Posts in category "Random"

Five Year Timestamp, Revisited

On the last entry, my Uncle Joe post­ed this com­ment:

You’ve changed a lot. More mature, more sta­ble, more tol­er­ant. 5 years back, you paid more atten­tion to your appear­ance, now you care more about what you do, what you observe. Now you’re a bit slop­py :)…and I like that. Your spend­ing habit is so much dif­fer­ent.

I don’t know what caused all that…work expe­ri­ence? Parents’ divorce? Love life? Tai Chi and Taoism?

The caus­es of my changes were too big to cov­er in the small box, so I said I’d cov­er them in their own entry. Here goes.

Therapy

One of the sig­nif­i­cant things my ther­a­pist helped me with was the abil­i­ty to not sweat the small stuff. It took a few thought records for me to real­ize that there are things out of my con­trol. I used to be real­ly moody, where if a small detail did­n’t go right, I’d get real­ly grumpy. Now that does­n’t any­more, although I do occa­sion­al­ly have to remind myself of this idea, as it’s not a com­plete­ly nat­ur­al reac­tion (yet). This is prob­a­bly what Uncle Joe noticed as me being “slop­py”, as I’ve stopped wor­ry­ing about things going wrong, so a bit more care­free when it comes to details. Even Bronwen said she’s noticed the change.

I also had inti­ma­cy issues, where I’d push my girl­friends away if they got too close. I’ve since learned to let some­one in, even if it means it may hurt me in the end, and there’s a great com­fort to be had in know­ing this. In fig­ur­ing out what went wrong, and being giv­en the hope that my future rela­tion­ships won’t end due to my old inti­ma­cy issues, which I’m sure was buried in my sub­con­scious before.

Taoism

Taoism has giv­en me the same rough mind­set as ther­a­py, in terms of let­ting go of the lit­tle things that don’t go my way. But it was­n’t just due to the fact that things are out of my con­trol, but also the idea that things don’t real­ly mat­ter. I’m still work­ing on oth­er tenets, like spon­tane­ity and wu wei, but what I’ve been able to under­stand and apply so far has helped a lot.

When I’m hav­ing a bad day, I can go to the Tao Te Ching, find a verse that’s appro­pri­ate to my sit­u­a­tion, and for some rea­son my heart finds such con­tent­ment in the words. Perhaps it’s even more than the indi­vid­ual tenets, and the fact that I now have some­thing to believe in that brings com­fort, sta­bil­i­ty, and hap­pi­ness. A non-reli­gious opi­ate, if you will.

Relationships

Having been through two good rela­tion­ships with two good peo­ple, espe­cial­ly with the mem­o­ries I have now, has giv­en me a lot of sat­is­fac­tion. Sure, they may have end­ed, but I nev­er thought I’d be in a good rela­tion­ship, prob­a­bly because of my child­hood with my par­ents, along with con­fi­dence issues. I think some peo­ple go their whole lives with­out ever hav­ing the sort of love that I did, or being able to expe­ri­ence the same won­der­ful­ly inti­mate moments. This has giv­en me a con­tent­ment I would­n’t be able to find any­where else.

Revealing Words

A read­er recent­ly sent me an e‑mail. This was the last para­graph:

Lastly and please don’t take this as being bold, I want to keep read­ing and one day read that you are noth­ing but hap­py and ful­filled. I would nev­er post a com­ment because I am too shy and also pret­ty prone to being embar­rassed by peo­ple who are cool­er than me (and I con­sid­er peo­ple who blog as peo­ple who are cool­er then me), but many times when I read your entries I feel like I am watch­ing a pro­tag­o­nist in a favourite movie or re-read­ing Siddhartha. Does that make any sense to you? I’m cheer­ing you on and I’m in your cor­ner.

It made me won­der: if she wants to read that I’m hap­py one day, does that mean that I’m not hap­py now? It forced the real­iza­tion in me that the answer is no. Obviously no. Life isn’t great. But do I only write about the bad stuff? I’ve always believed that you have to suf­fer to cre­ate. I’m one of those, so maybe this is the case. I imag­ine it’s the oppo­site with my Tai Chi or table ten­nis part­ners, who must think my life is per­fect, because of how hap­py I am when I’m doing those activ­i­ties.

It also made me won­der how much of myself is revealed here. Someone once told me that she sees two dif­fer­ent sides of me: one who is seri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing from the things I write, and anoth­er who is easy-going and relaxed over the phone.

So what comes through in my words? Certainly not every­thing. But it’s the same as any­thing else, because it’s hard to get a total pic­ture of some­one, unless, per­haps, you spend an appro­pri­ate­ly uncom­fort­able amount of time with them.