Push, pull, wind, unwind

[Free write]

There's a tension, a balance in everything

Even this blog! I want to use this space to sort through, untangle my most inner thoughts and feelings, but I am afraid of what my readers will think

And yet, there is a motivation coming from a different part of me that just wants to be known, to be understood.

Tiredness and elation.

Just a drip of caffeine away.

Funny how something that is so simple can change my mood so dramatically

Make me instantly awake, open to possibilities and filled with the energy to take action on them

And yet leaves me feeling tired, drained, out-of-sorts, unable to focus and feeling generally unsatisfied. Centreless, that cuppa just knocked me out of my chalk-drawn circle, smudged the lines as I slid out of it and into the chaotic outside world.

I want to fall into the dark formless dreamless world of sleep, but my cares and concerns and hunger for connection won't let go easily.

I teeter on the edge of chaos, but the light over the edge is just so seductive, and if I step with the beat of my heart it looks like a dance to anyone who's watching...

Anchors

On this great expansive journey of life, it feels sometimes that we are nothing but little boats set adrift, bobbing along the gentle waters with no land in sight. No navigation points. The stars are invisible during the bright light of day and taunting, meaningless harbingers in the black night. Most of the time life goes by without much rocking; each day you move forward, backward, left or right, not that you would know because direction are relative and the only point of reference you have is you.

But one day, we realize that we are all anchored. It doesn’t matter how deep the anchor is embedded into the seabed or how long the chain. Maybe you were almost flipped over in a storm and wrecked, and then you noticed a little weight in the hull that you’d never discerned before. The knowledge that an anchor exists, that you are attached to it, refocuses your existence. Suddenly it is not just you just struggling to stay above water, knowing that one day you too will be dashed to pieces by a tremendous wave. The anchor, the anchor -- who put it there? Why am I attached to it? How far can I stray before the anchor pulls me back? And perhaps even - how can I get away from this?

Anchors pull back when a boat drifts too far. Anchors strain. They hurt, sometimes. But anchors are there for a reason - to secure a boat. And anchors can be removed, can be shifted when the boat needs to move, although that takes deliberate effort. More than all that, though, anchors remind us that we exist for a purpose. Someone put that anchor down. We are not set adrift. We may not find out who, and our anchors’ positions may not obviously communicate why we are where we are, but it gives us boats a place to start.

Anchors give us dignity. Tiny fishing boats do not have anchors because they do not sail far enough into the sea or long enough to need them. Realizing that we are anchored triggers a re-evaluation of ourselves. Perhaps we are more than cheap bits of wood nailed together. Perhaps we are merchant ships. Perhaps we are luxury cruises. Perhaps we are anything in between. But we have value. We have purpose. We contribute to bettering others’ lives.

Find your anchor. Pull it a little, test it a tad. but don’t resent it. It’s more important to you than you think.

30/7/2010

Just to balance things out, you know. Not to brag or anything.

I am so very happy right now. Content, and excited for the future, and exhausted at a job well done but in a good way.

But most of all, I feel inexpressibly grateful that out of the gut-wrenching mess of the past, good things can and do happen. I have been redeemed. And it makes me feel a little closer to God again.

On Good Writing

The discipline of writing still eludes me. After over a decade of intermittent diary-writing, and some years of blog-updating, my words and ideas do not stack up neatly like well-designed, uniformed plastic chairs at the hawker store.

They say writing is good for oneself. Writing is an exercise in truth. It does not reflect truth but creates it. There is so much power in words wielded well, words that are not clumsily shoved into a sentence. Words that exceed their limitations so that it is not the words you hear, but the feelings and ideas expressed through them that are transmitted and embedded in your soul.

Really good writers have that effect, of being able to transport the reader into their consciousness, to see out of their own eyes and think not as one mind to another, but as one and the same mind.

Maybe it's not really about skill. Maybe it's also about heart. The burning desire to communicate something transforms itself into eloquence, the blue sparks glint off the page and creates flashes of light in the dark recesses of a reader's mind.

And I don't have it.

Homecoming

A year. It has *only* been a year. It feels like a lifetime ago, once removed.

This is my bed, white sheets, two pillows. The shower with it's partial sliding glass doors, the collapsible partitions. My old, old clothes. The humidity, not as insufferable as Hong Kong's, but pressing close by like a debt collector or an old friend. The books of my childhood, a row of CS Lewis and L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott.

It's hard to categorize this particular feeling I have. The getting of something that one has longed, pined for for so long - what do you do next? What grand gesture can you do, besides running down the street crying "I'm home! I'm home!" (and even that might not work) that will relieve this feeling in your chest? This exultant jubilation, this bottomless contentment, this quiet relief, this surging sentimentality agitated by the tangible reminders of everything that has shaped you. With wonder you look at the marks you left on your surroundings, pinpoints in time past to a history you barely remember happening.

Success, the future, dreams are vague, but home is very, very tangible. I just want to bask in this for a while.

Let me be flexible

The title comes from a Chinese proverb: the reed bends and sways in the wind, but remains standing; while the strong tree that neither bends nor sways crashes in the storm.

I realize that I often think of myself as grown-up, mature, able to make intelligent decisions. And I let little things go, bit by bit, excusing my behavior too easily, slacking off - and then I realize that I'm not all that grown-up. I have a-ways to go. I am not done. I am still making mistakes. I am still making excuses. I need forgiveness, and I need to forgive others too.

Why do we try to maintain balance in a world of flux? It's like looking for patterns within a lava lamp. The components are always the same, but the appearance is ever-moving, ever-changing. Except, perhaps, humans are even more complicated, because we change each other - we are interacting with our environment, adapting, discarding older models of thinking, moderating and analyzing all the time.

It's time to be flexible. It's time to trust. It's time to be...vulnerable. Because I need to, to retain and reclaim my sanity. To sway, to bend, and not to break.

When you walk, you think - and you blog after.

Walking quietly, next to you, both of us wrapped in thoughts so far away. It makes me think of the difference between physical space and mental space. That physical proximity can be so powerful. Although I may be millions of miles away mentally, I'm still aware of you. I think my own thoughts, but I wonder what you're thinking.

I think of so many things. I guess its because I can't talk to you, you need your space, but I can't do something rude like pull out a book or listen to some music either. I can't sleep because I'm walking. So I am forced, not unwillingly, to retreat into the cove in my mind where I think deep, spacey thoughts. I get high on observations about the world and human nature.

I think (not in order):

1. How harmonious the night is. The quietude, the smell, the dewy grass. I think about how everything is unique. How each person's footsteps reveal their personalities, their mood. Whether they're confident, poised, serene; or angry, impatient, distracted. I think of breathing and how no two people breathe the same way.

2. I think about how counter-intuitive life is. We expect to grow more complex the older and more mature we become, but in fact we get more simple. As children, we act on our impulses and are taught not to. As adults, we have to "find ourselves" - get in touch with our impulses and against all reasoning, act on them. We find that what we wanted to do is the right thing after all.

3. Now, I think about how rarely I think. How infrequently I actually take the time to be completely away from consumption (of ideas, of conversation, of visual movements) and just occupy my mind. Why? Is it because I am afraid of what I will find? Or because I feel that it wastes time? Sometimes it does feel like a waste of time, because I can't remember what destination my thought journey brought me to, and it follows that all that thought-time was a waste. But perhaps in the recording of this process, and in your consumption, it wasn't a waste at all.

4. I don't think its wrong to want things. It is not wrong to want love, it is not wrong to be forthright about what you need. It is wrong to snatch things away or to make others do what you want them to do if they are unwilling. But in being clear about our wants, our reasons, our lives, our reasons for life - it makes it so much easier to be helped, and to help others achieve their hopes.