Ruin is the road to transformation

The Beaver is a film about meaning, purpose, connection, losing your way, and finding it again - all themes that strike very close to my heart. It's a story about a family unravelling because the people in it are lost, confused, hopeless, and at the end of their rope - and how they reach a breaking point only to find that it is exactly what they need to rebuild.

After the movie I kept thinking about what the main character, Walter Black said:

"We reach a point where, in order to go on, we have to wipe the slate clean. We start to see ourselves as a box that we're trapped inside and no matter how we try and escape, self help, therapy, drugs, we just sink further and further down. The only way to truly break out of the box is to get rid of it all together... I mean, you built it in the first place. If the people around you are breaking your spirit, who needs them? Your wife who pretends to love you, your son who can't even stand you. I mean, put them out of their misery. Starting over isn't crazy. Crazy is being miserable and walking around half asleep, numb, day after day after day. Crazy is pretending to be happy. Pretending that the way things are is the way they have to be for the rest of your bleeding life." -Walter Black, The Beaver (2011)

And I couldn't help but be reminded about what two of my favourite writers had to say on this subject of ruin and rebuilding:

 “A friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. It’s called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. The great Augustus, Rome’s first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. It’s one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won’t let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we’re afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Then I looked at around to this place, at the chaos it has endured – the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn’t been so chaotic, it’s just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.” -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat. Pray. Love

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I think instinctively, we all want to settle for 'safe'. The idea of starting again and leaving behind everything we've worked for and built away is a scary, painful thought - it feels like losing a part of yourself - losing all the things that used to define you. But what if leaving the past behind and starting again is exactly what we need? What if it is when we feel like we're losing ourselves that we find who we truly are?

I need this reminder daily. I need to remind myself it's okay to change. It's okay to 're' - rebuild, restore, revamp, re-examine, revoke, retry. I'm not a finished product - I'm a work in progress. And like any work in progress, it's okay to throw everything out and start again. In fact, sometimes it's not just okay, it's essential if you want the finished product to be anything worthwhile.

Image: Some rights reserved by Fulla T

Relish11.4 - Fear

No one likes to re-live moments of fear. We are often shown as children how to “master” our fear, or “wrestle” with it. Today let’s consider fear in a new light. Let’s let fear have a say, and for once really listen to what is tells us. Fear can be a most powerful teacher. When were you fearful in this past year? Follow that fear now, and see if there was a lesson for you. Did you take anything positive away from that experience? If you follow it, instead of fight it, what does your fear have to offer you?

This year, I faced two huge fears: 1) the fear of being alone, and 2) the fear of not doing work that matters.

Far away from my support network and family, I spent a lot of time alone in the UK. While much of this time alone was therapeutic and gave me plenty of space to think and reflect, much of it was also spent worrying about losing people, about people coming and going, about whether I'd ever find someone to get used to. I've said more 'hellos' and 'goodbyes' this year than I cared to, but in the midst of all of that I've seen amazing new friendships come into my life when I most needed it. I've learned that sometimes we need to let go of some people, but it's always, always, so the ones we need can come into our lives.

Having just entered the corporate world, I also struggled with connecting meaning to my job. And through people and my reading and songs, I've been reminded again and again that peace, purpose, and satisfaction is a state of being, not doing. It's hard, coming from an Asian mentality, to believe that what I do does not equal who I am, but I am learning a little bit more everyday that it doesn't. I'm learning to 'bloom where I'm planted', and that it's more a matter of my attitude and perspective towards things that make a difference, and less about what I am actually doing. 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination

I've been quiet for awhile. Well, by my standards at least. For someone who blogs every other day, a week without a new post is a substantial hiatus.

When I'm not blogging, it usually means I'm busy living. And this week, I have been living. The few times I did find myself staring at an empty text box below the words 'New Post' this week, I was at a loss for words to type out.

Because the thing with living is that it's pretty hard to process, to grasp, and most of all, to write down when you're caught in the middle of all its craziness. The lessons, the appreciation, the understanding for what we've gone through usually come in hindsight. Often, we only realize or understand what we've lived through after we've lived through it.

I think I've just been thrown into the middle of one of those crazy OMG-how-did-the-week-just-fly-by, sleeping-late-and-waking-up-early seasons of living, laughing, crying, loving. And I think I'm ready to face it.

After coming back from the UK absolutely drained, this past month and a half - spent giving myself time, spent paying attention to myself, spent being honest with myself, spent giving myself a chance - has been good for me.

I've come to realize that most of the time, when I tell myself "I can't", what it really means is "I won't". I won't risk failure or embarrassment or even worse, mediocrity - I won't even try because those risks are not worth it. I don't really mean "I can't" because I don't even know if I can or can't, because I've not even tried.

It dawned on me how much of my life was spent telling myself "I won't", masked by excuses of "I can't", "It's not my thing", and "I'm not good at that". I realized if I kept having the attitude of "I'm not a corporate person", "I'm an artsy person; I don't fit inside a system", and "I'm hopeless at understanding business and finance" - even before giving any of the above a chance - I was going to make myself miserable for the next three years.

I've also come to realize that I'm more afraid of success than of failure. If you've failed, as long as you've tried your hardest, then you can simply shrug it off and say I tried my best, but I guess that's not my lot in life. With success comes recognition - and scrutiny. What if... what if there are people who don't think I deserve my success? What if there are people who are jealous of me? What if there are people who try to steal my successes from me... and what if they succeed? What if I can't handle everyone looking at me and evaluating my success? It comes down, then, not to a matter of failure versus success... but a matter of self-worth.

As Marianne Williamson famously put it:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness which scares us. We ask ourselves – who are we to be brilliant, beautiful, talented, and fabulous. But honestly, who are you to not be so? 

You are a child of God, small games do not work in this world. For those around us to feel peace, it is not example to make ourselves small. We were born to express the glory of God that lives in us. It is not in some of us, it is in all of us. While we allow our light to shine, we unconsciously give permission for others to do the same. When we liberate ourselves from our own fears, simply our presence may liberate others."

But these epiphanies mean nothing if my perspectives and actions don't change. So I told myself to stop telling myself "I won't" and give myself a chance. And while succeeding - really succeeding in life - scares the crap out of me, I've decided to give it 101% - everything I have in me and whatever more I can muster. To be scared, but to do it anyway, scared and all.

I'm a big advocate of facing your fears. To overcome my fear of heights and wobbly knees, I turned to Skytrex and Genting Theme Park's Space Shot. To overcome my fear of reptiles, I wrapped a python around my neck. In the future, I hope to go for a night dive to overcome my phobia of dark water, which I blame on my parents for letting me watch JAWS when I was a tiny kid. But these fears aren't as crippling as things like the fear of failing or succeeding.

Often, we don't see our avoidance of those things as fears. It's easy to address a fear of insects or lizards once you acknowledge it as a fear and take steps to overcome it. But as long as we don't admit that telling ourselves "I can't" really means we just don't want to, and that sometimes, we don't push ourselves enough because we don't really think we deserve success, then we'll never be able to overcome those mentalities.

Overcoming a problem starts with admitting there's one.

Namaste. 

(Note: I discovered the above word while writing a review for a Northern Indian restaurant. It is a reverential greeting associated with several Eastern religions, most famously Hinduism, but I believe its essence transcends religion or culture. It means "I honour the divinity within you", or "the light in me respects the light in you". Beautiful.)