Termination

Gotta pen this down before the intensity of the emotions dissipates.

I just terminated a client.

I had intended to bring up the topic of termination just so that I could ease him into the process of cutting off our counseling relationship. I thought I'd at least have 1 more session with him and imagined him having some termination anxiety. How wrong. He was more prepared than me to terminate and was absolutely fine with it. In his words, he said he had wanted to see a counselor because he was going through a crisis. Now that the crisis has stabilised, he shares that he as always been coping and there was no reason why he will not be able to cope now. *Liren smiles a satisfied smile to himself at client's resilience*

It turned out that termination was more of MY issue. I had some anxiety about it because it was, for me, THE case. It was my most complicated case thus far, and I think for me, working with him forced me to think about many issues. And it taught me many things too. Many of the issues we learn about in school was placed before me IN MY FACE. :)

1. People can cope. But they need to come to terms with their past in order to cope with their present. That's the difficult part.

2. Just talking and having someone listen to you non-judgmentally is therapeutic.

3. Church sucks, God rocks. I hope God rocks the sucky church.

4. Life is deep. People can be super deep without counselors and without much education.

5. Reality is reality. Psychological research is academia.

6. Hiding is our greatest skill.

And some other things that I can't mention here cos they are more detailed and I don't want to compromise confidentiality.

And so it's been another week, and not every week I many thoughts to share.

It's been another week in which I had to try to come to terms with the mortality of life. Had a session with a client, we were supposed to talk about something and it turns out that a close friend of his died between e last time we met and now. And my session plan flew out of the window, and became a grief counseling session. And a nav brother is also now in hospital, at one point grappling with mortality.
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Just spoke with a very sharp friend on MSN. We haven't chatted face to face in about a year plus, and yesterday was the first time.

She is sharp. She shared that after a year, she says that she feels I've developed an 'aura of indulgence'. Haaa. That's a funny term, I've never thought that way. And I wondered what it is.

She said it's almost like.. it feels like I have seen so much of human life, I don't have a need to constantly be looking out for others' needs. But that I could just look out for myself, not feeling that I always needed to self-sacrifice, material or immaterial pleasures, or alone time.

Do you guys feel that way about me too?
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I've got a new fad. I collect classic books and try to read them. You know, those books that you can keep for life. Edmond just bought 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Viktor Frankl for me.

I just got Confessions by Augustine, who wrote in Latin in the 4th century. He's possibly the wisest man in the history of the Church, ranking alongside Calvin and Solomon. To be honest, I was quite disappointed with the response of some peeps who I read a passage of his writing to.

Sometime ago, was reading a couple of wonderful books by Kubler-Ross.

And now I'm becoming a bigger fan of U2. I want to attend one of their concerts someday.

Thinking about deaths

I've been thinking about deaths. 2 deaths, in fact.

The media has been covering a lot about these 2 deaths, but definitely one more than the other. The first is the dear Anthony Yeo that so many of us in social services know so well. And of course, the other is MJ. I believe anyone who speaks the English language would have heard of him.

Just read an article in the papers 'Buy a piece of MJ', talking about how the owner of the club who were the first to sign the Jackson 5 now wants to sell the entire building brick by brick to people who want a piece of history.


People are now clamouring for MJ CD's, memorabilia, previously unpublished music, every piece of news about him, every single detail about his death. This man has fans, even when he's dead. Give him a break, will ya?

The world is, in a way, in shock.

And the other death I'm thinking about is one that is with much less fanfare and attention.

Anthony Yeo, the 'Father of Counselling' in Singapore. He devised a model of counseling that ALL of us social workers and counselors in Singapore are familiar with; the PADI model. More than that, he was a master, a student, a friend, and so much more to many others. I have not had much contact with him, except hearing him at some forums, reading his books, and watching the lone youtube video there is on him.

I remember attending the Samaritans of Singapore Suicide Awareness Forum last year, and the first line he said blew me away with its depth and wisdom. 'People who commit suicide are a special group of clients. These are people who are not afraid to die. They are afraid to live.'

Life can be such a burden that for some, death is a better option. But there are also those who live well, and who have looked through life itself so hard, that the loss of life is not really a loss. It is merely a conclusion.

As I ponder these 2 great people, powerful in infinitely intangible ways in their own fields, I can't help but ponder their lives.

There is something profound about the behaviour evoked in those who loved these two men. On one hand is an almost hysterical clamouring of whatever is leftover, on the other is a group of people who let go, albeit reluctantly.

Let's face it. While the media articles are now putting up things about MJ and his positives, this was a man who lived for himself. And towards the end of his life, we found him holding on to it with everything he had. And we know, quite certainly, that he was probably quite a tortured soul, never quite accepting himself and amassing obscene amounts of riches to fill that soul up. But food fills stomachs and clothes cover bodies; they can never fill a heart.

And you just get a sense that with all that clamouring, there is a feeling that people can't get enough him. Why? Maybe because he didn't give himself. People are clamouring for the MJ they couldn't get when he was around.

You get a feeling that the clamouring is to fill a gap left behind by a sense that this life could have been more. He could have done more. Played his 50 London comeback concerts, published his other music, brought up his children till they were of an older age. More. He could have lived more, done more. But MJ, like the rest of us, is a human being, not a human doing.

I don't want people to clamour for me after I am gone. I don't want people to feel that I could have done more, contributed more. I want people to sense that no matter how many years I lived, I had lived it to the max. I had given those I love around me; my family, friends and clients, my best.

I don't want people to 'buy a piece of Liren.'

I want people to have me, as a whole. As a whole Liren.

Will you allow me to love you, my friend, with the whole me?

Lao Zha Bor

I took the bus with Lao Zha Bor today!!

Chwee Kway - Form vs Essence

Chwee Kway. Either you love it or you hate it.

For the uninformed, which are probably not many, chwee kway is a chinese snack often eaten for breakfast. It's essentially steamed rice flour cakes which are totally tasteless, eaten with preserved salted radish. The plain-ness of the flour cakes complements the extreme salt content in the radish well. Either you hate it or you love it. Personally, I quite like the pairing of the taste and texture contrast, but the radish is often SOOOOOO oily at most stalls that I end up with a bloated stomach the whole day. Yearck.

The thing is, chwee kway is round. It's supposed to be round. Everybody thinks of 'round' when they think of chwee kway. Chwee kway cannot be of any other shape. It just can't. It's just the way it is, no rhyme, no reason.

I buy breakfast sometimes from a little stall near office. The auntie self-proclaims to have been manning the stall for 12 years, and she makes pretty good stuff. I enjoy her food quite a bit. Hers is one of those Chinese-snack-breakfast-stalls selling CCF (chee cheong fun), yam cake, pumpkin cake, dumplings, pau etc. But unlike the other stalls who take their food from suppliers and factories, this auntie has helmed the stall by making her own stuff! Cool rite?

But therein lies the problem.

Her chwee kway doesn't fit the mould. It isn't round.

It's square. A cube. A block. Anything but chwee kway.

I've seen many aunties give the stall-owner a queer look when she opens her giant steamer and fishes out these blocks of steamed rice flour when they ask for chwee kway. Can you imagine? The sight is actually quite funny. And the aunties would actually ask 'Huh? is that chwee kway?? Eeyer. Your chwee kway square one. I don't want.' Sounds ridiculous? I've seen it right before my very eyes.

Chwee kway is steamed rice flour cakes eaten with preserved salted radish. Round chwee kway is steamed rice flour cakes eaten with preserved salted radish. Square chwee kway is steamed rice flour cakes eaten with preserved salted radish. Steamed rice flour cakes eaten with preserved salted radish is chwee kway.

It's interesting how we often can't recognise something just because it's changed shape. Or we think something isn't what it is anymore just because it looks different from what we are used to.

I remember reading about a man who had his legs amputated because of disease. And he said 'The toughest thing is that people see me as somebody who was. I am not who I am, I was who I was.' Even when somebody's outside changes, is he who he still is inside? Our form is changeable, but can our essence remain the same?

Our form is often what academics like to call 'social constructs'. Chwee kway must be round because it has always been round, because we are used to it being round. If it is not round, it cannot be chwee kway. People define what a chwee kway is. But a chwee kway does not cease to be a chwee kway just because it is square. Its substance, its essence remains identical.

So often, we try to fit ourselves into the moulds that others give to us. Just like the rice flour, we fit ourselves into the round mould and make ourselves that shape. The fundamental aim of every human being is self-actualisation. What is that? If we looked at the words and break it down, it essentially means we become 'our actual selves'. Ironically, too many voices out there today tell us that we are only self-actualised when we become successful in business, make a tonne of money, able to speak like Adam Khoo.. etc. The irony is that these goals are what society tells us we should be, they may or may not be 'our actual selves'. Self-actualisation leads to happiness and joy. But too many 'successful' people today are not happy, not because they are failures, but because they tried to be round when they are actually square.

And so, chwee kway should be defined as what composes it, not what it should look like. Can we also accept those who don't look like what society thinks it should look like? Can we also enjoy chwee kway that is square, savouring the salty-plain and smooth-grainy contrasts? Sure we can, but we must first put aside our thoughts that square chwee kway is not chwee kway and be willing to take a first bite.

Other vs actual me. Rejection vs acceptance. Round vs square. Form vs essence.

You choose.

But I still want my breakfast. :)

Home

I'm coming home.

"But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything.
He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist.
And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it.
Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself.
He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it.
As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time.
A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself.
A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie.
He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble.
The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts.
In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.
Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt.
By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything…”

- G. K. Chesterton

The Moody Blues - Question

Some lyrics of a 1970s song. The words are poignantly real, but the song is absolutely horrible. haha. enjoy, and think about the words.

__________________________________

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
'Cos when we stop and look around us,
There is nothing that we need,
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed.

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That's what the war of love is for

It's not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me
It's more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be

And when you stop and think about it
You won't believe it's true
That all the love you've been giving
Has all been meant for you.

I'm looking for someone to change my life,
I'm looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it's done to me,
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me through.

Between the silence of the mountains,
And the crashing of the sea,
There lies a land I once lived in,
And she's waiting there for me,
But in the grey of the morning,
My mind becomes confused,
Between the dead and the sleeping,
And the road that I must choose.

The ironies of weddings

Weddings are ironic.

We call it 'settling down', but it's actually probably the most unsettling experience we will ever have in our lives.

We 'save' ourselves for the big day, but spend every damned cent we have.

We use other people's money (packed nicely in an angbao) to pay for our own narcissism.

We want the wedding to be perfect, but no marriage ever will be.

We make the closest family members sit in front, and our friends at the back. But our friends are usually closer to us and know us more than our extended family. So, what's up with the cursory ritually imputed significance?

The VIPs may not really be that important.

Everything else tells us more about the bride and groom than their alloted speech time.

The bride has her hands full holding up the massive train of her gown, and no hands left to hold her groom's.

A bride has full rights to wear anything she wants and pose any way she wants, in ways she would never be in real life.

The couple are usually the furthest from their usual selves on that day, but their usual selves are really what we want to celebrate.

How much can/will a divorcee really celebrate at a wedding?

Wedding couples vary their shoe-heights to look like they are of a more similar height. And it is likely they will spend the rest of their lives trying to 'live up' to each other, and hate it.

Weddings are ironic.

Make Your Call

Make Your Call from superlide on Vimeo.

My bro's 2nd video production. Filmed entirely with a handphone camera!

Sponsored dinner and random thoughts

When Trans Centre had our 30th anniversary, I won a $50 voucher to Al Forno (East Coast) which is an Italian restaurant specialising in adult entertainment. Haaaahaa. No la. It's just that Edgar says the name sounds like a combination of Fornication and Porno. Cool. I shall try it out and see if the food is really orgasmically good.

And since Ginnette was kind enough to use her Marina Square vouchers to exchange for some Muji stuff for me, I decided to be nice to use my voucher to buy her dinner. :)

Company is more important than food, so here's a photo of the person who refused to be photographed.

In any case, I think the food was pretty good. We ordered a Pizza Primavera, Squid Ink linguine and Saute di Vongole (clams in white wine sauce).

Of the 3, I personally enjoyed the pizza a lot. The dough was chewy, freshly baked and I think the cheese was really tasty. I loved the super savoury Parma Ham too! Woots!

The clams. Omg. I think there must've been like a thousand clams in there. But I loved the garlicky buttery taste of the sauce. I might've gotten half-drunk from it. Clammy clammy clammy clammy clams.
Remnants of our squid ink pasta. :) Gorgeous stuff. Remnants is my favourite word.

Thankies Gin for dinner! :)
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Random thoughts.

Very good calamari at Borders Bistro with Jerm.

Humongous-but-decent-only briyani at this Indian restaurant Brinda's at Bukit Merah Central.

Good technique to use when in a crowd. Follow the man pushing the rubbish trolleys. Cos he can pave the way for u. Behold the trolley of rubbish! Prepare ye the way!!

The true definition of peace.

Peace out.

Nugget

Nugget of wisdom from Hong Rui when I chatted with him today.

Your purpose defines your success. Your success makes you happy, and everybody needs to succeed to be happy. But many successful people are not happy, because their purpose is not theirs. Their purpose is something society imposes on them, not their own.

Tourist at home: part 2

And with the band's completion of the song Zombie, we decided to go off. The conversation was just about to get deeper and more interesting, and I felt like I didn't want the conversation to end. And hence I walked him to the bus-stop where we talked until his bus came.

I wondered how I should make my way back to City Hall, and felt perhaps a long walk alone on a cool night would be therapeutic.

'I realise that e best part of our conversations tend to occur as we're about to part in the solace of the stillness of night, when somehow we wind down our defences and share about the inner sanctuary of our hearts..'

I looked around me, and proceeded to walk.
Peering into the Louis Vuitton shop and wondering why people bother to spend their money on it. Passing by Coffee Club and realising that there were tonnes of people there. Journeying past Istana Park, Orchard Rd Presbyterian Church, Chijmes.

Each of them places I see practically week-in-week-out, but each seemed to take on a different flavour scented by the night sky and stillness.

It's true. For whom do I labour, and to what end?

The melding of the sacred and the commercial.

And then the cravings came. Like Rebecca says, they came in mid-thought, mid-stride, and u reach out a hand, seemingly to grasp for the air that was choking me up. And then I realised that an empty clutch forms a fist, not a fist of fury, but a fist formed out of the effort to suppress and push away the cravings. We each have a need to hold on to something. But when there is nothing to hold, we can choose the fist of fury or the fist of strained acceptance.

'A lighter way is to say how all of us have that need to have people to walk with you. Nice to know you're walking that journey too. Hope the walk for you may be a alone but not lonesome one.'

Oh at that point, how I wished for that. What a contrast my evening was to the partying happening elsewhere. And finally, as I reached for the room door, my forehead and hair wet with perspeiration, I entered into the welcoming embrace of the cold air-conditioning. Silence.

Called McDonalds for a McChicken meal to be delivered to my room, took a shower and watched some TV. But in my mind, his words kept ringing. 'How do you tahan the things you hear at work?' It's true, my peers are burning out. I think I'm still okay, but I'm quite sure I've heard more horror stories than the average 1 year old social worker. Not just hearing, but having to actually handle it.

As I soaked in the bathtub, that question kept ringing in my mind as I searched for an answer. Looked at my heart, and it looked familiar yet strange. It felt.. like I was really a tourist peering around the recesses of my own heart. And like the tourist, I could only find a description but did not have enough insight to explain what I was describing.

And with that, my consciousness drifted off into the darkness of the night.

I was woken up by the light shining into my room. It was pleasant. With no source of cheap breakfast in the middle of town at 8am, I sourced out a KFC Twister (which is essentially some flatbread filled with scrambled eggs, cheese, tomatoes, mayo and popcorn chicken leftover from the previous day) and a big cup of Ya Kun coffee. Sitting in silence, I stared out at the window with my very delicious breakfast. Oh, and a book detailing how God shapes us through the events of our lives. Interesting that I had just finished the chapter 'Your Calling Matters'.

It was in this silent breakfast that more introspection came. In that silence, I paid close attention to the taste of my food and the aroma of my coffee.

Perhaps what keeps me going is the fact that I am somehow gifted with the ability to perceive the beauty of the human-ness of the people I interact with. No matter how screwed they are, how messed up their lives are, I somehow am able to sense in my being the humanity. I believe God is a God who creates the concept of beauty, and then proceeded to burn this beauty onto every human's heart.

And with that, I had completed a brief vacation on my own into myself. A break from the hustle of outside life, and a break from the noises of the world. It piqued my interest, and it all felt so familiar and comfortable, and yet so foreign.

I felt.. like I was really a tourist.

Tourist at home: part 1

Perpetual routine can actually be quite stressful on the mind. I have been needing this break for a while, and this weekend I finally decided to get it.

It's interesting how a shift in perspective and looking out intentionally for things you don't normally see can move you dramatically away from the routine drone of life. With my bags packed with a day of clothing, a book, a notebook and my lappie, I set off for my staycation.

The first thing I noticed was how things kind of felt different as I was making my way to Excelsior-Peninsula hotel on my own. The purposeful silence was in fact, quite comfortable. My first mini-adventure (known as MA from this point onwards) was to eat something for lunch that I wouldn't normally eat. Knowing that Peninsula Plaza is a place where many Burmese gather, I was nevertheless surprised to find that the food court below consisted of about 70% stalls selling Burmese food by Burmese people. I had Mohinga noodles and some 'crispy fritters' (which was really just onions fried in batter) for lunch, and there were so many Burmese around me that for a while, I even felt like I was in another country, although not necessarily Myanmar. It felt.. like I was really a tourist.

The Mohinga noodles were basically thin noodles in a fish broth with crispy bits of fried catfish in them. Maybe the American guy who tried to swim across Aung San Suu Kyi's lake in Yangon was trying to catch some of these catfish, but if he was I don't know why he bothered to go through all that fuss. The noodles, while presenting an interesting texture contrast between the crisp and the soupy, were nothing to shout about. But the texture contrast did remind me of the contrast of where I was: paying $4 for a bowl of noodles that would probably cost $0.05 back at where the dish originated and surrounded by people who were also paying $4 for the same thing that they probably grew up paying $0.05 for. The price to pay for a chance to feel like you're home, perhaps? Oh what we would pay, for a chance to be connected to that which we are fully comfortable with.

I checked into the hotel, got the keys to my room, and threw my things around. I went to check out the swimming pool, but it was way too hot for a swim. I would've gotten sunburnt. But then, who needs a swimming pool when I can soak myself in a bathtub of warm, chlorine-free water? Which was what I proceeded to do.

Well, I must say that really, this is an age of open-ness. Literally. Check out the bathroom man!

The bathroom can be seen through a glass window from the sleeping area in the hotel room. Wooo. Talk about transparency.

And so, with some soaking in the tub, some gymming, some swimming and some lying on the bed, the alone-time was wonderful.

Not much of a view, but I liked the sunlight coming in through the windows and lighting the room naturally.

The peace of silence and the suspension of judgment. There was a strange peace inside of me as I went about all this without need to utter a single word. Peace that came, somehow, because for once there was no need to speak of myself. No need to describe, define, explain, elaborate, rephrase anything. I was just, me. There was no need for me to think about what the other person was thinking about what I was presenting about myself. In that silence, the judgment of others on me, was for that few hours, suspended. And in the suspension of judgment I found rest.

It was almost time to meet Ed. I got showered, dressed and headed out. It felt very strange to have that just-showered feeling and when you step downstairs, it's actually City Hall. The point of reference for your life matters. Where you are coming from can totally alter the direction and feel of your life, whether it is a physical location or a mental one. Whereas in today's world, we are filled with people who tell us that the only thing that matters is where we are heading and whether we get there, I beg to differ. I believe where you head towards cannot be fully dichotomised from where you come from, because the very desire to head somewhere is shaped by where you are from. Just like how it feels refreshing to be freshly showered and sauntering around City Hall in my slippers n jeans. It felt.. like I was really a tourist.

Window-shopped around Orchard, met up with Ed for dinner at MOS Burger. Checked out some shirts at Springfield, and he eventually bought one. Should I get the one I tried on too? Why is there such a strong need for me to buy something only after a few times looking at it? Is it because I feel more secure making that decision?

The band at Indochine was great as usual. The insane guitar riffs, the echoes from the mic, the rhythmic bass-lines. No Kilkenny, but a mojito instead. Mini-adventures, remember? To try things from a different perspective. The good conversations. And chicken strips this time instead of the chicken wings I usually get.

New perspectives, purposefully. More to come later.

The House with the Golden Windows

Do you remember the old story of the house with the golden windows? It tells of a little boy who would look across the sprawling meadows outside his house every morning and see in teh distance a house with golden windows. He would stare and revel in the radiant beams streaming his way from far away. He asked his father one day if they could visit the house with the golden windows. The father obliged, and they started to walk. They walked and walked until they approached the house. The young lad stood perplexed. He saw no windows of gold. But a little girl inside saw them staring at her home and came out to ask if they were looking for something. "Yes," replied the boy, "I wanted to see the house with the golden windows that I see every morning."

"Oh, you've come to the wrong place," she quickly said. "If you wait here a little until sunset, I will show you the house with the golden windows that I see every evening." She then pointed to a house in the distance - the home of the little boy.

How true this little story is. We go through life looking out of the windows of our own experience, dreaming of a golden window in the distance. But when we look through the windows of the soul, we realise that those distant golden windows do not exist. We see gold only because of the way the light catches our earthly dwellings at different times of our experience, at different times in our lives.

-- Ravi Zacharias, The Grand Weaver

Fridays at Indochine

Hmm. Ever since evenings became more empty, I think I've spent about 4 0r 5 Friday evenings at Indochine at Wisma le. The last 3 were consecutive some more. Call me loser, call me no-life, or whatever, but for me, a Friday night out with a couple of drinks, some chicken wings and great acoustic-not-too-loud-for-your-ears music is the perfect way to unwind and release some of those shit that ppl put at my feet during the week.

It helps that besides the band, there is sometimes another attraction at the bar. This bapok.. hmm to be honest I dunno if she's a transsexual yet, but definitely already a transvestite, has a major crush on the lead singer of the band. She would often stand outside the bar, watching, clapping, dancing. When it's a particularly sexy song being sung, she would sometimes arch her back backwards to further protrude those mounds of hers. She goes crazy sometimes when the band wink at her for fun. And she's the one who screams the loudest and claps the loudest at the end of a song. It's fun to watch, but often I feel intensely sad for her. Wherever she stands, automatically people form a 5 metre radius around her, almost like got nuclear radiation. And that's besides my speculation about the internal confusion and external rejection.

In any case, Friday evenings there are great. I can sit back, lean back with a good Kilkenny draught and some chicken wings. For once, somebody else is doing the performing. It really helps me to unwind, and a good conversation adds to its shiok-ness. I love it. After working for a year, I really realise why many people go drinking after work. It's therapeutic! But, need to control la.. it's expensive. And also I think the best conversations come when the alcohol releases a bit of the inhibitions. Haha.

Some videos for your enjoyment. This is the primary reason why I go to Indochine on Fridays.


Catsinecradle - In the end


Catsinecradle - Apologise


Catsinecradle - Summer of 69

I think I know why

My non-Hokkien speaking friends, forgive me okay. This post will have a lot of Hokkien. :)

I think I know why I'm a social worker now. There was a period of time I pursued compassion a lot in my life. I felt that it was a very important quality to have. It still is, but I think it has kind of changed over the years. As I told Rebby on the bus one day, now my pursuit in life is wisdom. I want wisdom, real bad. I want deeper and deeper insight into life and into humans, not just knowledge. Knowledge can be attained by going for a Masters' in psychology tomorrow, and a Phd after that. I don't want knowledge, I want wisdom.

Having said that, wisdom is what raises my competency in life, but I'm starting to see that compassion is the base of it all. What is wisdom without love? It is but a clanging cymbal. What is love without wisdom? That is naivete and foolishness. I need both.

And I think that despite the pursuit of wisdom, the seeds of compassion are still in me. I know it because whenever I see a demonstration of the fullness of human dignity, the tears well up inside me and I have an irresistable urge to say to God: 'Lord, truly this is life in its fullness.'.

Like this morning in church, a man who had a glorious past but lost much of his mental faculty due to a freak beating-up accident came to share about his life. He had once been a celebrity hairstylist but suffered brain damage after being beaten up at a party because he was mistaken for somebody else. The fullness of human dignity is demonstrated in those times, that when we are at our simplest that we are at our deepest. When we have all the riches in the world, we often live superficially, out of touch with our deep humanity. But it is when we are stripped to nothing, that we realise the greatest treasures we have are ourselves, our being. Which is why we are called human beings, not human doings or human achievings, because when we take away the doings and achievings, we are left with just our core.

And he sang this song which is one of my favourites. Pardon the quality, it's recorded with my SonyEricsson C902. :p Oh and by the way, that's me playing the drums on the song.



For another version of the song on which you can hear the lyrics better, here it is! :)



牵我的手，我的主啊，
请祢别离开我。
这条路我还要走，我需要祢来作伴。
牵我的手，我的主啊，请祢别离开我。
有时我会怕，有时不知怎样走，有时好像听不到祢声音。
牵我的手，请祢跟我作伴，给我的脚步又稳又定。
走到祢的门前，听到祢声音，跟我说：‘进来，我孩子。’

Perhaps, when we have nothing, then we realise that we have all we need in God who holds our hand.
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On another note, I love this video. We don't need our children to earn big bucks or do big things, we need to them to be by our side. I think most of the readers of this blog are more children than parents, so yea, remember, they need us to be with them. :)

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there!

Our Yesterdays

Click on the pictures if you wanna see a clearer view of the words. :)