Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Appreciative

Something hit me today - about how much appreciation each of us actually needs to continue functioning healthily. As I talk about giving in my previous post, I realised it's only saint's talk to want to give but not expect any returns. It's really impossible to achieve that state. I have been conditioned to give everything I've got, probably sometimes I slack in this little pursuit of excellence of mine, but other times I do my best to not disappoint myself.

Behind the glory of the title/position/status, I finally understood what he meant when he said, do so much for what? No one actually really appreciates or feels like they are a part of it. The job of delegation requires careful thought and consideration. It's finding the balance of giving someone the power to make decisions but still retaining authority and commanding respect to gather feedback about the task.
We may not be good leaders, and this is a precious lesson I've learnt.

Because one thing I know that I have failed in doing, is that after all of the behind-the-scene work, nobody feels like a part of what we have strived to create. Who really appreciates it? Everybody looks inwardly at their own little bubble of how much they have already done and how much they ought not to contribute anymore. I heave a sad sigh of revelation but the only way to go is forward, regardless of the amount of appreciation.

Because, a part of me knows, that this could be poor leadership. And I realised that I may not have been the most ideal one I thought I could be.


Saturday, April 21, 2012

The answer to my dilemma

Okay, call this coincidence or what, but I happen to randomly chance upon this article which somewhat provides an answer to my elaborate dilemma as described in the previous post below. After so long, I think I kinda knew that the answer had been this, just that I didn't know how best to express that idea and someone comes along and plonk it down in such a beautiful manner that I've been wanting to achieve. He says it best here on finding my answer with regards to the behaviour/communication in any relationship.

 To be strong is to show our weakness 

“I wish you were more emotive sometimes. You’re always so damned stoic.” 

Yet, I like that I’m stoic. I’m proud of the fact that few people and few things can faze me nowadays. I’m proud of the fact that I rarely lose my temper or spew my emotions on someone. I’m proud of this new-found manliness that I’ve uncovered, and of how strong I am today.

At the same time, there have been a couple close friends who’ve gotten me to open up, whom I’ve shown my vulnerabilities to.
Re-examining these relationships, I had a minor epiphany:
It takes a lot more emotional strength to let myself be vulnerable than just to close myself off. It’s much harder to talk about my feelings with a boyfriend than just to maintain my stoicism all the time. I realize now that “showing weakness” does not equal “weak.” 
In fact, it takes a ton of strength to reveal my weaknesses, to open up to someone intimate. It’s hard to tell another person about my wildest dreams or my deepest fears. It’s hard to tell another person how much I would miss him if I were to lose him. So, if these things are so hard to say, what could possibly be weak about saying them? 
Of course, there’s a flip side to all this. Revealing my vulnerability to someone doesn’t mean that I allow myself to become completely dependent on him, to start basing my entire existence on his presence, to pine for him when he leaves town for a week. Because, god damn, have I made that mistake, too. 
It’s okay to cry in front of my boyfriend once in a while. It’s not okay to cry in front of my boyfriend every day. And, as the cliché goes, therein lies the rub…. 
To me, showing vulnerability to a significant other is kind of like holding up a barbell with bent arms. It’s easy to just let the entire weight drop to the floor. It’s also relatively easy to lock out my arms in full extension. 
It’s not so easy to hold that midway point.

And this is how emotional strength works. To me, being weak is unleashing all of our suffering in a constant barrage of emotional vomit. Being weak is also holding everything in and never showing one ounce of emotion.

No, if we truly want to be strong, we can’t live our life at the emotional extremes, either dumping everything on our partner or just cramming it all down into our innards. We have to find that perfect balance of controlling ourselves, yet being open and communicative with our partner. We have to find that just-right, Goldilocks balance of emotion and control.
And we have to hold that barbell with our arms bent… forever.
To me, that’s what it means to be strong, whether we’re man or woman.
Credits

He couldn't have said it better. This is what I've been trying to say, all this while.  


Dilemma faced in dealing with truth

I've been having this internal debate within me in trying to resolve how best to embark on this journey of self improvement with regards to disguising/concealing the truth.

Just 2 years back, I have learnt the hard way of shutting down the entire emotional system when it comes to dishing out hard truths. I developed the routine of clamming up and refusing to say a shit about what's on my mind because I know the truth is going to hurt. My mom hated this aspect of me. I became like that in that relationship. She faulted him for causing me to be like that. Slowly but surely, I not only reacted in such a manner in the relationship, I started behaving like that towards everything else in my life. Anything that bothers me, gets stuck in there, swallowed into the deep recesses of my mind, any excess probably flowed out through the form of tears that I allow to fall, to make myself feel better. A sort of therapy I learned to adapt to the shut down of my emotional system. I appear detached to friends while becoming the most rational person. In that short 3-4 years, I have effectively shut out my emotions almost completely from everything else I do. I am able to make decisions without allowing emotions to interfere. It became a boon when I had to make important objective decisions, but it became a bane in my social life. Only friends who really knew me, got to experience the vulnerability - that emotional side of me. I became less sympathetic over the years. It's because of this that I tell Chanel that she has always been the one who reminds me what it is like to be human. She makes up for my lack of emotions. She donates readily to dubious organizations, she buys tissue paper without so much a thought about how much money she has left for herself.

Nevertheless, despite being more cautious with the giving of money, I am ever ready to offer a helping hand. I recall getting out of the car once while waiting for my mom at an elderly apartment, just to help a wheelchair bound person go up the ramp, and pushed him all the way to the lift lobby. He kept thanking me profusely, I would have done it with or without the appreciation. It required no thinking on my part. And it felt natural for me to do so. Another time when his mom had an operation, I ever so gently wiped her lips and face to keep her fresh. Something I never thought about as well. These little actions that I did without considering at all remind me that I am still capable of feeling, and giving. I realised I have a soft spot for the elderly. My heart goes all out to want to take very good care of them.

Which leads me back to my point on dealing with the truth. I have been consistently making the effort to find myself back from the shut down of my emotions. I go the extra uncomfortable step of airing my opinions in the most forthright manner. I always believe that an act can be changed. Criticising someone's action is alright because it allows him to improve on himself, but criticising someone as a form of insult adds no value. It's like saying you're so slow you can't even do this job properly vs. i'm sure you can do this job if you did in in this preferred way. The approach is different. And I am acutely aware when and how to separate constructive criticisms from insults. But I realised, not everyone has the ability to. And I cannot impose my assumption on everyone when I dish out the supposedly 'hard' truths. It hurts, because then, the person who cannot differentiate these two tends to take it personally.

I think it takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence. But it also takes a lot more sensibility to speak up when it's time to because open communication brings a relationship much further. It allows the other party to understand what goes on in your mind and removes the need for second-guessing. Remaining silent could be a temporal way of dealing with unhappiness in the short run but hurt and anguish builds up in the long run because matters that ought to be dealt with are merely shoved under the carpet in the name of love. Slowly, love becomes an obligation and a responsibility. With the involvement of these two, doesn't that make loving someone become a job? Something that ought to be done, rather than something that I want to do purely because I love it so much. If you loved your job, you wouldn't call it work.
李宗盛 puts it best in the lyrics he wrote for 伤痕: 虽然爱是种责任 给要给得完整

With that reasoning, how am I to embark on this journey of self improvement to conceal/disguise the truth in order not to offend or injure people I care about?

My mom would probably be very delighted to know I'm making so much effort to speak up more than ever before with what's on my mind, but probably, those around me have to bear with my ever-critical comments I often hesitate to say. To speak or not to speak the truth. I still have much to learn. And I need some signs when I should do either.

And side-tracking from speaking the truth, I have always replaced words with actions in the way I express love.  Many would categorise this as a guy-thing because women tend to be more expressive with words and talk about their little declarations of love. I don't know how high the correlation is, but ever since I stopped expressing my thoughts to people, I have taken in my stride that I will express them through my actions. It's something I've been doing for quite a while now, being the man in the household, carrying 5 plastic bags full of groceries in each hand when we do grocery shopping, just so my mom would not need to carry anything. She understands it's my way of expressing love. Or when I wake up at unearthly hours to send my brother to camp, pick him up from his friends' places, send him off to wherever he wants, despite him not bothering to pick me up/send me off whenever I was in dire need. I believe that actions speak much louder than words. And seeing how I have somehow mastered the guy-way of expressing love, maybe it's time I ought to embrace the girl-way as well. Which means I talk about my feelings more often, even if it hurts. Right?


Thursday, April 19, 2012

The value of love

The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
- My top priority hit list of self improvement for the year of 2012.
I've often thought that honesty goes a long way, even if it requires baring the naked truth. But I've also learnt that the whole truth can sometimes hurt, really deeply, and perhaps, concealing part of of truth, or even the whole truth, may prevent the hurt. The hardest part comes in juggling this balance, because of my need of requiring non-ambiguity in every thing. I am still figuring... and it's tough. But I will learn to appreciate this value of silence. 
You may expect love to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Credits: Adrian Tan, "Life and How to Survive It"

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

The End of Semester 1

It's the last week of school for the 2nd semester of my University days. There's only one thought in my mind all this while, and that is time passes too fast. Really.

I don't know why I had this sudden urge to take a break from U and pursue a gap year, climbing really really hard. I'm going to fund myself finding some part-time work. And before I dive into the second year of aimless studying and running the rat race again, maybe it's time to find out what I really want to do in life.

It's a thought. I think I need to give it some serious consideration.

Carpe diem. Well, in this case, I want to seize the life and motivation I have for climbing. At least, I feel I have boundless of energy now to pursue the most extreme things I would be doing which happens once in a lifetime.

Will I take the plunge?


挥霍多少时间
折磨多少痛苦
才累积出的领悟

最心疼的是自己的无助,你了解吗?

Saturday, April 07, 2012

A kinder, gentler philosophy of success



Our belief in who is responsible for our lives. It's no longer the gods, it's us. We're in the driving seat. That's exhilarating if you're doing well, and very crushing if you're not. And some of the reason for that is that people take what happens to them extremely personally. They own their success. But they also own their failure.

Hold your horses when you're coming to judge people. You don't necessarily know what someone's true value is. That is an unknown part of them. And we shouldn't behave as though it is known.

When we think about failing in life, when we think about failure, one of the reasons why we fear failing is not just a loss of income, a loss of status. What we fear is the judgment and ridicule of others. And it exists.

We are the first society to be living in a world where we don't worship anything other than ourselves. We think very highly of ourselves, and so we should. We've put people on the moon. We've done all sorts of extraordinary things. And so we tend to worship ourselves.

Thing about a successful life is, a lot of the time, our ideas of what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas. and make sure that we own them, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough, not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of a journey, that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

The Path of Aloneness

Have you ever felt that there is a time when you can't voice out your thoughts to anyone? Have you ever walked down the path of aloneness even though you are surrounded by the closest of friends? There are certain thoughts jumbled in your mind that you can't even find the words to describe them. You try so hard to articulate it, to make sense of your emotions, but you just feel like you are grabbing at nothing-ness. As if I bought a ticket on the bullet train, everything is whirring by me. The moment I try to focus on a view outside the misty windows, my head spins. The only way to go is to follow the flow, the ride as the tide goes.

The feeling of having my feet off the ground floating in this state of nothingness makes me feel like I'm losing a grip on this thing called life. Maybe I have been trying too hard to exert some form of control as I can only perceive the best way to doing things is to have some if not all control over them.

In the pursuit of exposing my vulnerable self, I am starting to lose grip on my emotions. Having some emotions would signify something, but why is it a void inside of me? I am so humane and soul-less at the same time. I don't know how that is achievable, but it looks like I'm doing it. Fully capable of loving someone whole-heartedly without reservation is what I have transferred from the years of friendship with the closest of friends. I give without expecting any returns. And I don't disappoint myself even if there is slight appreciation expressed.
Hurt me all you will, but what hurt will there be when the core is empty inside of me? What is there even to hurt?
Love me fiercely, and I will do the same, but what passion is there when everything I try to grab at is slipping through the fingers?

Maybe this is a part of me changing. I am embracing the vulnerability in me. I am, for the first time, putting myself out there.
And sometimes, some things don't need a reason or logic.

The logic that I keep pursuing is slipping as fast as I try to contain the pool of water in my hands.
Maybe it's time to let go... and be free from my own clutches.
I'm still wandering at the cross junction, with so much as having clouds to guide me forward.

And this has nothing to do with you, because we all need to walk down the path of aloneness, from time to time.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

Enjoy the process

Amidst the chaos in the mind, a distant voice resides in the deep recesses of my mind, reminding myself to enjoy the process and revel in it. The willingness to work hard to achieve dreams still continues to burn strongly inside. I'm glad for that. Thank you Philip.

I think even my textbook is secretly encouraging me, I shall quote an excerpt here
"Motivation to excel: They have a clear results orientation, set high but realistic goals, have a strong drive to achieve, know their own weaknesses and strengths, and focus on what can be done rather than on the reasons things can't be done."


Not to be ego or anything here, it resonates so well with me. Well done. Oh ya, in any case, why would such a concept be in my textbook right? They are actually traits of an entrepreneur. But I lack creativity and innovation. I probably need to expose myself to more ideas and to open my eyes and ears even wider than they already are.

The only thing I'm really not very happy is my time management skill. It really takes a lot a lot of effort to be super disciplined to do all the things you set out to do in a day. Still a bit sloppy here. I need to work on it!