Day 6.

So it has been quite a tormenting 2 weeks…

So much to say, think, feel, reflect, and change. So much to cry and dwell about too, so much courage needed to be bare, raw and honest, it’s not easy.


At the end of the day, when the cloud clears, I pray that we will still see the good. And the good has a lot to fight for, to work hard for. This is the lowest I/we can get, and I pray that we will pull through.

It's my deepest desire to live simply.

Day 1

“I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.” - Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending


Time doesn't have value in itself. It's the things that we associate it with - our feelings, thoughts, emotions, that in turn makes it into a memory. 

At the end of the day... We have nothing. Only these memories that stay with us. And the funny thing is, we humans CHOOSE those memories that we want to remember.

And I am still praying... the good will remain.

Day 0.

Cliche, but true: "Pain demands to be felt."

I think this has been a very trying year for me, that I juggle between being brave, brutally honest with myself, and facing my monsters.

There were days I don't think I'll have enough courage to face the world...

And... even as I feel like I've taken a faith leap into the unknown, I trust that You have my world in Your hands. I am safe...

Life is ironic. We lose what we hold the tightest. And life throws challenges at you to make you lose equilibrium, and you realize, what you held tightest, will hurt you instead.

GUARD.

A wise friend once told me, in order to go back to the beginning and 'undo' a relationship, is to force both sides to the extreme. like two sticks, if they were very intertwined before, and have to them force apart, you can't just undo them and expect them to stay apart, but you got to bend them to the very end to force a distance before it'll come back to being separate like how they started out.

I am a firm believer of that. I think distance is good sometimes. Before things get back to normal again, distance is very good.

I believe in every relationship we deposit a part of ourselves. And I've come to realize I'm such a relational person. I got to take extra care who I decide to let into my life. Because not everyone is here to stay.

Disciplining the body is hard. But disciplining the mind and emotion is harder, I feel. The bible says, GUARD your heart/mind/thought. It's so easy to let a seemingly subtle, harmless thought to come in, and that may just slowly eat away and destroy your heart/mind/thought. Meditating on things that are noble, true, positive is so so important.

Those were just some random thoughts that came into my mind...


I feel very 'unfeeling' recently, I feel like I've lost my drive. It's not as if anything bad happened, but precisely because nothing much is happening, it feels like I'm missing something. The drive to... drive on to a destination. I need something new...



one of those nights.

It's one of those nights that I feel deeply. 

I think God doesn't remove certain pains in our lives for a reason, He leaves it there, and we need to go through every single bit of pain it brings. 

Unbearable, but He made sure it makes us stronger. 
Unthinkable, but He made sure it brings us up another level.

Sometimes, there are just some roads you need to walk alone. These long, winding roads. Not on pavements but sometimes it seems that it's deep in the forest with no sure way out. It gets pretty lonely and pretty scary... when you look around in the dark and you don't see anything or anyone. And it may seem pretty unfair. It may seem that God has forgotten you. It may seem that you are on the losing end. 

I do wonder. Why does God deem some experiences necessary for our growth and for our good? Must we really learn life's lessons in such a way? When we are going through a hard time, doesn't it pain God more than the need for us to experience it? 

Time and time again, this is a raw nerve that is sensitive for anyone to touch. And somehow I think that God made me in such a way. That it will always stay as a raw nerve as long as I live. Because this is the only part of me that feels in this way. 

I'm naive... I still do believe that God restores in His timing. In ways we do not imagine.

Hello.

Haven't been here in a long while. Was wondering for a moment do I even have words to string a blog post together. Many times, wanted to come here to pen down some thoughts, but just didn't find the time to. And as always... at 4.15am inspiration strikes and here I am. 

Part of the reason for lack of blogposts - I often wonder... what are the appropriate words to describe my exact thoughts. Sometimes, they stay as emotions and feelings, without having a proper name to them. Sometimes, it feels like words do not do them justice. In this world that is too noisy at times, I often find myself keeping a lot of thoughts just in that confined space of mine. 

There were many things I wanted to write about: emotions, seasons of life, incredulity of time etc. And I stopped short, because I just couldn't find proper words to describe what had happened. (not that anything serious happened, but just trying to be a lil dramatic here)

And I wanted to mull and gasp at how much has changed in the past year. It's funny and true - time has its way of teaching us things we wouldn't even have thought of, and it has its way of changing things we thought were for ever. But at the end of the day, we look back and reflect, yes indeed, everything is for the better. 

But now... I feel myself lacking of words to say again. Haaaa. So I'm gonna end abruptly here while awaiting for the next moment of inspiration to strike. 


yesterday I was just thinking.. Does God do anything without any purpose? Isn't it an incredible thing.. To always do every single detail with a purpose in mind? 

I bumped into a friend yesterday that I haven't met in a long while. And that got me thinking... Why does God make us 'bump' into certain people sometimes? What kind of purpose does He have in such a small detail in my life? Does He do anything without any purpose or anything in mind? Even if it seems like there's really nothing to it.

Isn't it an incredible feeling to know that He weaves all these small incidents from each of our lives to make up one whole big masterplan that is ALWAYS for our good, and ALWAYS is for us? What a great God we serve...

Hi, I'm 23 and old.


Just came across my mind today...


Somehow, I feel old. At 23 this year, it feels like I've already lived a long life. Enough life experiences. I know 10 years down the road, I'll probably read this and laugh at my own naivety. But I can't help but feel this way...


My friend once commented before, she feels like I have an old soul trapped in a young body. And that got me thinking, what exactly is an old soul? Do I, really? Is my thinking very 'old'? Sometimes, I just don't feel 23. 


Sometimes, it's a blessing to be 'ordinary', to be 'simple'. Musings...

Time.


Recently been thinking about this one word: time.

The mysteries of time. It's something that we can't grasp hold of, and it slips away.. seconds by seconds. When they say, to cherish your time, to make full use of the time you have. What does it really mean? What does it mean to live time to the fullest? If this very second doesn't come again, what can we do to really 'hold' time? 

This 'time', it makes up our whole life. Our everything depends on it. But yet.. When we go to heaven one day, time is eternity and it doesn't matter as much anymore.

Sometimes I stop and wonder, where did all the time go? It's scary sometimes knowing that you can't control time, and yet it steals away everything from you. Precious memories, precious people, precious moments. And all it becomes... some fragments of our memory, and we try to connect them together to remember and remind ourselves of how we felt back then.

And how would time be like if we've lived time without emotions? Ultimately, what makes time important? Is it the emotions and experiences that we associate with it? 

Quoting a para from a book I'm reading: "We live in time - it holds us and moulds us - but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return."

因为太了解
所以很伤心
没有你只好听着风的呼吸
却有种叫做时间的东西
说没问题最后我们会痊愈
因为太了解
我无法坚定
这一次会要掉眼泪的决定
有些遗憾只能一个人听
很对不起
我还是珍惜
所有的事情

of moving on.


I've never thought I would feel this way, probably because I've always been the one 'in front'. Recently I've been thinking, what a scary thing it is, to feel that everyone has moved on, except you. 


I don't exactly mean it in a bad way, like I refuse to let go of something etc, nothing of that sort. But in a sense that everyone is progressing on, going to the next phase of life. And yet somehow... I feel like I'm still at the same place. 


I'm not talking about in terms of growth etc, I'm talking more about life stages? I've learnt that patience is indeed a virtue. It takes a lot to wait. It tests everything about you. And it's just a scary feeling that while you are 'waiting', others are already moving forward without you, when they were supposed to be on the same page as you.

It's just a scary thought and feeling I've been thinking lately... 


PS. it is actually quite a touching thing to know that people are still reading this space. other than a few really 'loyal readers' that I have, I have like random people who come up to me and say that they are still reading this blog. I think it's quite amazing cos I haven't been writing a lot...


that aside, I really love words. I love how it expresses, I love how it plays around.. I just simply love words.. more than speaking them. English/Chinese, they are really such incredible languages... :) 

dreams.


First of all, I would like to say that I'm not a very 'dreamy' person. Not saying that I don't have dreams and desire, just that I'm not those who will say, "My dream is to ....". I'm not... 


Thus recently, I've been thinking, sometimes life really isn't about this great one dream that we all want to achieve. You know how growing up, we've heard people saying go for our dreams, and stop at nothing till we achieve our dreams. We've seen people wanting to be singers, trying all means and ways to get there etc. 

But what if some of us, we don't have such a big one dream? Sometimes... I think that life is really about small dreams along the way. One small dream leads to another and another, and so when we look back, we see a 'big' dream formed. I think this is very true for me. 

I always feel very awkward when people ask me things like, what's your greatest dream and desire? I don't really have one... Am I abnormal? I'm not exactly a "10-years from now I'm going to be this" kinda person. Is it wrong? Or is it just my nature? I'm much more comfortable knowing that I have smaller dreams, and they are just as important and great as the seemingly 'bigger' dreams. And I've come to realize that it's okay, as long as I know that God is guiding me. 


Maybe it's just me...