Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A Matter of Choice

Each of us has the freedom to choose. In any circumstance that life presents us with, there is a myriad of avenues open for us to take. And nobody, outside of our own mind and body, can make us go where we don’t want to, nor make us stay if we want to go.

My journey, since it began almost a year ago, has been replete with choices. Hard choices. Choices that required me to jump blindfolded into the blackhole of the unknown. But looking at where I am standing right now, I can most confidently say that the choices I made were the right ones. And from now on, the life I live will be based on these choices that made me grow, made me strong and made me the person that I am today:

I choose to live elegantly and grow gracefully.

Elegance, in my book, does not depend on a person’s outward appearance. It will manifest itself outwardly but it comes from within. It takes root from your values, your beliefs, your steadfast principles. It is how you live your life, with yourself and with others, which define the true measure of your elegance.

Grace is the same. It begins inwards and radiates outwards. It speaks of the serenity of your heart and the peacefulness of your spirit.

These two traits come hand in hand. You cannot have one without the latter trailing behind it. However, to acquire them takes a bit of sacrifice and work on our part. For, most of the time, it necessitates letting go of our pride, our ego. It requires taking the high road even if nobody is there. But I found out that in order to find your own special place in this earth, you sometimes have to set yourself apart from the others.

I choose to forgive.

Many a time, my heart was full of anger, of blame, of rancour. During these times, I was gripped by an intense desire to lash back at all those people who have hurt me. I was so busy playing the victim that I didn’t notice how all these negative emotions were, little by little, eroding whatever good that was left in me. As much as I said in my previous post about goodness feeding on goodness, so does the bad feed on itself. And it will not be long before these feelings turn inward and damage your own self.

In order to stop the bleeding and spare yourself from a life full of spite, there is no other way out than to forgive. In order to live with a heart that floats rather than a heart that sinks, forgiveness is the only option.

So I chose to forgive. I chose to forgive myself. I chose to forgive others. And by forgiving, I was able to let go.

I choose to embrace the unknown.


I know fear. Intimately. I have lived with it for 35 years. I slept with it. I woke up with it. I carried it in my little purse everywhere I go. I never, for one moment, left it behind. I feared the past. I feared the present. I feared the future.

The problem with living with fear is that you do not really live. You are constantly beset by anxiety, by worry, by apprehension that there is no way that you can enjoy any moment. You might as well erase “enjoy” from your vocabulary. If you take fear with you wherever you go, you will never meet “peace” or “serenity” or “happiness”. But I wanted to meet them. So I had to let fear go.

Venturing out into the unknown, out of your comfort zone is a scary choice to take. However, the knowing lies in not knowing. Another paradox in life. In order to seek your truth, you have to know your untruths. And most often than not, the answer lies in the unknown.

Since I opened myself up to what I did not know, the more I knew. I now know what I want. I now know what I do not want. I now know what works for me and what doesn’t. And more importantly, I now know who I am and who I am not.


The choices I made were not easy. But neither is life. Peace, happiness and serenity come with a price. You only win the prize if you are ready to pay the price. But once done and once paid, there is no turning back, there is just going forward.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Thankful

I am feeling thankful. I didn’t even know that one can feel thankful. I always thought that being thankful is a fleeting state of mind. I wasn’t aware that it is something that can permeate your whole being and just settle. Like something that has found a comfortable spot and decided to linger.

But I was wrong. Because it can linger. It will stay as long as you let it. Filling up your heart with a swelling amount of gratitude each day until you feel like you can burst open with it.

It’s such a new feeling for me. You see, I have rarely been thankful. I was always concentrated on worrying, on controlling, on being afraid, on being scared - that gratitude couldn’t find a place to set its beautiful essence on. I could always spot what is wrong from tens of miles away. And worse, I could imagine a million and one ways things will go wrong before it can even start. And soon enough, I have a horror film playing in my mind fed by my very fertile sense of doom.

But since I started to open up and slowly release my fears, I could finally see beyond the clouds. The little things that I have taken for granted suddenly glistened in front of me. And little by little, gratitude entered. Now, I am just grateful for everything – the fact that I now have a deeper connection with my daughter, the presence of friends and loved ones around me who genuinely care, the roof above my head, my new job that fulfils me and let my creativity shine, a boss who guides me, values my work and recognizes my potential, colleagues who are very supportive. The list is long and my life replete.

It is such a liberation. When you enter this state, everything suddenly just falls into place. And you CAN expect the unexpected because things start to unfold right before your eyes with nary an effort. And suddenly, even the bad things that have happened in your life are seen in a different light. You see it as a blessing rather than a curse. And you are thankful that even those things happened.

However, there is one thing that I feel most grateful for. Far more than the things, people and circumstances surrounding me at the moment. Over and above everything, I am grateful to be myself. I am thankful that I didn’t buckle down under the weight of it all. I am thankful that I was courageous enough to plod on despite how stormy the journey was that most times, I couldn’t even see where I was going. I am thankful for the resiliency of my spirit. I am thankful for my faith. I am thankful that my heart was cushioned in hope, that no matter how dark the skies, I never doubted the presence of the sun.

And I am thankful to be in this state of gratitude because finally, I can love myself. I see my worth and what I am capable of. It’s funny how good things feed on good things. When you let yourself grow and just let yourself be filled up with good feelings, it just feeds on itself. And all the things that you thought could never be yours such as happiness, peace and love all start to appear – those things that every single person on this God-given earth looks for but we all think are very hard to achieve.

As I said in my previous post, I have a big love for words. It is of no surprise then, that at this moment of deep gratitude, I have found a poem that speaks perfectly of how I feel and has moved my spirit once more.

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged the punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley