A Prayer The Night Before...

Dear God,

How will my life turn out from this day on? I have no idea. But you’ve led me this far. It’s only right that I let you lead me on. Thank you for bringing wonderful people into my life. Thank you for hard earned lessons, thank you for grace and forgiveness, thank you for second chances, thank you for love and friendship.

As I start this whole new chapter of my life, please help me. Help me be better than what I have been, help me learn from painful mistakes, so that they aren’t wasted. Help me be the best that I can and should be, for my own sake and for and for the ones I love. Help me still my turbulent heart – let it quiet down and settle. Let it learn peace and contentment. Let it no longer be torn and divided. Help me grow wiser. Help me forgive and love others, just as I have been loved and forgiven by others. Help me learn how to be Godly and righteous, in thought and in action. Let me not want the things I shouldn’t want. Let me want the things I should.

Give me wisdom, give me courage – to be the man I should; as a son, as a brother, and now as a husband.

Lead my heart, and let it be faithful. Let it no longer wander and stray as it so often does. Let it not lust and crave for temporary pleasures… Let it love and care for people and things that matter. Let it learn to love others in the right way, in the right amounts. Let the love that kindles in my heart and in this newly founded marriage be pure.

Teach me how to spend my walking closely to you. Indeed. You have been faithful to me, even when I have not been to you. Give faith and hope to the persons most precious to me. Lord you know who they are, even if they don’t know it themselves. Just like how you have allowed certain people to become a blessing to me in my life, let me also be a blessing to the people around me, so that I may give back even if it’s just in part, what I have received from others.

I believe that everything that happens, happens for a reason. Sometimes, we find the answers instantly, other times it takes a long while before we do, and sometimes we just never do. But whichever it is, I do believe that You are behind it all; that behind every laugh, every cry, every tear and every song, you are at work.

And with that in mind, whatever happens tomorrow and the for the rest of my life, however things turn out, I leave it all in Your good hands.

In Jesus Christ I pray.

Amen.

Wedding Thoughts

Numerous people have asked how I’m feeling leading up to the wedding.

I was initially feeling pretty cool about it. After all, this was something my fiancee and I have been talking about and planning for over a year now. To think and talk about it again wasn’t exactly something that would send butterflies up our stomachs. In fact, we were somewhat amused at the reaction of the people around us when we made the announcement. We have been together a long long time, and I think most people thought it was just a matter of time before we tied the knot.


I don’t know if every marrying couple goes through this, but we were genuinely surprised not so much on how people react to it (which was positive) but rather the intensity to it. People would say to us “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re getting married! I’m so excited!”…….. or something along those lines.


I suspect maybe it’s because given our age, we are one of the earlier ones amongst our friends to actually be taking this next step. Hence the whole feeling of novelty is there… that one of their personal friends, and not some uncle or auntie’s son is getting married.


Some people in the older generation, knowing the hardship that my fiancee and I have individually gone through in life, seem to feel happy (and relief almost) that we seem to be emerging and moving on from the ghost of our past.


But in the end, what it really feels like personally for us is the feeling that actually, our friends and family love us, and are genuinely and sincerely happy for us and our union. People have come out to openly express how happy they are for us, how they feel so excited for us, and how they are there to help if we need any at all…


The excitement and enthusiasm rubs off, and suddenly, we feel excited too. But the excitement isn’t so much about the act of getting married, but the fact that a lot of different people, from different areas of our lives will be gathering together for a night just for our sakes. Relatives and friends from near and a far will all be there, some as far as the US….and when I think about it, it’s hard not to be moved. You see, in trying to finalize our guest list, we had to pick and choose who and how much they mean to us. But in making the commitment to come, even if it mean a 20 hour flight or 6 hour drive, we are shown how much we mean to them in return. And those who sincerely cannot be there go through great lengths to express their regret. Suddenly, there is this physical manifestation of the level of love people have for us.


And I guess that’s the part that gets me excited the most. That there are people who mean something to us, and that we mean something to them too...


So am I ready to get married?


Well... as ready as I'll ever be I guess....

Let me just check if I've been invited. :-P


Cheers.

More Than Meets The Eye

When I was a kid, one of my favourite cartoons was Transformers… and one of my favourite things about transformers was its tagline.. “More Than Meets the Eye”. They were basically robots from outer space camouflaging as ordinary vehicles.... and for some reason that appealed to me a lot. In fact it still does.

I’m a staunch believer of this – that there is almost always more than what meets the eye; both in things and in people. Things are always more to things than what they seem, people are always more than who you think they are; life’s never merely what you see on the surface. There’s always more. It’s a truth I have slowly but surely come to discover and appreciate.

Why has the phrase ‘more than meets the eye’ stuck with me since those childhood days? Maybe it has to do with the value I place on the importance of depth.

Maybe it’s just me behaving like a geek, but I do believe that anything / anyone that is worth knowing is worth knowing well. Any subject, any issue, any field, any friendship, any relationship, anything worth your time knowing, is worth knowing well.

People sometimes wonder why I ask so many questions sometimes, or why I seem to be interested in knowing all sorts of intricate details about people / things. I never really thought much about it until they asked, because asking, learning and getting to know things / people in a more intimate manner comes quite naturally to me.

I think it’s this; I cannot love what I do not know. Or put in another way, I want to know as much as possible about anything / anyone that interest me or that I care about. There is no other way to it. Not that I must know.. just that I would naturally want to know. The knowledge.. the intimate knowledge about that something / someone in turn makes me feel intimate with that person. The level of knowledge you are privy to is direction proportional to your level of intimacy with that person / thing.

For example, when I’m interest in a subject or new topic, I really spend hours upon hours on the internet reading, researching, watching videos, trying to understand, grasp, comprehend and appreciate the thing I’m trying to learn. I immerse myself in that subject.. in an almost obsessed like manner.

And when I’m interest in someone (in the purest sense of the word), I find myself wanting to know anything and everything about the person. Who they are, where they are from, what they are all about, what their quirks are, why they don’t like purple stripes, how they acquired their obsessions with buying bed sheets…..whatever it is that makes them…. THEM.

Does that make sense?

And when I finally feel like I have gone beyond that surface level of things, that I have seen more than what meets the eye, then only do I feel like I at least know something about that someone / something.

The flip side of this is that I realize that it sometimes intrudes on people’s privacy. When it’s me clapping with one hand, I end up crossing lines I shouldn’t by way asking questions I have no business asking, and wanting answers I have no business knowing. I have had to learn to control myself; to not ask too many questions to people I am unsure about else I drive them away even more.

And on the flip side, I often feel like there is so much more to me than what I have allowed people to see. My fiancee’s most constant comment about me is that the ‘me’ that she sees behind closed doors and in our most private moments is so much more than what the outside world sees. She says I’m so private I allow so little people to see the more intimate sides of me. Which I found hard to deny. The things I do are often more deliberate than they seem….because my usually choose to act in more subtle ways that other people. And for me, letting people in too see what’s inside is as deliberate as keeping the others out.

Or maybe I’m just acting out my childhood fantasy of being a Transformer.. Disguised as one thing on the outside, but truly another on the inside….. moving around everything holding a secret that there is more to me that what meets the eye.

Autobots assemble!

:-P

Cheers

The Important Stuff?

If I asked you to name what the truly important things in life are, what would you say?

Would you say family? Friends? Work? God? Money? What would it be? What do you think you need in order for your life to be well lived?

Some people know exactly what they want to be happy. Other people can't really be bothered. But people like me – I constantly find myself asking this question. People tell me not to think so much, but I find this to be a question we all eventually have to answer at some point. The answer to this seems to define who we are, how we think and the kind of choices we make in life.

Every decision we make in life in some way ties back to what we consider important to us.

3 people I know recently quit their jobs. They wanted to find a different kind of job; something that was less taxing; something that enabled them to be physically with their family more often, even if it meant taking a pay cut. Career and money wasn’t quite important to them as being physically present at home.

I found this act unthinkable. I felt it was a mistake. Because despite living in the 21st century, I still felt that a man’s primary role in the family was to protect and to provide. And since a man’s primary means of providing was his job, to actually commit career suicide and take on a dead end job was unacceptable to me. I love my family. But I felt the way to take care of them was to at least do well in providing.

But there was something there for me to think about. I wonder for a moment if perhaps they have got it right and I’ve got it wrong.

In one of our conversations, my fiancée said to me that money didn’t matter to her. As long as we were together and we had enough, she’s happy. And I felt immensely comforted by that. But it also just made me want to provide even better for such a wonderful person. Surely, she deserved it.

A few days back, I was sitting in the backseat of a car travelling through the rural areas of Thailand. The land seemed so detached from the rest of the world. No big commercial signboards asking you to buy this or buy that, no people with fancy cars and cloths walking around….. nothing around to suggest to you that perhaps your life would be happier if you had that something more (that you can buy for just $99.99 at your nearby department store). There were a bunch of kids running around bare footed and on bikes. I leaned forward in my seat to take a good look at them playing ‘kejar kejar’ (or catch). And against the orange sunset and green paddy fields, I couldn’t imagine anyone being any happier or contented than them. Just a week earlier sitting in a café in Singapore, I felt like I just needed to get that latest Blackberry phone before I could feel happy.

I leaned back at my seat and asked myself “What is this all for? If I make it good in life and give everyone everything they can want, will I have the kind of happiness these simple kids have? Is having more really going to give me more happiness?”

And even though my own answer to this question was “No, money doesn’t make you happy”, here I was chasing the dollar just like everyone else. Here I was busting my butt, working hard, travelling extensively, sacrificing weeknights and weekends, minding my career, all in the name of gaining more.

I asked myself if I ever could just let it all go and do what those three men did – get a dead end job and spend more time with your family. I few conversations with people about these things and I half joked that one day I would just quit and be a teacher. Some actually encouraged me to do so whereas the most of them said it wouldn’t be a surprise considering ‘its you’ (whatever that’s supposed to mean).

But my answer to myself was still no. Not because I don’t want to…… but because I dare not.

If I wasn’t providing for my family, I wouldn’t know what I would be doing. My identity has now tied back to my job more than I’d like it to.

Back at the hotel, I booted my computer and tried to write again (for the tenth time) what I thought really mattered in life. After a few paragraphs, I realized I was just regurgitating the same old stuff I had already said before. So I stopped.

I asked myself at which points in my life do I feel the most contented and happy. For some people it’s when they have achieved some sort of goal in life. But honestly, I have never harboured any sort of ‘things I must achieve’ in life. Believe it or not, I actually do not know where my life is leading, or where I want to end up. But I realized over the past year or so that my happiest and most memorable moments were always when particular relationships were blossoming or going well. And the most painful ones were almost always at the breakdown or deterioration of it. Healing only came to me when relationships were restored.

I guess relationships are one of the most important things to me.

Perhaps this is true for everyone else too…. but I wonder if this is more so for me than others.

Then I wondered again.. then why haven't I quit my job?

At the start of things..

“Things always look the most promising at the beginning of things.”

That IS the thing about new beginnings isn’t it. I can’t think of a time when hope shines any brighter than when at the start of things.

“When you’re at the start of things… all you can imagine when you close your eyes… is how brimming with potential everything is, how great and wonderful things are going to turn out……..”


“But then… life just sorts of… take over… and run its own course. And you find that things don’t always go the way you expect them to… things change, priorities change, PEOPLE… change… “

“Things don’t turn out the way we hope them to. We meet obstacles along the way, an detour, a delay, a change…. Somewhere along the line we always find ourselves having to accept that the things we vision in our head don’t always translate into the realities of this world

“And we sort of just thread along. We adapt, we compromise, we accept things as they are. We shrug our shoulders and say ‘Hey, life’s like that. Still gotta live right?’… And we go on.”

Sometimes I wish things could just stay the way they are right at the beginning.. full of positive vibes, full of hope, full of potential, full of promise. No compromises, no disappointment, no cold biting truth of reality that the dreams in your head often ended being just that - dreams.. 

Let Go..

You think you’ve got it all figured out, but you don’t. You think you know what you want, but you don’t. You think that you don’t care, but you will. You think that this feeling you have inside is all that matters, but it isn’t. You think everyone’s against you, they aren’t. You think the problem is that no one understands you. But in truth, the real problem is, you don’t understand yourself.

I feel your pain. Other people tell you to start using more of your head and less of your heart. But I disagree. Man cannot live life disregarding to his emotions. We are as much emotional beings as we are logical ones. To do only the ‘correct’ thing all the time every time robs us of our humanity, cheats us of our compassion. And to me, it is a good thing that you have chosen to go through life without denying what you feel inside. Many people take the less painful road of pretending they don’t feel what they feel in their hearts simply because it’s easier. And you have not.

You find yourself face with a tough choice to make.

You’re all gung ho now thinking how ready you are now to make a choice. But like I told you, there is a price to pay for everything decision you make in life. Hold your horses and give it some thought. How far are you willing to go? What is the price you are willing to pay? You may spend the rest of your life living with the effects of this decision. Are you prepared for that?

A lot of people will tell you to do this or do that. And you feel like they don’t really understand you enough to give you correct advice. And it’s true. They may not really know any better. They might be wrong in their opinion, but their intentions are right.

Make this decision and you must be prepared for the world to turn its back on you; you will be mocked, sneered and laughed at for making a bad choice. And though you may feel in your heart that it is in fact the right one, be prepared to swallow the bitter pill of being proven wrong.

Make that decision, and you can expect to receive nodding approvals from the world over; you’ll be patted on the back for finally coming to your senses and making good and sound decisions. But be prepared to see just how wrong other people can be.

It sounds impossible doesn’t it?

What I’m trying to say is, ultimately, it boils down to you. You must live with the decisions you make in life. There is no one to blame; not other people, not even yourself. It’s part of growing up. People often worry about making the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ decision in life.. Like it or not, you will have to make decisions at many crossroads in life. Some will be easy, some will be hard. Some will be merely academic, some will be critical. Some will have no consequences at all, some will be life changing… Some will lead you through muddy roads, some through smooth highways and some even to dead ends. Whichever ones you end up on, it is still you having to make the journey, not others.

To me, the ‘right’ decision simply means finding myself on the road I gladly thread on, be it in muddy roads, smooth highways or dead ends. A road travelled with a happy heart will always be the right one – wherever that leads you. You may have to pay or suffer much for it, you may find yourself having to make a U-turn, but if given a chance you’d still do it all over again, … I’d say the price you pay was well worth it. We like to imagine that there is this ‘one road’ that is the ‘right one’. But to me, what’s more important than which road you take is how you chose to journey it. A road – any road travelled in the right way, in the right spirit eventually becomes the right one.

You say you’re in love.

I’ll say this much; love is costly. And rightfully so. Everything ever worth having in this life will always come with a great price. You will be made to struggle, sacrifices, and fight for the things you want most badly. You will find yourself being tested to the very ends of your wits. If you say you’re in love, know that love will require you to make expensive sacrifices… sacrifices you will have to make at your own free will. And you don’t know if it’s ever going to pay off at all.

So let me ask you this…Are you sure you what you have is love? Or is it merely an infatuation? Have you really truly come to understand what it means to love someone…and be loved by someone…. not in the romantic I-love-you-like-the-moon-and-the-stars kind of love, but it a very real, sacrificial, unwavering, unconditional sort of way? True love always exhibits selflessness, sacrifice, forgiveness, kindness, humility and honesty. When you say you love this person, and that person loves you back… are there signs of these traits? Are you prepared to translate what you feel inside into real genuine acts on the outside?

Our hearts often get smothered with intense feelings of passion and euphoria.. and we call this love. But love is so much more than that. Love runs deep. It has roots. It’s hard to spot sometimes, because what we see and perceive of love is often only the surface part of it. The real difference is underneath, where the roots run downwards to form the foundation and give it the firmness and staying power. Depth; it’s the difference between a love that will last and love that withers.

You talk about how it’s God that’s putting all of this before you, punishing you for all the bad things you’ve done. You say it’s Karma. Karma means that good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people. You get as much as you give. And certainly, knowing the things you’ve done it’s easy to want to agree. But I don’t. I cannot believe in Karma. Because I’ve seen good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people.

I believe that every obstacle put before us in life is meant for our growth. I believe that when we screw up and make wrong decisions, it’s a reminder of how flawed and imperfect we are, how we should always remain humble, how we should remember not to become arrogant in our ways, and how much we really need help from around and up above. And in some ways, I do believe that’s the lesson you’re meant to learn. You’ve been relying on yourself, relying on your strength thinking it’s what will make you strong. But it’s the very thing that’s causing your downfall. And as long as you pull through on your own, you will never learn the lesson of humility and of putting your truth in something or someone other than yourself.

Let go of the control Alex.

Whatever you choose to do, whatever happens to this love, the wisdom to choose, the courage to act and the strength to persevere will only come once you let go…

New Beginnings...

And in that brief little moment, everything just seemed to fade away. The sound of the world was drowned out, the worries of the world disappeared and all there was… was you, and me, and the promise of a new beginning….