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Envy is a "you'll never have enough no matter what" kind of feeling and I believe it boils down to be greed. And I'm a damn greedy person, even though I've tried to be content for as long as I can remember. I need to chase and crash and burn to truly learn, man. Sigh. Will things ever be enough?

2015

Resolutions:

1. Learn to show my appreciation without expecting returns. 

2. Look forward and put down what's in the past. 

3. Work hard for myself and be responsible for my own well being. 

Ignorant

Some pursuits are meaningless, but I don't know which yet. Or maybe I should be looking out for those which are meaningful, I dunno. I really don't know much about anything at all. 

Coming to life

I'm always reading multiple books at once, guess I'm fickle like that. An author I wanna talk about is Mitch Albom though, who always slips from my mind until I unknowingly make references to his books. His stories have never failed to enchant me and make me cry. I've read The Five People You Meet in Heaven (my personal fave and the first book I read by him), Tuesdays with Morrie, Have a Little Faith, For One More Day, and now I'm reading The First Phone Call from Heaven. These books are so easy to digest -- comprehension wise -- but profound, enlightening, inspiring and heartwarming encompassed in each of them. Now that it's Christmas season, talking about this seems apt, as all these stories revolve around faith, hope and love.

I like this quote from The First Phone Call from Heaven: "Joy and sorrow share the water." It strikes me as depicting how different emotions share a space, how they co-exist, how our tears could mean either or both. We, I, need to learn to embrace our emotions. I usually tell myself to keep them on a leash, but isn't it against our nature to tame our emotions? Why shouldn't I feel them at full force? Perhaps, after that, I'd be able to understand them better and truly gain control over my feelings. I guess this could be something I can try working on in the coming year. Test it out, see how it goes. 

Meanwhile, Merry Christmas everyone! Have a satisfying end to this year, and may God bless each and every one of us :)

Wanderer at heart

So quickly, a year or six have passed. They say there's two kinds of people in your past -- the ones you've loved and lost, and the ones you've loved and let go. Is it bad that nearly everyone in my past seem to've been let go? It seems to boil down to the kind of person I am inside. Am I a wanderer trying to stay? Should I try to plant my feet, or should I head out to see, hear, feel and learn? People want stability, and I seem to be lacking that. I'll learn slowly I guess, though I think this will always be a part of me. 

Hmm

Sometimes, for no reason at all, I feel a wave of sadness wash over me, starting from my heart, and it spreads through my chest. I really can't explain it -- it doesn't seem to be crippling, nor does it ruin my mood. To some extent, it gives me a sense of peace. I felt it during tuition just now, as I was looking at my tutee do his paper. It took me by surprise, though I didn't show anything. But I felt so aware of my surroundings suddenly. The sunlight, the temperature, the things around me, the feelings my tutee may possibly be feeling. And if I have to be honest, I quite like it. I guess it's because I know I really have no reason to be feeling that way. It helps me appreciate things even more.

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"Family isn't always blood. It's the people in life who want you in theirs; the ones who accept you for who you are. The ones who would do anything to see you smile and who love you no matter what."

Infinitely thankful for the friends in my life. Thank you God for these blessings :))))))

Milestones

Well, so, it was PMS after all. Being 21 is absolutely the same as being 20!!! (Ha ha still as dumb as ever ain't I)

Anyway. I'm happier, if anything has changed. Being pensive and shit is still part of me, but nowadays I feel like I have so many other things to do (in a good way), so many things to see, people to love, and while I'm still as broke as I was, now that's not my scarcest resource; it's now time, and I wish I could put every minute of it to good use.

Yeah, maybe life is going really well for me right now and I'll look back and scoff at this. But I want to write this down because in this moment, I truly believe being happy is just a matter of perspective. 

x

20.

Last few hours of being 20. Maybe it's PMS, maybe I'm too mentally exhausted, maybe I'm just being immature, but... I don't want to turn 21. I don't want time to fly so quick, I don't want to grow older, I don't want to become an adult, I don't want to stop being a child. I don't want to face the worries of real life. 

I have to, but I don't want to, so let me just whine and rant because it may be the last time I can do this without drawing a, "You're 21, you should know better," because I do know. I just don't think things will be better, although I have no choice. 

"And in the end, we were all just humans... drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness"

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Enthusiastic!

So hyped for fencing again. Just had our fencing elections today and I'm excited to see what the new Exco will bring to the table. New insights, new personalities, new dynamics. Of course, there'd be problems along the way and stuff, but I'm looking forward to see how issues will be handled and managed. Haha it's really so different when you're deeply invested in a club. This is the first time our elections have meant so much to me, because it truly is gonna affect me. Hopefully I'll be as involved as I can be in the coming year.

Novices, we're gonna clinch your medals. Damn straight. 

Stultifying

Something someone once told me that has stuck with me ever since, is that I tend to make myself feel worse than I should. Whether it's because I've brought belief to become action, it's true now. I find small reasons to make myself upset, and I wonder if it's to attract attention or what. We should tend towards happiness, instead of moping. A little mopeyness is fine but too much of anything sucks. And I think mine crosses the line all too often. Gosh. My mind needs to shut up. On the bright side, being aware of this is good, right? Awareness is the first step, just like what I've learnt in my communications classes. Although admittedly, it's only the first of many... Sigh. Optimist by day, pessimist by night. 

P/s. Running on caffeine, probably ranting inebriatedly.

Slow down

It's confusing. I'm becoming someone I don't want to be, a little like how I used to be. Temperamental, moody, jealous, rude. I need to go back to how I changed those -- by keeping quiet. I need to calm down and get a leash on my emotions. 

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Late night thoughts:

Once you've had a taste of the best, you'll never just want better. Once you've experienced freedom, it'll linger in your skin, wafting from your hair, always a hidden ache for it in your soul. 

Emptying

If it's possible for a place to be emptier today than yesterday, as if 'empty' was a spectrum and not a standard, then I would describe my heart as such a place. I feel as if I'm retreating into myself yet again; my heart is stirred by external forces, but ultimately remains hollow and lacking intrinsic motivations. Do I know what I want, and if I do, do I feel this way because I can't have what I want? Or do I want so many things at once it's tearing my sanity apart?

Some nights I wonder about these, while most days I don't. I can't explain the feelings of sorrow I feel sometimes. They wash over me while I'm on the train, they wash over me when a sad song plays. They wash my happy thoughts away when they do, leaving the rawness of the remaining melancholy. Could it be because home is where the heart is, and it's a little broken right now? That could be a plausible explanation, but it won't be the only one. 

Power and security

Typed yesterday //

RT @loversdiction: "inseparable, adj.:  Everything is separable; it’s just a question of whether you can survive the separation."

I don't think there's a question to that, because you can. You may succumb to the ill feelings and the emptiness that you previously voided to allow something to occupy, you may think you're going to inevitably get swallowed up in a black hole that's your own being, but, nope. The heart keeps beating even when it's broken, because that's how humans are. We bruise and we hurt, but we recover, and even scars will fade. The days you thought you'd never survive eventually tide over, and in this big world with its endless beings (billions is perceptually endless relative to one, anyway), your heart will find a safe elsewhere to anchor even if you originally had no destination. Well, that's if, you don't choose to sail and wander with no purpose, no nothing, but lug the weight of your anchor towards the view of the horizon you'll never reach. Heartbreak is good for you if you're fighting it, not if you're wallowing in it. Our generation romanticizes pain and suffering, but maybe I'm just beginning to learn that the traditional values of loyalty and passive companionship are much more romantic and inherently good for one's well-being. Maybe I'm older now and prefer stability, but I just want my love to be slow and maybe addictive, not burning and later crashing. 

On another not completely unrelated note, I've reached a decision not to go on exchange overseas. True, I'm missing out with regards to what my peers will be experiencing. But referring back to my priorities, family is first, and while my heart yearns to travel, I think I'll be thankful I chose to put that off and to spend more time with my family, more specifically, my mom. It has always been a nagging worry to me that my parents are getting on in their years, and I think my future self will look back and be happy I invested my time in the people whom I will one day miss, instead of the self I'll always be in. 

Now or never

My life works partly on a guideline of priorities. I must say I put thought in this sentence: using the words "partly", "guideline" and "priorities". Firstly, one rule doesn't dictate my whole life. Some situations I look to this guideline, others are intuitive. Secondly, it's a guideline because my priorities aren't hard and fast rules to follow by, but just a rank of things which when given a choice assuming desperate situations, I would choose to keep. On days when my emotions are too strong to facilitate rational thought, my priorities actually help me decide better. 

My decision making is based a lot on weighing the options to the best of my knowledge. I agree with those people who say that many of us these days merely wait until it is a "right time" to make a decision, when in fact, all we've done is to wait until there was only one option left. In that case, the decision was already made by time, not by us. I would rather risk making a decision that could be right, than wait for a decision that could be wrong. And of course the contrary could be true, but I'm comparing the best and worst scenarios to emphasize the difference between deciding and waiting. 

Burst of the bubble

Manz, recent weeks have been spectacular.

Taiwan fencing trip was an experience I couldn't have asked more out of. The happiness I got out of the trip with its sights and company was very real. It reignited my passion and motivations in a way I've never imagined. I guess I do run on emotions after all, despite being a person who thinks so much and prides myself on being rational. My intrinsic motivation is still my heart it seems.

So. I came back with a desire, almost an ache, to improve. Not just in fencing, but in my schooling and conduct. Things I used to overlook, like tardiness, became bad habits I wanted to overcome and defeat. I honestly started appreciating the effort of putting my heart into things. Training was fun firstly because of the people, and even more so because of this previously unfelt energy that I finally managed to tap into. I was hyped to do well in Novices. I wouldn't say I put immense pressure or high expectations on myself, but I knew that when I was there, I would do my best and enjoy everything.

Losing terribly after a whole string of great matches was depressing, but not crushing. It made me want to train even harder, and it made me yearn to achieve something great in the following weekend's team event. Well, shit tends to happen when you're on a roll for too long. One unexpected fall, trippin' over with swaGger (jk, I actually fell flat on the ground and unglamly rolled around in pain) and now I'm unfit for exercise due to pulled hamstrings and a swollen knee. How the hell did that happen, I was questioning. And I kinda felt like everything was wasted at first, but later I realized that it was the pain getting to my head. 

Talking to the teammates I count on so much was a good source of positivity. I realized that even if I couldn't be strong for myself, I had to be strong for them. Sounds cheesy, but I can't put it any other way because that's the truth. We all hold a stake in our team expectations, and no one's gonna be happy that anyone's injured. And no one's going to feel much better unless the injured person starts feeling so. So, I picked myself up, I got my shit together. I still have so much ahead of me, if I just focus on becoming better than I am each day. I was reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and I felt so heartened by this line her grandmother said while berating a man whose wife had just passed away: "...have faith. He never gives us more than we can bear."

Amen to that. This will only make me stronger. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Next Novices, I'll be better than this. :)

Thank you Lord for all the invaluable experiences <3

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“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” 

-

Only if you could see the bright side,
Of waking up and being alone
If only you could see the future,
It's all yours now 

'cause I know I'll be higher without you now,
Keeping up a life somehow
Oh you'll be lighter without me girl,
Feeling alright somehow 

'cause I know I'll be higher,
Without you
Higher,
On my own