourself to rescue; make yourself miserable and guilty over an issue, a broken friendship, a problematic or ended relationship, because things are never one-sided. More basically, you should never have to do anything that you don’t want to. More and more people are turning their focus and values closer to those of hedonism these days, (hopefully) salubriously, which preaches not to waste a chance for pleasure. Getting involved in anything out of your desire is not only the opposite of chasing “the highest good”, but also unhealthy and damaging to your soul, degrading to your self-esteem, and lessening of your personality. Most importantly, we’ve been wired for too long and hard under this and that pressure, worrying about what he and she thinks, what they and so-and-so will say. Then, just like that, we forget what we want, what’s important to us, what more can we appreciate, and ourselves. 

The society is always demanding worth — how much money is it worth, how much pay are you worth — but sometimes you must reverse the judgment on some problems: is this worth my time, is it worth my efforts and mental energy, is it worth fixing? I’ve come across conflicts that have been resolved with more or less efforts, but also problems that will stay a splinter, so deep into your skin that you’d hurt yourself more trying to get it out than letting your body naturally dissolve it. More simply, some things are just broken, like a vase, and there’s no use of putting it back together. At the same time, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  

As a child, I was disciplined by doing things that I didn’t want to do, simultaneously demanded to do them with a good attitude. At the brim of turning 23, I’m only starting to learn that I never have to do anything that I don’t want to. 

Happy Chinese New Year. 

What I Stopped Doing

What I stopped doing:

Writing sentimental cards or letters 

Being sentimental

Talking on the phone every night 

Heart wrench upon hearing certain names 

Receiving or writing emails to my dad 

Creating happiness for my mom

Posting pictures on Facebook

Trying as hard to hold up a conversation

I used to feel so much when I was younger, as a child, as a teenager...

I am not certain whether it’s a form of desensitization or not, because I don’t think desensitization is all it is, but this excerpt from the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close seems to capture how I feel about sentimentality slipping away from me year after year just enough: 

“Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did.

I spent my life learning to feel less. 

Every day I felt less. 

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” 

It is so sad. What are we capable of doing that we do not know? This is one of them. Autonomic adaptation to life.

Everything was always so easily hilarious and moving and heartbreaking and unusually miraculous or devastating, but everything seems to become less of everything as the years add up. I used to cry whenever we had the moment of silence in memory of those who passed away from 9/11 in elementary and even high school. Now I can’t even cry if I want to. But sometimes, like reading stories about the little boy who was waiting for his dad at the finish line of the marathon got blown to pieces from the Boston bombing, tears just burst out of me two days after reading about it when someone asked me if I were okay. 

It is so deep. Writing sentimental and cringingly cheesy birthday or thank-you cards was my priority and strength in every occasion worth celebrating. I’ve always been a thinker. Everyone was always like, “you think too much.” Then I think I’ve thought less, not voluntarily, it just happened. Not that I’m not a thinker anymore, but I guess eventually I lost track of where the lost thoughts go and what it all means—to others, to myself, and to anything else—so, I jumped on the bandwagon of “don’t think too much about it”. 

Another birthday is approaching. Having less heart-wrenching and passionate emotions, genuinely cannot care more than what I can emotionally and financially afford, and having less energy and motivation to put, not even glue, the broken pieces together—is this growing older? Is this what is coming out of it? 

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live” 

Having just been to my younger brother’s high school graduation and revisiting students’ speech that always repeat every year one way or another, with lines like “ready to take on this crazy thing called ‘life’,” or “life is a game, you just need to know how to play it.” All the while, I was having briefly argumentative and almost condescending thoughts like “no!” and “it’s not true, it’s a trap!”. What it’s like to be naive and hopeful at the same time. 

At the moment, it feels like life is lifting up its veil bit by bit, and I’m hoping there is an end to this lessening of my self and that, there is much more to heartbreaking words put together in books that make me cry and struggling eternally out of an emotional hole. 

What I started doing:

Saving (more than just money) 

Not be too caught up in moods, they really are overrated 

Feeling less sad about sad things

Learning

Accepting changes

Making the first step (e.g. get out of bed, begin typing up an outline, send/reply an email etc.) 

Taking a life to learn how to live would be a waste of a life. No one knows how to live, but we just do, but I guess that is only existing. I don’t want to just exist for a life and learn how to live by the end of it, so I will try harder. 

I’m Waiting for Nothing to End, for Now.

What if we never see each other again? 

At the parting times, desperation, sadness, spontaneous and overwhelming emotions of all kinds take over, and for those moments we can only focus on the fact that we’re saying and acting on goodbye. Time passes, though. Later on, later on, the question asked above takes on a new face: aside from whether a reunion is likely or unlikely to happen, it doesn’t really matter if we do see each other again or not. Separate lives in different places—each and every person is too occupied and invested with the now to truly make a way—make a way for reunions or forever to happen. What about all those feelings of not being able to live without one another, and what happened to trying, and why was there a meaning to brood over having to part from each other in the first place? Do we just enjoy being melodramatic on the stage of life, where scenes of parting are a nature and, in my opinion, too recurring? The passing—coming and going—of emotions; we are all brilliant actors for nailing those parting moments with tears and breaking hearts, and thereafter allowing life to go on, because life does go on and the story between you and me seems to play out to be just another scene in a movie. Memorable, but somehow we just cannot break our “big plans” and not put an end to something that we consider wonderful, because more and better adventures are always to come. Things can always be better, so when are we going to be satisfied and make a choice?

“I know that people say 'life goes on,' and it does, but nobody ever tells you that it's not a good thing. Why is that?" 

Because hope remains the last thing in Pandora’s box. We have hope for the future—the “bigger” plans. But we often forget the initial paradox of hope being an object amongst all in Pandora’s box, which is supposed to carry all the bad things in life. 

I don’t want to focus on the present and only enjoy the now. I want to continue this and wait for it to never end. Now just let me be melodramatic and contentious, and feel again in a couple of days that although I’ve said goodbye too many times, it might not be a good thing, but it will still be okay. 

The Best Day of My Life.

“ I woke up feeling very happy today because I knew it was gonna be the best day of my life. As I went to bed, I carried a joy that a child has as if he was about to experience something exciting the next day, because I knew tomorrow is gonna be the best day of my life.”

That’s a paraphrase of what I heard from sermon this morning.
I have to say, I haven’t had such a nice day in a short while. And I haven’t meant what I say as much as everything that I said today.
I spent my day in separate sessions with three good friends, and it was purely pleasant. We shared thoughts and caught up with each other’s life, we helped and heard each other out.
I also enjoyed today and those individual sessions so much because I was in a way forced to be independent. I’m thankful for that, because it feels like it has brought me to another level in my relationship with myself.
It’s so nice to have different people in your life, and it’s amazing how things happen in such bad ways that turn out to making you stronger and become more familiar, comfortable, and confident with yourself.

Perhaps this is the pattern of life.

This is a temporary life, therefore things will not be perfect, but that’s the point of life—imperfections and problems. It only affects you deeply if you were so attached to it, it being this temporary life and everything that comes along with it.
I realized, everyone needs these issues, these imperfect relationships in life for things to get better and for one to work it out. It is all for you to develop, for your own sake.
So next time when you encounter problems—any problem—frown, but don’t frown for too long. Learn to embrace and accept the fact that there are problems in life and they are never one-sided, as in you are usually part of the problem as well. Learn the lesson, then move on and enjoy yourself. Feel free to indulge in imperfections, because they make life perfect.

I've been roaming around

This is one of those nights.

You feel cranky, a bit sick (physically and of just about everything), not in the mood to work at all. You don’t mind loud music, but you don’t realize that you actually want some—in fact, need some—until you hear some; even trashy music would work. Or maybe after all, you just want to be by yourself for just one bit?

Riding in the most ghetto manual truck in which no radio is installed, having music played out loud on a speaker in the back. Driving past this hippy street with these great restaurants that I have only been to once or twice, but have probably mentioned over five times, because there is no time. No time for good things. Singing and lyrics in the background, I looked out the window as we were zooming by everything. All these shops that are familiar, but they don’t mean much to me. I thought about life, people, the good times in another country... I thought this: “I want to be somebody”.

In this sphere of reality, so hard to find something that you truly indulge in doing, some form of ambition. Realistically, when you finally find it (and I have to emphasize finally because once it’s discovered, the more you think about it, the more you see how precious it is), you may learn to see the obstacles that are in the way—one by one—of where you genuinely want to reach. The dream is in your mind; so clear, so close, yet so far.
I’m walking on a path piled up with all these things that are supposedly leading me there. I’m thinking to myself: “There’s nothing that I want to do more than this.” and I’m walking and walking, sometimes running, I don’t even see the blurred frame of this temporary destination.

I fathom: we are lovable because we are fragile and weak at times.

When this temporary destination feels so foolishly far far away, I just want to wander wishfully and wonderfully. It is at times like this when I see how it is like to enjoy life as tasting good wine. They are right, it is the process that counts and that is the most delightful and real. Yet we often lose sight on our way there, too blinded with all the requirements and expectations; we get lost instead of wandering.

Don’t forget what life is and don’t forget about it.

engaging in someone else's victory

the so-called life -





I haven’t exactly figured out my life yet, but with these glorious food, it’s hard to resist to not care for a thing and have a taste of the wonderful edibles that exist in this world.

it also makes me forget about the need to plan stuff out..
so my friend told me his exact plan in the next 7 years or so. he said he is going to get his first million when he is 23.
what do i want to have achieved by 23?
in this moment, i am still engaging myself in the canadian athletes’ glory of 14 golds - not only world record - but the last hockey gold medal game was ... deserving, real, and victorious.

..engaging myself in their victory

today i learned the reason why we become so into big events like olympics. as peasants, we seldomly get to be involved in things that are so huge..and being part of a big event allows us to be engaged in something much bigger than ourselves, thus sharing a sense of larger importance. when our nation wins, we experience a kind of victory that most of us will never be able to have, personally.

when i think about my own dreams.. which leads to an interesting thought because my dreams are not ridiculously big like i wanna become an astronaut or something like that, but i have high expectations, of myself, in a way. it’s weird ‘cause i always hear things like “don’t be so harsh on yourself” but im not a person that strives for perfection all the time. im a medium, average person, in everything i’d say.

but i think so. fucking. much. it always drives me insane.

anyway, so back to thinking about my own dreams, that leads me to think of my habit of getting upset when close friends/family members leave town for say more than two weeks. i know it’s ridiculous, it’s only two weeks kathy, wtf are you getting worked up for? but i think there’s a couple of reasons. first of all, ever since i was small, i used to cry everytime when i left the park, just because i had to say goodbye to little friends that i only met for 20 minutes or so. i don’t like saying goodbye.. it gives me uncertainty of their safety (like i can save their lives when im around them) and just .. like i lost some directions. and thats also related to the second reason- because my motivation is not as strong as theirs. and when those that are close to me are ones that chase after their dreams, it makes me feel empty inside because i am not able to do something so courageous..and carefree. i can do impulsive shit but so far, not this, not chasing after my dreams. it’s so easy to say it but so hard to do. there are reasons why i cannot carelessly chase after what i want to do.. and i think they all have to do with my close friends/family. like my family, it matters to me more than the need to pursue my dreams. sounds crazy but yea, i still can’t do it.

but i gotta stop making others be like me, when they can be so much more, right?

anyway, on a lighter note, i was really engaging myself in these talented kids too- i always wish i was more talented and musical. maybe i’ll develop some more skills. i don’t care if it was the weed or drinks that they consumed, i heard some good music in this small, hippie, venue that night. same feeling as the whole olympic thing- when they had a good performance, i felt like i refreshed myself with all my dreams in the music field too.





and this is one of the pics that i took of this interesting plant.. isn't it so beautiful? it looks so fragile too



if you click into it you can see more details in the plant!! its absolutely amazing!