The Ocean

There’s a small child standing on a beach, right near the edge of the ocean. The water varies in its approach to the shore; sometimes, it comes in softly, gently, just touching the little girls feet. It teases her, tries to make her believe it’s a safe thing, inviting her to come closer. At these times, she feels joyful, carelessly happy, dangerously blissful.

Other times, the waves come too close, too quickly. They rush up and grab her around the knees, threatening to pull her in. She’s scared, but something’s making her stick to the spot she’s standing in – she is unable to move away. She’s curious. And she’s still clinging onto that idea of the gentle, teasing water that she encountered earlier. She’s still hopeful.

And still other times, far too often, a vast body of water, a huge wave, comes crashing in to shore fast and engulfs her, covering her, completely enveloping her in loud, strong, terrifying white foam. It knocks her off her feet, swirls her around and around. It disorientates her, makes her believe that left is right, up is down, wrong is right. It tears her apart, devours her. It breaks her. Then it spits her back up on the sand, where some force of nature drags her back onto her feet and makes her do it all over again.

November Rain

I find myself addicted to this place right now, this weird place called Solitude. And just like any other addiction, it feels like there’s no escape. There’s this self-perceived length of elastic between it and me, and every time I try to walk away and free myself from it, it pulls me back. And every time it pulls me back, the attachment gets stronger; I’m growing fond of it. I’m starting to enjoy its company. Solitude is becoming my security blanket.

Yet at the same time, as that realization grows, I keep hoping even more for eventual release. And that Hope is what’s keeping me going – keeping the addiction from taking over completely.

It's like the difference between November rain and January rain. There's something about January rain that just mades me feel so sad, so helpless. The fact that it comes right after Christmas, after all the festivities of New Year. The pathetic fallacy of it all. It reminds me that there's nothing more to look forward to, not for a long time. There's nothing to keep your spirit warm; it's just cold and wet. November rain, though. November rain is different. When it rains in November, you still get cold and wet, but it tends not to dampen your soul as much, because there's still that promise of Christmas approaching. And at Christmas, all becomes right with the world again.

I’m more like November rain. It’s true, I haven’t been myself lately. I’ve been feeling lost. Some days. On other days, I just feel detached, numb. Those are the days I don’t need to cry, when all the tears have run out and I’m just… existing. I’m not sure which are worse – the lost days or the numb days. I wouldn’t normally be as public as this with my feelings, but I have to be, to try and make you understand. Because even though I’m going through all this, and I’m struggling… despite all that, I know there’s something more to come. There has to be. All my faith is in it. Because if there’s not, if you take that faith away, then there’s nothing here. Not just for me, but for any of us. November rain has that small thing that January rain doesn’t:

it has Hope.

So This Is Christmas...

Christmas has come and gone again, but this year it feels a little odd. In a way, I’m still waiting for it to arrive. Hasn’t it felt like there was just no build-up to it this year, it just sort of crept up on us all? This year there just seemed to be less festivity, less carol singing, less anticipation. Or maybe I’m just growing up, something that I thought wasn’t likely to happen in the never-never land we call Hong Kong.

Christmas always makes me feel a little melancholy, too. Not the whole day; just that for a few short minutes in the day for the past two or three years, I’ve reflected on past Christmas’s, and it saddens me, how much it’s changed for me. I’m sure you’re the same – when you’re only little, Christmas is the most magical time of the year. There are presents and mince pies and singing, and everybody seems to be so in love with everybody else. Everything bad that’s happening, all your uncertain circumstances or times of trial, they all get put on hold for the few days that Christmas consumes, and everybody’s high-spirited and happy. Or so it seems, to a small child. Christmas is made for children. I remember year after year, waking up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning and racing into my parents’ bedroom to wake them up and then leaping down the stairs to the living room, to see what Santa had brought.

Sad to say, this year, I woke up on Christmas morning only because my Dad had come through to the living room where I was sleeping (I don’t have a bedroom in my parents house anymore) to use the computer. For a minute, it didn’t even hit me what the occasion was. Thank God for the little boy my parents are fostering, the only person in the house who seemed excited about the whole thing. He came into the living room and kissed me, wished me a merry Christmas and proceeded to rip open his parcels, yelling over them like each one was the best gift he’d ever received. Like I said, Christmas is made for children.

That’s another thing about growing up, when it comes to Christmas. When you’re little, everything you open is like gold. It could be anything from the world’s biggest doll house to a packet of jelly beans, to a child, it’s nothing but exciting. As you get older, not only does your yearly pile of parcels diminish in size, but the gifts get less exhilarating and more useful. That’s not to say we don’t still appreciate the presents, but it’s a different kind of appreciation, isn’t it. It’s less “Oh, this is fun!” more “Oh, this will come in handy”.

But I’m talking like Christmas is all about presents and food now. It’s not. I guess the one great thing about understanding Christmas more from an adult point of view is that you really start to appreciate the true meaning behind it – Jesus. That really struck me this year, singing a carol about shepherds going to visit the new-born King: how awestruck they must have been, looking onto that baby and knowing He had come to save the world. How absolutely speechless that must have left them, and how honored they must have felt to be some of the first human beings to stand in His presence. And that’s what makes Christmas something special every year, without fail, is knowing that we’re really celebrating how great God is, that He wanted to share His Son with us in that manner.

Everybody Wants a Water Buffalo

I feel like I just haven’t been able to breathe lately, there’s been so much going on, and I feel totally over-whelmed by it. I’ve realized something about myself: I find it really, truly difficult to relax and do absolutely nothing. I don’t know how some people can just sit and stare into space and not feel guilty or disturbed; I wish I could do that. But whenever I try, I have to resign myself to the hundreds of chores and to-do’s running through my head and it only results in me feeling more stressed out than before. I think that’s why I like blogging so much. It gives me something to do whilst at the same time releasing stress, rather than creating more for myself; I can relax and stay busy simultaneously. I guess it works in much the same way as journaling for other people, only journaling doesn’t work for me because it starts to feel like a chore and then I end up feeling guilty if I forget or neglect to write in it for a few days. Additionally, blogging and knowing that other people are reading what I write provides a certain release for me.

On Saturday I moved house, and to start with it was a lot of fun. I’ve been working hard making my new house look pretty and it’s been good, a chance to re-organize and throw out everything I no longer use and haven’t seen or missed in the past year. However, everything has a pitfall; in this case, my hands constantly smell of cardboard and there are small pieces of ripped off box littering my entire apartment. And, naturally, there are all the fiddly little things that must be done when moving house, small but hugely significant – informing banks, friends, work places and so on of your change of address, contacting PCCW in order to get them to come out and re-wire up your broadband and phone line (something I have yet to do, mostly because I’m thoroughly dreading trying to communicate my needs to a machine voice on the other end of the line). Paying whopping, great big deposits on the apartment and all the bank-scrounging that comes with that.

And then, just when you think you’ve got everything under control, you decide to take it upon yourself to be a plumber. My kitchen drain was blocked, and so I thought it would be most impressive if I could fix it by myself. I managed to successfully take apart the entire sink (as you do) and clean the drain, only to find that I now can’t put it back together. It’s not just me being incompetent either, I had my dad over this evening to try and fix my mistakes, but he couldn’t fix it and it looks like I’m going to have to call out a (real) plumber this time. At least I can say I’ve tried, though, right?

One of the high points of living in Sai Kung though, I must say, is the constant company of the actually rather friendly water buffalo. Contrary to my former beliefs that they closely resemble bulls, hence having me in a nervous state every time I thought about them lest they started chasing me down the mountain where I live, I’ve discovered that they’re actually pretty awesome. The other night, arriving home at around midnight, I dropped my keys in the car park and bent to pick them up, and as I stood up again I found myself, quite literally, face to face with a huge water buffalo. I had a fleeting idea of petting it and making fast friends with it, Dr. Dolittle style, but scratched that idea pretty quickly for obvious reasons. But as I looked around, I noticed that it wasn’t just one buffalo in the vicinity with me, there were at least 4, just milling around outside with nothing better to do than wait for the next day.

Since that night, I’ve stood on my balcony every evening and waited for them to come up, which they do, without fail. I have a feeling if they were a little smaller and didn’t smell quite so funky, they’d make very loyal pets.

6,602,224,175

Occasionally, I’ll take some time to stare up into the sky, or across the ocean, or stop in a really busy street and just look around me, and I realize how small I am. The world is so big, so vast, and I am just one person. Right now, there are around 6,602,224,175 people on the earth. Over 6.6 billion people. I can’t even comprehend that number.

Isn’t it crazy to think that of those 6,602,224,175 people, my immediate biological family accounts for the last 5? So if we all died, there would be 6,602,224,170 left. Then again, a woman apparently has a baby every 8 seconds, so within 40 seconds, less than a minute, the number would be back up to 6,602,224,175 and we’d all be replaced. Thinking about that makes me realize how strange it is that one person, as insignificant as they may seem in the great scheme of things, can be so tremendously important – either to a whole country of people, or just to one individual being. Take someone like Mother Teresa, for example. She was just one woman, one seemingly very insignificant person; without her, you’d hardly notice the change in the world population. But she changed the world. Everyone knows who she is.

And what about people you know? Of all the friends you have, all the people you’ve ever met in your entire life, is there a single one of them who hasn’t changed or shaped your life in one way or another, no matter how considerably or otherwise? There are a lot of people I know that shape my life, that change my world, and the way I see it. And if a single one of those friends didn’t exist, it would be a different world for me.

6,602,224,175 people. Yet it only takes one to change the world.

An Invincible Summer

People seem to question the idea of suffering too much. It doesn’t matter what their beliefs are, what religion or race or gender, people are always asking themselves the reasons for their sufferings. I’m not necessarily saying that it’s a bad thing, and neither am I pointing fingers; I question it too. It’s hard not to, when you’re the one going through the trials and not knowing how you’re ever going to pull through. But at the same time, by paying so much attention to our despair, are we forgetting the good it brings?

Helen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in quiet and ease. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition aspired, and success achieved.” A blind deaf-mute woman talks to us about our vision clearing. I’m aware that it’s metaphorical vision she’s talking about, but, remarkable, isn’t it? That someone who, it seems, has so many reasons to be miserable can actually have it all figured out. And she’s right, as far as I’m concerned. How mundane would the world and everyone in it be, if everything went perfectly according to plan? Should there even be a plan, a surefire one that’s going to get us through our lives without us having to make one real decision all by ourselves, simply because a Higher Power has already laid it all on the table for us? I don’t think so. I think that as human beings with brains and freewill and goals, we’re permitted and even required to make our own way at times, figure out for ourselves what’s best for us, choose our paths.

If we were never left to struggle, how would we ever discover anything about ourselves or those around us? Because it’s great to know a person when they’re happy and their life is in order, but in my opinion you don’t really know someone until you’ve seen them suffering, and witnessed how they hold up through it. In much the same way, you only know how strong you are when you’ve had to prove it to yourself or to others; people don’t just put on random acts of mental strength unnecessarily. There has to be a reason. And when a reason arises, and you find your inner strength to pull yourself and whoever else is concerned through this particular struggle, then you’ve discovered something about yourself. As French philosopher Albert Camus put it, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer”.

Mounting Pressure

Sometimes, things happen in life that leaves us speechless. And sometimes speechless doesn’t mean having absolutely nothing to say, it can just mean that you have so many thoughts and emotions and feelings pressing into your mind that it’s like a hundred little streams of water all rushing really fast toward a great big gushing river that it’s feeding, except that it’s not just water, it’s full of dirt and debris and it clogs up the paths and manages to create dams at the ends of the little streams so that there’s all this pressure just… pressing against your mind, and you can hear it creaking and groaning in protest and it’s just waiting for that one last, final piece of crap to come and break the dam and then all the words just explode out like a waterfall into the great big rushing river, cascading out from behind whatever was stopping it, and then you can’t stop it anymore no matter how hard you try, because you’re not strong enough to force that amount of water or feeling or emotion back into the little streams. And so it just flows.