Just Like That

Just like that....time has passed and I am back to reality.

There is something to be said about having flaws. I have mixed feelings about them, yet I know they are necessary. I mean, I always strive to be as perfect as possible - like everybody out there - and this desire to be perfect just make me blind to my own flaws. The ego wants these blemishes to vanish from my consciousness, but my heart long to embrace them...embrace these flaws as me and all me. All of them, every blackened scar and every imperfection in my identity, is me.

The dual nature of my personality has always been a torment of mine.

I mean, I know people who are absolutely aware of their flaws and is clear about what they want and don't want and just blaze right through life with guns blazing. I also know those who are aware of their faults and spend every minute correcting these faults to improve themselves. Me? I alternate between them so rapidly that I lose track and become apathetic.

I think I think too much....

Butterfly Effect

At times, within the turbulent workings of my mind, I find the words to describe my mental instability, and myself so to speak. Its as if the thoughts just gather and cluster together in a mess 99% of the time and one fine day, a coherent word just emerge out of the chaos and in that one moment, I know how I feel about a situation. It’s a battle I face everyday to make sense and conquer my lizard brain.

So it occurred to me that I have been neglecting the act of journaling my thoughts and life, and I am arriving a quarter mark of a century this year. Within a blink of an eye, I am 25. I remembered being six years old – playing with make-believe with my babysitter’s daughter high heels that I am 25 – and suddenly now I am approaching that age. One of the things I have always been fascinated with in my childhood was butterflies. The memory was vague and fleeting but I was a happy child who loved running in my yard imagining the wind dancing at my call and nature at my fingertips. One of my greatest delight during my afternoon playtime was to watch butterflies fluttering around me with their colourful wings glittering in the tropical sun as I daydreamed away in the afternoon. There was always something tragically beautiful about a butterfly – that it spent its beginning years as a caterpillar and then transform itself into a cocoon. Upon its transformation, it will struggle to free itself from its cocoon upon hatching and emerge radiant and gorgeous. But beauty is fleeting…and it dies within weeks – beautiful and triumphant. It’s poignant.

I am reminded of this while I watched a few white butterflies dance around a flower in a roadside pavement one afternoon in a traffic jam…and at how as a child I always took things so seriously at heart. Now an adult and numbed by my experiences and bitter times, this sight probably happens everyday around me yet I remain blissfully ignorant due to my narrow perspective fixed continuously on the hamster wheel.

Perspective, Lily. Perspective.

*

3 years and six months approaching you. Still happy and devotedly so. Happy anniversary, baby.

Wishlist

This is my to-do slash wishlist at this moment:
1) Finish FFXIII. My hardcore gaming days are now behind me, with a lack of time to game extensively. Now all I wanna do is finish the game and applaud myself
 2) Clean my room and reshuffle furniture around for a fresh spin
3) Buy and read more Vogue and Vanity Fair, gotta improve my writing flair and vocabulary better than before
4) Sign up for Japanese classes with CE again. My money for this purpose was used to repair my broken glasses (T.T), so now must resave and wait a bit more.
5) Clean and reorganise my office desk…
6) Haircut / Hair treatment. Overdue pampering for myself.
7) Plan for something epic for turning quarter a century old this year
8) Prepare something different in celebration of a special milestone this month for me.
9) Sleep better…no more 9gag/gaming an hour before bed because my dreams are seriously wtf stupid 10) Exercise harder

Whew, now that I actually outlined all the stuff I wanna do, my mind isn’t so cluttered now, I hope. Random pic of a happy me at Duomo di Milano, appreciating the beauty of life a month or so ago.

Lizard Brain

There is something comforting about rituals – the way you can just circulate your lifestyle around a singular task you do everyday and then it becomes a part of you. When you gravitate away from this routine, and seek to find a new one, somehow your spirit or soul will make a decision if this new routine is good for you or not. An intuition, if you’d like.

For the past few months, the process of carrying burdens too heavy for me to bear have somehow pushed my mental limits and soon my ‘lizard brain’ (as Seth Godin calls it) begins to take over and I’ve become almost ‘lazy’ in keeping up with the discipline I have set for myself. While you could say I should give myself a break once in awhile, the truth is, a break is a break. Letting negativity consume your actions is NOT a break.

Long story short, I am picking up the pieces of my lifestyle again and resuming an old habit that seemed to keep me grounded. No more waking up and running in circles. Orderly control it is. ☺

What if?

Sometimes, in moments like this, I let myself think and wonder. When my mind is not on its guard, and nostalgia kicks in, I do wonder what if.

What if, I did not follow my heart and went after that ray of light in my life?

What if, I stuck to my stubbornness and chose pain and suffering over happiness and comfort?

What if, I neglected to learn my lesson and allowed my heart to be trampled on and on again? I could still be that person I was four to five years ago, hanging with every ounce on my strength to the past. But to what? It was just empty air I was reaching out for. I was deluded that there was warmth in which my fingers were clutching to.

Now I can proudly say what I am holding on to is made out of warmth…and sunlight, butterflies and rainbows thrown into the mix. This being I am holding on to – its warmth is smouldering, yet gentle. It burns me at times too, but at least I can say for sure, I am holding on to something solid – not a figment of my imagination. I can hold on and let go at my own free will, but I feel so happy and content.

When I think of how happy I have been for the past years after following my heart, that nostalgic part of me vanished into the smoke as quickly as it came – back into the abyss of nothingness.

Note to Self

Things have been so hectic and busy that my memories of Europe are fading away. Often, while I catch myself daydreaming of the beautiful scenery during a three-hour drive from Lake Como, Italy, to Zurich, Switzerland. In truth, it was two weeks ago but it felt like light years away as I am swept up with the intense things happening around me.

Like everyone else, I am not perfect…I have my flaws, and as a true Virgo, I resent these imperfections very much. I hate the fact that there is always something wrong with me…and I monitor each detail obsessively. But maybe that is a good thing, who wants to be stagnant all the time? Robin Sharma touched on the topic in his book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, using a funny anecdote to describe the philosophy kaizen (change for the better in Japanese). As I grow older, I find it easier to be able to find that right balance between self-improvement and healthy self-esteem.

I am accepting that things are as they are, and ultimately how I feel about myself does not change the fact that I love what I do – and I can do it. That is enough for me.

It is often hard sometimes to break away from the situation and find a new perspective and I am doing my best to do so. At times, I admit, I tend to overblow a problem but as they say, it shall pass. It shall pass…

Sleepless Story

The elevator door pinged open and I stepped out onto the lobby. Darkness greeted me, except for an illuminated spot by the counter. The only sound that pierced the silence was the multiple tap of fingers on a keyboard. The attendant on the front desk glanced up at me and flashed a wide smile, “Can I help you ma’am?”

“Do you have still water? I’d like one up on my room.”

A frown crinkled his forehead as he glanced at the clock on the wall. 3.45am. “The room service is closed, ma’am.”

I’m not a ma’am. In the grogginess of my brain, the snooty remark my brain told me made me chuckle inside. Instead I merely nodded. “I’m having problems sleeping, can I stay here for a moment?”

He smiled sympathetically. “You may treat this place like your own home, ma’am.”

After mumbling a grateful reply, I wandered over to a plush sofa by the window. Outside the frosty glass, the cold and wintry night has driven every soul – drunken or sober – out of the cobbled streets. In the distance, I could make out the soft twinkle of stars above Lake Como, glittering like fireflies. Maybe I was hallucinating…that’s what happens when it is the second time you are unable to sleep in a foreign land. Heaving a sigh, I shrugged out of my jacket and nestled my chin on my hand, gazing into the night.

A sudden rattle jolted me out of my reverie, and my sole companion for the moment approached me, pushing a cart laden with cups, saucers and jugs. “I got this from the kitchen for you ma’am. Have some tea and biscuits, perhaps you might feel better,” he said cheerfully, beckoning me closer.

A few minutes later, with a cup of chamomile tea and a packet of biscuits, as well as a book I packed hastily in my bid to escape my four-walled hotel room, I was cosily ensconced in my little corner. Thoughts drifted in and out of my mind: of my family members whom I’m homesick for, of the days I have locked myself in a strict routine and of the joys of living in this world. Maybe it was destined to be that sleep eluded me that night in Lake Como, because within an hour of contemplative silence, all the weariness in my body – collected from months of stress – dissipated into the thin air by the time I take the last sip of my tea.