No change please

Imagine an angel came into your dream and asked you,
'pick one moment of your life in the past that you would like to change'.

I remember the moment. I was away on holiday with my folks, sitting by the beach on a rock, I had been thinking about my 'courtship' which was a couple of years old then.  In that moment I had had second thoughts about his(my husband's) suitability, 'rightness' for me.  But I retreated from those thoughts and did not dwell deeper.  Is that what they mean by the callowness of youth?

IF nothing else will change,  I would choose to change how my thoughts proceeded at that moment in time. 
But that would be impossible unless I forget all else that I have to be thankful for now because of that moment.   So dear Angel, I do not wish to change.

Our instincts work perfectly, we only see it in hindsight,  ....  it's just that our hearts don't always sync with our brain.  Life's like that, we know what must be done in our heads but the heart, is it stronger or does it just lag behind?  Maya Angelou(poet) is right to have said  'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel'.
So why would the angel ask me this?  Perhaps that's a sign - to purge that moment,  a gentle reminder to STOP dwelling on the past because now I know I would not change it. 

Voltaire said 'Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.' and he is right too.

Co-incidence

Co-incidence or a sign!
I had read Farila's(Chapters from my Life) short post on Friday last week that she had had a power failure and hence could not use the internet or blog and it felt like withdrawal. And I had commented that I understood what she meant.
So guess what, come Saturday, there is this wonderful lightning storm(which pulled down trees) and which for some strange reason disrupts just the internet line, (only and nothing else is wrong) and so then I had no internet connection for the entire weekend at home and none til Tuesday when they will send a technician.

What do you think? Was it a test for me, ok.. my hands aren't shaking...
Of course I had to jump on my blog first thing (at the office), this morning.
.. I think I'll survive .. til Wednesday ....mmmm ... maybe.

Emptiness for Fulfillment

I've been readng 'Encounters with Merton' by Henri J M Nouwen and I wanted to share a part that interests me and that is on 'emptying oneself' which was also discussed in M S Peck's book. Thomas Merton was into such deep contemplation of the meaning of life, the search for God, his self and so much more; his thoughts and journey is so complex I am not able to spell it out clearly.
Merton reflects that emptying our selves will  help us do away with fear.  This is done by detachment, to claim nothing and possess nothing not even his life. We will then be able to "stand without fear in a violent world"  Nouwen adds that "detachment does not mean shirking one's responsibilities. Rather it is a supremely active deed that makes it possible to move unprejudiced and unafraid into the center of the evil".
Merton wrote "If I remembered that I have nothing called my own that will not be lost anyway, that only what is not mine but God's will ever live, then I would not fear so many false fears."

Merton reflected that learning the secret of our nothingness will lead us to find our true selves, because what will be left, is us 'made in His image and likeness'.
Paradoxically it appears, emptying our true selves will give us our fill of answers to many questions and we will then know the way to go.

I have come some way(a tiny fraction) of letting go and giving it up to Him and that has truly made me feel less afraid of the unknown.  So I can only imagine what it must feel like (thousand times more liberating ?) IF I COULD go the whole way.

Grading Mummy

My youngest son and I were talking about how his teacher grades his essays.  I was trying to explain the term 'criteria'.  He went  'mmm I guess vocabulary and grammar',  yes an ideas too I added,  how interesting his composition is, makes a difference. 
Somehow we moved to grading his teacher. At first he said ten out of ten, I prodded him and asked him his 'criteria'.. 'his reasons'.  He thought about it out loud and decided she was not perfect, she did not know everything (cause she didn't know the plural for ox was oxen !! ). His teacher got downgraded to six out of ten (oops!).
Then we moved to 'sister' - she was happy to hear him give her a grade of  eight out of ten. I tried to get her 'marked down' ..with criteria (evil grin !!, she glared at me)  Obviously sister was not that 'bad' to him.  I think it's because she shares her IPod with him eventhough she does yell at him from time to time.
Brother did not fare that well, although I suspect at a different time or day his grading would have improved.

Finally we came to Mummy, here I was thinking perhaps I should have picked a better time, I had been 'nagging' him the whole morning about the ills of procrastination to get him to finish his homework. 
But,  he gave me a ten out of ten.  Of course to be fair,  I prodded him with reminders and a chance to re-think, I tried  (really did!) to get him to lower my grade, but (happily for me)  he remained firm, brushed aside anything else I attempted to bring up.
It's a wonderful feeling to be unconditionally loved inspite of our imperfections.

Meandering thoughts

Strange the planet is so small, there's beauty and quiet to be found in some parts and bloodshed and poverty in others, yet each does not touch the other.
The news lately has been bothering me, there's very little good news these days,
- a doctor drowns while diving, - a man is in a coma because he was struck by lightning while he was golfing,   - a suicide bomb kills 100s in Baghdad, bombings in Pakistan that kill women and children,   - a place called Rayong south-east of Bangkok that has seen so much industrialization that the cancer rates and suicide rates are so much higher than the average in the country, and drinking water is contaminated with metals and chemicals... .
- cyclones and floods, earthquake victims and destruction...

Life is so fragile, and unpredictable, this old cliche will never grow old, do we know what happens tomorrow,  whether you be rich or poor death can come unannounced.
Are natural disasters an act of God or the wrath of God. Is it meant to be a renewal or punishment,  we ask  these questions ironically.  Yet here man is also chipping away at that already fragile surface, adding to all that,  the wrath of man and callousness of man,  so eager to hasten death of life and death of the earth. Sometimes I think God is trying to wrestle back control.

Is there a balance, it all seems to be weighted in favour of disaster. Can we tip the scales then,  it's upto the rest of us then to plead for and save the earth.

It Must Be Wonderful

I wrote this post in August but I have decided to resurrect it because I keep reading so many blogs  that have been  talking about the onset of autumn in the US and some more recent .. marvelling at nature's beauty in change.

I live without seasons. It’s either the rainy season or the hot season, which these days are mixed up due to global warming.
I can only imagine how beautiful it is during the other times of the year when it’s not summer.
Four times a year, there’s beautiful change to look forward to.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be able to anticipate each season as it comes, to be able to see the changes in the sky, the trees, the slow transition of colours, to smell the changes in the air, the start of snow, when it melts, your home in a white landscape and feel the temperature change.

It must be wonderful.

Looking inwards to solve conflict with a working colleague

Conflict with another human being can eat away at a person and is truly a total waste of energy..if it can't be overcome outwardly , the solution lies with ourselves.
My problem 

I have been facing on-going frustration at work with a colleague.

I have this frequent urge to say to this person “I told you so", it just sticks in my craw, again and again and after more than 20 different projects, she still does not get it – that she’s not doing it correctly.

There’s a certain satisfaction in being right . We are vindicated, we can gloat. After all I did do my part to advise and yet she refused to listen.  And so I am glad it turned out the way I predicted it would  (..evil has been collecting his points).
It's not arrogance or opinion on my part,   it's about professional practices. Regardless the end-result speak for themselves - there have been no project wins.  More frustrating, she does not learn from previous experience.

My response of late (tired of sparring with her):  
I start to resist working with her, and I think there is no point putting my all into a project with her at the helm. But that would of course compound the end result.  I have stopped giving my points of view. What do I do? I’m just an employee.  It is wearing me down.
My conscience:  
You can't ignore conscience when it knocks.  At work it is easy to justify taking the opposite route. I don’t want to gloat or be superior, honestly don't want to 'b...'  about  it either,  it's not about recognition or being idealist.  On a personal level this person is alright, little pushy but bearable.  But because co-projects are frequent, I begin to distance myself from her personally.  How do I get past it ?  I don't see a solution, so I have to learn to accept it.  Something has to give, it's me.  Management does not do their part  (I'm not into back-stabbing).
Me now:  
It's been 2 years already, and I think I am beginning to  - not let it bother me;  do my part still and not expect more from this colleague, in other words tampered my expectations in order to avoid further inner conflict. 
(a lesson to store)