A While Back

From a phone message conversation with the brother:

L: Yeah! No point watering the negative seeds within ourselves

J: Yup! No point feeding the lesser wolf in us

L: Hahahaha so many ways to put it

I thought it’s lion?

Lol

J: wolf la

Final verdict: Ok it’s wolf. Haha.

http://zenpencils.com/comic/94-the-two-wolves/

It’s nice to have family to water the positive seeds in me. Miss you, bro!

How Do You Want To Be Remembered?

When Comrade asked me this question, I (sadly) found myself quite unprepared for an answer. I must have thought about this before, but I must have yet to come to a conclusion. After thinking for a while, I came up with something like “I would like to be remembered as someone who loves life and people unconditionally. Someone who can see the good in everyone and everything”, and left it there, saying that I’ll let her know if there’s any changes after more thought.

Well, I’ve thought about it further, and this is the change: I want to be remembered… as a Happy Person.

While I can see how that may come across as a self-centered goal, I would like to attempt to explain how  I’m not thinking along those lines. I was thinking about how I want to be remembered as someone who chose to be happy no matter what happens. Being happy no matter what happens would encompass being able to see the good in everything and everyone. Being happy no matter what happens means having mindful awareness and exercising the will to be positive at all times. Being happy no matter what happens means believing that everything, especially seemingly negative things, happen for a reason. Choosing to be happy also means activating an automatic mechanism to want to help others and be kind to others, even if they have not been kind to you, because you can’t be happy if others are suffering. Choosing to be happy means partaking in selflessness, because your heart naturally expands when you’re happy and you’d be able to accept others for who they are instead of trying to change them and faulting them for hurting you. Choosing to be happy means finding the passion in what you do, even if it isn’t your first choice in life, and inspiring others around you in whatever way you can, even if you would rather be doing something else (link to accepting that everything happens for a reason).

While the ideal situation would be to live a life in which every moment is a continuous stream of conscious, natural and overflowing happiness, we know that it isn’t easy to be so. Some days, being happy takes more effort than others. Some situations make it feel almost impossible to be happy. Some people’s words, actions and company make us wonder what did we ever do to them, that they would want to hurt us like that. Then there are things like the ego, selfishness and self-pity that get in the way. So what we have are more of Moments of Happiness – quite far from a Life of Happiness.

But if I could expand my Moments, such that they increasingly form the bulk of my life, and let this determination to choose happiness be the underlying force in my choice of thoughts, actions and words, I might very well end up being remembered as a Happy Person.

And this life would not have been lived in vain after all 🙂

Picture Source

Correction

Another class discussion. The question was posed to us. A classmate started to speak up about her experience with a certain client group.

“When we worked with autistic children…” she began.

At this point, our lecturer, J, gently interrupted her.

“You mean children WITH autism.” J corrected, a smile lining the corners of her mouth.

My classmate paused for less than a second of a heartbeat before starting over with a sheepish grin . “Right. When we worked with children with autism…”

And that was that. Nothing more was said about the correction. Neither party asked the other why the correction was made, or why it was necessary, or what made them use the phrases/labels they did.

But I think, at the back of all our minds, that exchange stuck. And for me, personally, it drove home a very important message.

The message that we are first and foremost dealing with people. Children. Not the autism, not the disability, not the illness, not the condition. The importance of seeing them as human beings FIRST, before anything we do will be able to have any effect on them or their lives.

May this lesson stick.

Hurray for subtle lessons and learning~!

Level Up

“How did you fracture your thumb?!”

“I was playing soccer, then I fell and my thumb turned the other way, then they brought me to hospital, and the x-ray show that it was fractured.”

“Wow.” I couldn’t stop staring at the thick cast around his hand and wrist.

“Cher, I have the picture of the X-Ray, wanna see?!”

“What? No! No, please keep your x-ray. I do not. I do not want to see your fracture! And please take care of yourself!”

The friend, watching with amusement nearby, quipped:

“Cher, he level up!”

Though I looked at them in great amusement at that moment, on hindsight, isn’t what the boy said true?

Everything adversity, every challenge, everything that doesn’t kill us, DOES help us to “level up”. We learn from experiences, we become stronger, more matured, more resilient. Just because we have not hit the next “level” does not mean that we are not on the way there.

Just another day when I learn from those I supposedly teach.

Conversations become meaningful when…

They enhance our cognitive, mental, and emotional capacity.

There is exchange of thoughts and ideas, hence widening one’s worldview and perspective. 

Imagination is prodded to take flight. 

Bonds are strengthened through experiences, thoughts and ideas shared.

 

And so there are times when I’d rather have conversations with myself. 

The Adrenaline of Spontaneity

“Ewww there’s hair on the cloth! It has to be yours!!” A disgusted brother yelped as he gave the dining table a wipe after dinner.

“It’s not mine!” I instinctively replied to his glare.

“It all starts with denial.”

“You sound like a teacher… Still considering?”

“Of course not! Me?! Teach in a school!”

“It all starts with denial.”