Soul Sunday: If you could freeze a moment...

 Some rights reserved by Neal.

(It's been a crazy week that's gone by! Then again, that's just the way I like it. Unless it's doing nothing with good friends. :) I was supposed to post this yesterday but life got in the way, so here it is today. I'm keeping the title for this series in my attempt to be a more organized blogger - even though, I know, it's not Sunday anymore.)

They say it’s moments in your life that shape you. I was thinking the other day about a question I discussed with some other friends. 

"If you could freeze a moment from your life, what would it be?"

Wow. What a question. I hardly knew where to start, but once I started thinking about it, it was hard to stop.

• Childhood games (eg. catching, hide and seek in the dark)
• Going to a furniture warehouse and marveling at how vast the halls filled with brand-new furniture were
• Mom’s homemade shortcrust pastry chicken pie at Christmas
• Playing 'Toy Story' with my brothers and dad (ie. One of us acts as ‘Andy’, and goes out of the room, while the rest of us go bananas in the room and has to freeze the moment ‘Andy’ walks back in)
• Watching Christmas cartoons in PJs on Christmas morning
• Power failures, which meant sleeping on the tile floor (because it was cooler) in the living room and playing with torchlights and candles
• Sleepovers that involved baking and nail polish and exercising in the middle of the night and handmade crafts
• Daytona racing 
• Kaya toast after school and debates about God and life in a mamak along Old Klang Road
• Staying up all night on New Year’s eve to go to church in a stadium and eat KFC
• My tall, lanky youngest brother being a small, round, chubby baby I could carry around again
• Croissants, pain au chocolat, and café noir with Mabel on an early Saturday morning in Paris
• Tiger crawling on top of me to snuggle his furry head into my neck
• Baking comfort food late into the night in a spacious, quiet kitchen on cold, wintery nights
• Opening the Starbucks store I worked at in the morning; grinding the first batch of espresso beans for the day, and flipping on the music player to pipe jazz through the store as the scent of coffee wafts through the air
• Watching the sea in Kota Kinabalu at night on an assignment to write a travel piece for a magazine I was working at
• Phở, Pharmacie, and sharing meals and comfortable conversation with someone who enjoys taking it as slowly as I do
• Falling asleep in a hammock to the sound of waves on hot and lazy afternoon in Redang
• Sitting in a cold train station in Edinburgh as staff from a café closed shop and handed out unsold sandwiches to weary travellers on a late, cold, New Year’s eve 
• Train stations and airports; people coming and going 

And as I mentally list these moments a pattern begins to emerge. I begin to realize what really matters to me. 

It’s not the achievements or the big things I wish I could relive. 

Not graduating, not overcoming certain phobias, not awesome camps or concerts or events I got to attend, not performing in front of people, not achieving certain grades. It’s the little things that mean the most.

The privilege of time, to do the things you really love. The people you really care about. Silence, solitude, and being at peace with yourself. The gift of rest. The experience of sensory pleasure. The ability to experience and observe new, unfamiliar things. 

This is what matters. This is what we can experience on a daily basis. Even with the most seemingly mundane routines it’s possible to carve out space for these things. 

I’m a big minimalist and purist, and I believe in quality, not quantity. I believe seeking more entertainment or distractions won’t give us the meaning we crave or make boredom or discomfort pass away quicker. 

But I do believe things like a walk, a good cup of coffee, a smile, a hug, listening to a bird chirp, a sunset, and, especially in a city like KL, a good ten minutes of silence – as miniscule as they may seem in our over-cluttered days, they keep us centered on what’s truly important – the kind of moments we’ll look back and want to relive. 

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, ... grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. -Henry Van Dyke 

The beauty of now

Life is a funny thing. Lived forwards, it can seem chaotic, uncomfortable, and painfully slow. But somehow time washes the not-so-pleasant away, leaving the beauty behind.

In the UK, I didn't think it was possible to miss a place as much as I missed KL. I now know that it's possible.

I didn't think I'd ever find myself missing it. All I saw, for most of my eight months there, was how much I was missing back home. But looking backwards, time did its funny little tricks, and I am struck by how beautiful my time there was.

I find myself, again, wishing I was back in a place that feels familiar - although ironically, it didn't feel familiar at the time. Yet I know that going back is not the answer. Things won't be the same again. I'd have to adjust all over again, and I'd find myself missing other familiar things here. 

Such is life... and such is time. It gives past memories a makeover, transforming them into beauty. Yet it's the very thing that keeps you from living the same moment twice.

I think that means we need to be more careful about the time we let slip through our fingers. 

We can't hold on to anything in life, that's for sure. But we can look past the chaos and unpleasantness of the moment and see all the beauty the present contains.

Maybe time works this way because if we got all the good and beautiful things in life at one go, we wouldn't be able to fully savour it or know what to do with it. 

There's beauty in the past, in memories. There's beauty in hope for the future, in dreams. But the only beauty we can really hold, touch, taste, experience... is that in the present.

So always keep a little bit of the beauty of the past and future in your heart, but don't let it blind you to that of the present. 

Because there is always something beautiful around us, I believe. At every single moment in our lives.

Sometimes I'm scared to embrace the beauty of today, because I'm scared I won't have room in my heart alongside so many beautiful memories of the past.

But the heart always makes room. 

Sometimes I live so much for the idea of a 'better' tomorrow, that I look back and regret not fully appreciating yesterday, by which time it's too late to go back.

Be present. This moment, this day, is all you really have. 

See the beauty in it.

Slow down.

Cherish the little things.

Savour the good things.

Remember that everything will pass, the good and bad.

But it's your choice which to focus on.

"Life is short. Break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile.... 

...Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain

Big circles

"But there's not enough time!" I said. "There's so many things I want to do, so much to see, so many places to go. I'm not even done exploring Malaysia."

"You know what's the thing about you?" he said.

"What?"

"You draw your circles very wide."

"What do you mean?"

"The circle that is your life - you draw it very big. For me, I've studied abroad, and I think I've seen enough of the world that nothing really takes me by surprise anymore. I draw my circle very small and I've covered or experienced most of what's in that circle.

"You... just being in Malaysia you are always finding new things to do and discover... you don't limit your life to specific experiences or people or acquaintances... for you... (and here he waved his arms around making big circles in the air) your life is this huge, never-ending, enormous circle... that you can never finish exploring.... life to you is so much wider and bigger than for most people."

I took a sip of black coffee and paused to think.

He was right. Still is.

I do. I do 'draw my circles very big'.

And I don't think I ever want to change that.

The movie of my life

“two years ago, i was afraid of wanting anything. i figured wanting would lead to trying and trying would lead to failure. but now i find i can’t stop wanting. i want to fly somewhere on first class. i want to travel to europe on a business trip. i want to get invited to the white house. i want to learn about the world. i want to surprise myself. i want to be important. i want to be the best person i can be. i want to define myself, instead of having others define me. i want to win, and have people happy for me. i want to lose and get over it. i want to not be afraid of the unknown. i want to grow up to be generous and big-hearted, the way that people have been with me. i want an interesting and surprising life. it’s not that i think that i’m going to get all these things. i just want the possibility of getting them. college represents possibility. the possibility that things are going to change. i can’t wait.” - friday night lights

Sometimes I think my life is sadder than the saddest movie I can think of (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) but I wouldn't trade it for anyone else's in the world.

Because if it feels like a movie at the sad parts, then at the high points it feels a million times more amazing than when the soundtrack soars into a crescendo in a movie at the happy parts.

I honestly find my life more interesting (in both bad and good ways) than any movie than I've ever watched. And how many people can say that?



"I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined
I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines
We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way" -Natasha Bedingfield

Mr. Random Stranger in the rain

(Wrote this some time back but decided to post it after listening to Sparks Fly because I think it's the perfect soundtrack for this story;) Click and listen while you read if you want :))

"There’s no such thing as an ordinary person,” he said, when I told him I was nothing special, just an ordinary girl.

“Every single person you meet is a story waiting to be told.”

He was always saying things like that. Making me think about what I believe. Going against the norms and questioning everything.

We met on a dark, rainy evening. Two strangers waiting for the same train. One totally oblivious to the presence of the other (me, of course), mulling over the day that had passed and impatient to get home.

He said it was captivating how engrossed and wrapped up I was in my thoughts. I couldn’t understand how he could find a tired, disheveled and damp (from walking to the station in the rain) girl captivating.

But he was irresistable like that. “So? Can’t I find a tired, disheveled, and damp girl captivating?” he teased.

“I hate the rain,” I complained. “It makes it hard to go anywhere without an umbrella, slows down traffic, and disrupts people’s plans.”

He laughed. “It also nourishes the plants that give off the oxygen we breathe. And there’s no better way to enjoy a cup of coffee than when it’s pouring outside. So what if your plans are disrupted? We need reminders to slow down and breathe. We rush through life too fast.”

He rode the train home with me that night. He asked if I had any plans, and I told him that I had some work to catch up on. He gave me a slightly amused look, one that seemed to say "as if anyone would be caught dead working on a Friday night" - to which I rolled my eyes and retorted that some people had to earn a living, and not necessarily in the manner they’d prefer.

He asked if he may interrupt my plans. I said yes.

We had dinner at a nearby cafe and coffee after as the downpour faded into a drizzle. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

“Where? There’s no park nearby.”

“Just around.”

“What’s there to see?”

“Everything. Or nothing. Your choice.”

He was always speaking in riddles like that.

I sighed. “Okay, fine. Let’s go.”

He chuckled, as if enjoying some private joke.

“What?!?”

“Nothing.”

I rolled my eyes in mock exasperation. Which only brought on another chuckle.

“Am I some kind of amusement to you or something?” I huffed.