Birthday Lights and Reflections - 2009

Of Empathy and a Helpful Hand

I have always known that helping someone, anyone, revives me like an endless smile that lights up the world forever. I do feel youthful in these moments when I see or feel or sense that someone, anyone, has found happiness again. But I never placed this in the framework of marriage or even in the image of a husband.

Would he be a man with misery at heart, a man with a tear and a smile, a man who needs a friend who reminds him always of The Friend above in times of self-war and sin and tears and hardship…

In hurt but with pride, in short, a man I know how to know.


Of Courage

A man once said there’s a fool in us all that sees the mountain so tall but in the end it’s the valley that’s safe.

Foolish it is to think courage comes from the big shiny famous things we’ve done in life. And foolish it is to think true happiness comes from these statues of accomplishments gathered like gods in Roman temples. With this kind of seeing the world, with these pair of eyes, what happens is we imagine our happiness in people we do not have. Can never have. When he who sits right next to you is the happiness of your life. The one you thought is your mundane valley while you turn your cheek and dream of glorious mountains.

It takes courage, you see, to change. To change how we see. How we see our loved ones, and this matters when we think of soul-partners or husbands or wives. The pursuit of happiness (and the movie helps, too) is about re-learning how to see happiness in the person who truly offers it to you, and not to dream of it elsewhere.

And the same man said… and though folks might say you must conquer the heights, you ain’t conquering nothing without the valley inside …


Of Humor and Smiles

In a dream I once learned that the funny person is twice more serious than the not-so-funny person. Heart heavy, mind tactful, smile measured. But when I look in the mirror of my mind, I remember the words of my grade three teacher Mrs. Barbara who looked at me with her beautiful blue eyes and said in her lovely British accent: “ Never let anyone take your smile away from you, dear”.

I can understand if the world takes my smile away from me but what if that anyone is marriage?

I’m joking! Where’s my unearned ha-ha?


Of Writing

I will argue it to the grave. Writing is healing, ranging from bloggers to grade school writers, the inside cannot be seen unless penned with ink and paper. Or Mac and Microsoft Word. Or color paint and a white wall. Or napkin and an old school pen. Or a finger writing in thin air while you lie on your back looking up to the clouds passing by …


Of Quest for the Right One

This blog started with an idea. Why not make the quest for marriage, especially in the “West”, one step easier by starting up a space for communication and the exchange of thoughts. My older posts shoot straight at the title and address notions that seem much more relevant such as suitoring or choosing a husband or describing experiences about my friends and so on.

When real life experiences about marriage or suitoring ran out, I found myself in a two-forked way. Either be honest, or tell stories. Either stop the blog or make up stuff. So I took those two options, put them in the blender and created a third thing: Narrations that are as honest as the smile I flashed to my mother the last time I saw her. And if some of these narrations happen to be about marriage, that’s good too :-)

As mentioned in an older post, the quest for the right one has also become the quest for the right me within me. Only in this self-reflective state can I offer something beautiful to my soul-partner. Otherwise I’d just be a wife.

This said, I do apologize if the title of the blog seems more and more irrelevant, but if I can make it better, I’d advise you to get comfortable with this disrupt. Go into the unfamiliar with me. See what it brings. And don’t quit believing.

Thank you all for your insightful, loving and soft words! This birthday girl can now grow one year younger.

With Peace and Joy and Cha Cha Cha!!! :-)
Quest

PS: wanted to quickly say I'm so like super touched by the e-gifts I got. Totally unexpected, totally loving this :-)




.