Helping Others.

I used to question my sincerity whenever I find myself doing things just to be nice or keep peace. But after thinking for awhile, I realised that I don't actually need to feel strongly for something to be sincere. I may go and volunteer at a orphanage and even though I don't really have a compassion for orphans (or children in general), I will do my best to help them because I feel for them.

Feeling and having compassion is a totally different thing. To feel is to understand and become aware. To have compassion is to be sympathetic and emotionally affected. Ask me which is healthier and I will say having to feel for another person is healthier because it doesn't take as much emotional energy as compassion! When we feel for something, we act with understanding. For example, we feel for our hands and we do not deliberately put it into hot oil! We do not necessarily have compassion towards our hands, but we feel for them!

Sometimes love comes in actions and a simple act of not moving an inch away when a bangala sits right next to you is a kind act on it's own. Of course, there is no compassion in that act, but because you feel for them, you understand that they are just humans seeking acceptance like us makes you more mindful of how you act when they are around. Just like how you don't deep fry your own hand, you won't do things to hurt them on purpose.

It Doesn't Stops There.

Your actions make huge impacts even though you don't get to see the full impact of it. And the kind of impact it takes depends on what kind of action you are doing. Be wise with your actions! 'Cause at the end of the day, it comes back to you!

The song is by Matisyahu - One day.

Check it out, it's awesome!

Insults

There are many times where I feel disappointed with myself. For wasting time, for not doing better, for falling for my own traps again and again. And whenever that happens, I don't feel good about myself. So I would end up feeling useless, stupid and incapable.

There are also times when I look into the mirror I don't like what I see. Fat, short, ugly, pimple faced. It's worse when both of it happens at the same time. I simply feel worthless. I know these thoughts usually only come when I am in a bad mood, but that doesn't give me the excuse to throw insults at myself.

They say it takes a 1000 compliments to erase an insult.

How many times have you insulted yourself?

How many times have I done that?

How can I 'repay' those insults?

Reincarnation.

I wasn't very surprised when I saw this because I was 'born' a Buddhist and my family believes in reincarnation. It has always been something that I feel was natural until I came across the Christian faith. I still don't know if I actually fit into any religion but I guess being a free-thinker is still the most comfortable thing to be. After all, all wars are caused by conflicting beliefs and I think one of the best ways to keep peace is to keep your beliefs to yourself and respect other people's beliefs. So, take this video with a ton of salt and enjoy!

The Story of A Thousand Marbles.

This is not my personal story, just a story I came across. And I would like to share it with you. Enjoy.

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time.
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind. He sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about “a thousand marbles”.

I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say. “Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital.”
He continued, “Let me tell you something, Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of “a thousand marbles”.

“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.” “Now then, I multiplied 75 times

52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part.”

“It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail” he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about
a thousand of them left to enjoy.”

“So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.”

“I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.”

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday, then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.”

“It was nice to meet you, Tom. I hope you spend more time with your family and I hope to meet you again here on the band. 75 year Old Man, this is D9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!”

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast.”

“What brought this on?” she asked with a smile. “Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids.” “Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out?...

I need to buy some marbles.”

Singlehood

After seeing my cousin getting married, I sometimes I dream of my life as being single forever.

No one to tie me down, no one to be worried about, no one to affect my emotion and I can travel the world with all the money I have. I don't see the reason why some people see it as no one to tie down to, no one that's worried for you, no one to make your day just be saying "I love you" and no one to travel with. I think establishing a relationship with myself is the most important thing and I haven't fully done so yet.Maybe it takes a life time to discover oneself and another to establish a relationship but I have already started saying I love you to myself and that feeling it gives is awesome!

The other day I was bored and I was trying to make a checklist of how I want my dream partner to be like and I think the person I am describing is very similar to myself. I am not extremely poetic, but I can be deep. I am not very simple, but I am easily pleased. And sometimes, I wish people could understand that just because someone keeps their mouth shut, it doesn't mean they are dumb!

Call me egoistic, I know I hardly am, so I won't care about your comment! Hah! But I think that's why I don't need a partner... I have myself. And if no one else in the world knows how to appreciate me, then I would rather be single. I feel like it's the self-love and self-respect I promised myself the last time I have broken my own heart by randomly dating people. So I am really careful about who I date now.

Love in my opinion starts from within oneself. If you don't love yourself, don't even try loving another person. Independence is attractive and an additional love for music is a plus point. Whoops, it looks like I have unknowingly made a better checklist for myself. Haha. When I love someone, I want to like every aspect of that person. It's hard to find someone like that, but it's important to know what you want. I definitely do not want to end up in a relationship where I just love my partner just to keep things together. Reluctant relationships are emotionally consuming! I would rather end things right away. But I know, when I love, I love deeply and I will try to work things out as far as I can... except, I know my limits now.

At the end of the day, it's between me and my partner. It is the bond we share because we love each other not the bond we share to amaze or make others envious.

I'm not a clown in the circus of love.

Hell's Escape Plan (works on Earth only)

Have you ever found yourself stuck in hell? So much work to do, so little time! You are so tired yet you are less than halfway through. You feel almost burnout and you and blaming yourself for not doing your work earlier. Well, if the above situation is familiar to you then this post is for you.

Ways to escape hell #1:

Don't believe in hell. Tell yourself that you are not stuck in a rut and there will be a way out. You are not disabled unless you believe that you are. There are many successful people that are described as disabled according to our society, but what made them different and more successful than other disabled people is their mindset. Even through people label them as disable, they do not see themselves differently and they believe that there is always a way to work things around in a difficult situation. Believe is a very powerful thing, use it to build yourself, not tear yourself down.

Ways to escape hell #2:

Face hell with all the confidence you have. Yes, do not run away from hell. Don't procrastinate. Just because things are hard to deal with doesn't mean that you should avoid it. If you do that, hell will just keep running after you. Face hell, or even better, confront hell! Confront hell like you enjoy doing it. If you have a difficult assignment on your hands, do it to the best of your abilities. If you don't understand something that will be tested, ask the lecturer personally. You are responsible for your own escape and you can't blame Facebook, your crush or that awesome Friday night party if you fail to escape from the clutches of hell.

Ways to escape hell #3:

Plan your way out. Set goals. I know some of you must be thinking, "But I never once fulfilled my goal!!" That's because you've been setting the wrong kind of goals. Your goals must first be SMART:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Timely

Don intimidate yourself with dreamy goals, set something that is simple! Then build up your goal archiving confidence from there. Also, it is important to have 2 kinds of goals! One long-term goal which you should always remind yourself of and one short-term goal which should be driven by the long-term goal. For example, if my long-term goal would be to get a 3.8 GPA, then my one of my short-term goal would be to study for at least an hour every monday - friday. You might think that one hour is not a lot, you small changes do make big differences! Like what Sean Covey said in his book The 7 Habbits of Highly Effective Teens, if you wanted to fly from New York to Tel Aviv in Isreal but made a one degree change north, you would end up in Moscow instead of Tel Aviv. So short-term goals help to make long-term goals more archivable!

Ways to escape hell #4:

Be truthfully happy. This is the part that you should be familiar with (if you read my blog often that is). I love to emphasize on happiness and if what you are building on to archive isn't making you happy at all then it is time to change. I know it is hard to make a change now that you have already put your foot on the path but if you don't want to wake up one morning in your mid-thirties realizing that the only reason you are staying in your job is because of the financial support it gives and your happiness level is equivalent to zero, then it's time to change. No matter what I choose to archive, the most important values to me are self-respect, happiness, family, and health. You might have different values but if your ultimate goal isn't in-tune with your values then... you know what to do.

That's all I have for now. Maybe there will be a part two.

This is to remind myself that I need to share the story about a thousand marbles in the next post! Haha~

Dear Acquaintance,

This post is linked to my previous post, Dear Stranger.

You are trying to find yourself in every situation and you are starting to realise that almost everyone around you are unique in one way or another so you start to question yourself. Am I being myself? Am I unique? What in the world is myself?!!?! So, you try to create this unique character that you want to be and you will be that person. But actually, that isn't yourself, that is acting out a created character. Being yourself should be effortless.

Sometimes your heart screams to be heard, there are so many things you know you should say but you just don't know how to put it in words. Either that or you are too afraid of the consequences those words might create. You envision yourself to be a great friend-in-need, a person who doesn't just sit and listen but also asks questions, open new doors, give good advice and you blame yourself when you are not able to do so.

The thing is, you tend to forget that your hands cannot heal all the hurt in this world and there is a reason for that... Because your eyes can never see the whole world at once. There are still many things you do not know and many years you haven't lived so sometimes, great friends shouldn't help, great friends shouldn't give advice, great friends should just sit and listen. Too much advice can be like helping a chick crack it's egg. You are actually doing the opposite of helping! It's better to just ask questions and let them give their own answers because they are the ones who understand their situation better, not you. After all, people can open their own doors.

You love learning. You learn things everywhere and you learn mostly by observing. But because of this, you often doubt yourself on the things you do. You learn to be humble, then you learn to be highly egoistic and now you are stuck in between cuz you don't know which one to be! You are constantly wanting to be nice but at the same time, you don't want to be a doormat that everyone steps on. So you have agreed on being humble but fair to yourself by claiming credit for the things you do.

You also realised that you don't like being serious most of the time. Being serious is one of the most painful thing to you because when you are serious, everything suddenly becomes so intense, so stressful. But you are afraid that if you aren't serious at all, no one would take you seriously at all. You haven't found a solution for this yet but you know that not being serious makes you happy... So, you kinda know where you are heading already.

There is so much more things to know about yourself and being truthful to yourself is very important. You want to be happy everyday and when that happiness meter goes down, you panic. I find that you should be more accepting of sorrows and pains because after all, happiness exist because of sorrows. If you ever forget how it was like to be sad, you would also forget how it would be like to be happy. To live is to have imperfections and life is full of them. So, embrace whatever you have even if it is tears.

Give, Love, Appreciate, and Compromise.

The Forgotten Wallet Post.

I lost my wallet.

After a day of fun, joy, and laughter at wild wild wet, I lost my wallet. I have no ez-link, very little cash, and I am feeling kinda lost. My immediate reaction was to put on a black face and vent my anger out on everyone around me. The useless office staff who told me to fill up a form (which never works!), that bastard Caucasian guy that I suspect is the thief of my wallet, my friends (who are as helpless as me at finding my wallet), and stupid looking children that are laughing and running around. Instantly, I wanted everyone around me to feel the pain I am feeling within me but I know it wasn't right so I kept it in.

I called my dad and told him about it and he advice me to report the lost to the police. I felt a little better after telling my dad. I started using my phone's Google Map to find the nearest police station. I still feel pretty depressed but I told myself I am not helping myself cope with the situation by being so upset. So, I shook off the black face and smiled to myself and started being thankful for all the things I didn't loose like my phone, house keys, my card holder (which contains only membership cards), and I am more than thankful that I have friends with me! (thanks, shaw, guangyi and melvin~) Losing a wallet may not be a good thing, but I am thankful for it because everything happens for a reason, after all, it will be a good learning experience.

Thankfulness is a kind of positivity. We must see a kind of beauty in the things we are thankful for in order to be thankful for it. (Unless you are being sarcastic of course) And I believe in seeing beauty in everything. It's not neglecting the flaws in a situation, it is looking at things at a lighter point of view.

It is making life more worth living.

Being positive was the best thing I could do for that moment and I did not regret it. Imagine if I actually kept a black face throughout that period of time! I think my experience of losing my wallet would be far worst for me and the people around me... maybe even traumatic.

Mistakes

Sometimes people do things that really make you snap, and you end up hating the person. You swear that you will never want to see him/her again. So, you avoid them, talk bad about them and that makes you hate them even more. I am sure everyone has one person that is like that in their lives and when you hate someone, chances are, it is really hard to forgive them.

But we are all human and imperfection is human. Sometimes the things that we do are so wrong, even we are ashamed of ourselves. I don't know if this applies to everyone or not, but I have hated myself before and obviously, I was in misery.

Unfortunately, the sad fact is, you can't run from yourself. You can't avoid yourself. But talking bad about yourself is actually possible! People say things like, "I am so fat and ugly." And in their attempt to 'run away' from themselves, they act like someone else. Someone they admire. Someone they feel worth more than themselves. They end up feeling unconfident and worthless.

We are imperfect. Let's just accept it. You are not able to do the right things all the time, so does the person you hate and that's okay. So, laugh at your own mistakes, don't take life so seriously, don't beat the life out of yourself with regret, and always be gentle with yourself.

It's harder to love and forgive others if you don't forgive yourself first.