People are like sunshine

Coming from a warm, tropical, sun-drenched country to a place where cold winds, cloudy skies, and freezing temperatures are the norm, I've learned that you can spend months despising a place with all your guts and then all it takes is a few drops of sunshine to change everything.

Suddenly, drenched in sunlight, everything looks beautiful, fresh, radiant.

Cold, dark nights fade into a dim and distant memory, and suddenly, all is new again.

People can be like that, too.

You can spend night upon lonely night wondering if you're the only human being who's ever felt alone, scared, and out of place. Wondering if such a thing as unselfish love actually exists.

Then you meet someone, and all it takes it a genuine smile, a lingering glance, and unselfish hug, silences that speak louder than words - that say I'm here, I understand, you're not alone.

Suddenly hope bubbles from a spring you didn't know was inside you.

Sleepless, tearful nights spent tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling become muted memories of what feels like a dream.

Suddenly, the world is new again.

What if we all lived our lives to be like sunshine for others?

What if were not meant to change the whole world but to change one heart at a time?

What if all it took was a smile, a hug, a hello?

What if we all lived that way?

How beautiful would the world look like then?

Dedicated to the new friends I've met who have been sunshine through long winter days. 

How to be alone

"...take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings."

"...Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.

But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.

You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.

But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it."

Life is like a box of chocolates game

If life was a game, how do you play it?

Do you move through the levels, unlocking and acquiring new skills, weapons, power-ups, equipment, and health points that will help you through the more difficult stages to come?

Or do you take the shortcuts and secret portals that allow you to skip levels to advance to a level that you might not even be equipped to handle?

Looking at life through this analogy, I think I often do the latter. I'm quick to seize opportunities that present themselves to me... without considering if I really have what it takes to rise to the challenge.

And then I fight and struggle and claw my way to survive through that level... when I could have taken my time acquiring more skills and gear and rose to the challenge without feeling like I'm going to die or the 'Game Over' sign is going to flash soon.

I'm not sure if this is the best or healthiest way to approach life.

Everyone has their speed and approach to playing a game... everyone has a different storyline that they play to... why do we try to rush through the game instead of taking it at a pace we're comfortable with?

After all, most of the time, the fun is not even in reaching the end or winning - it's the enjoyment of playing the game itself.

Hm...

What 7000 miles has taught me so far

It doesn't matter where you are in the world...

there are problems everywhere.

there will always be people who complain about the system but don't do anything to change it.

there will always people who manage to inspire people even in the midst of their own problems and challenges they face.

people who inspire others usually have fun doing so, and by putting a smile on others' faces put a smile on their own.

tough choices are everywhere.

it's way too easy to become the person you swore to yourself you'd never be and judged others for being.

things always look a whole lot different when you're actually on the other side of the fence.

people change, come, and go, whether you want them to or not.

in every dark day there's something beautiful to be found if you're looking hard enough.

the best way to embrace the present is to stop comparing it to yesterday and tomorrow.

And finally,

wherever you go in the world, there's a whole lot of lonely people out there.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt

Do we live the life that we should?

Do I push too hard?
Or fall too fast?
The moment never seems to last
Will I stop long enough to know

Your words circle in my head
Weigh so heavy on my chest
And I'm crushed by your expectation
I only want to do some good
Too dumb to know if I could
And I just wanna feel the days I'm in

Do I go to far,
Not far enough?
Why can't I keep my big mouth shut?
And do we lead the life that we should?

You know what I was thinking about on the night I turned 21? I was thinking that I was three months closer to the day I would return 'home' to Malaysia - the day I'd been anticipating and looking forward to every single day for the first five months since I first got here.

And instead of bubbling over with excitement that the day I'd been dreaming of and longing for was almost within reach, I started feeling a sense of dread.

Because for the first it hit me that even though I might be going 'home' to where I came from, it's not going to be home by the time I return. I can't just barge back into KL and expect to pick up my life where I've left off. People will have changed; some have left to other parts of the world already; but most of all, I will have changed.

It suddenly hit me that going home will be adjusting back to a new life all over again like I did when I came here. And while adventure and change is always good, it still means leaving someone(s) behind, which is never easy.

I spent the past 4-5 months here trying to hold on to the someone(s) I left behind in KL, trying to bring them into my world here. And for some people, maybe, that does work. Maybe e-mails and Skype chats are enough for some. But it's not enough for me to whinge about the weather to someone who has never been anywhere colder than 20 degrees.

I spent most of my free time here in isolation but mostly because I didn't bother making the effort to get out and get to know people, and now that I have started to, I actually feel normal again having friends I can talk to and see in 3D and live audio, not through a flat screen and tinny laptop speakers. I feel normal, and it feels good to be normal.

Still, trying to bring Malaysia into my world here is like trying to talk about the tropics to people who have only ever grown up in four season countries and wear thin hoodies in the dead of winter while I'm all bundled up in like four layers. It doesn't work when I keep my Malaysian accent around friends here - I'd just sound like a total weirdo; and the other way around - I'd sound like a snobby wannabe.

I finally understand why people lose touch with friends when they move away - a dear friend, who's in Canada at the moment, said to me when she was back in Malaysia for a break... that when she was there, Malaysia felt like a dream, and in Malaysia, here time there felt like a dream. I finally understand what she meant. Took me a little long - five months to be precise - of fighting and trying to ignore the fact that the two worlds I lived in, the two worlds I now call 'home' - were so completely different that I couldn't expect to reconcile them just like that.

I'm tired of trying. Explaining a foreign culture is one thing; trying to bring it into the day-to-day life of another culture is another thing. I'm tired of living between both worlds; I want to actually feel normal - to have my emotions and time invested in the world I am actually physically in instead of being a million miles away in my head in someplace I can't be in in person for another three months.

I spent so long back in KL learning to live in the present and not for some distant event in the future - and it felt like that ability slipped way when I got here, and lately, it's starting to feel like it's coming back. And it feels pretty good actually, to live arms wide, expectation-free, ready to go wherever life takes me.

You know what else I was thinking?

That exactly what I dreaded would happen before coming here has happened. I've changed. I don't think I want the same things as I did anymore before I left. I mean, I knew I would change, but I thought I'd find myself wanting different things.

But at 21, I found myself feeling the very same thing I felt at 18 - trapped and stifled and not knowing who I am, and not wanting to find my identity in a safety net or security blanket or a reliable shoulder to lean on.

I thought I was ready to settle down and live a stable, settled life with a stable job, significant other, and etc, and now... the thought just scares the crap out of me like it did... a couple years ago?? I don't even understand it myself... I never expected to feel this way, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have hung some of my hopes quite as high as I did before leaving.

All I know right now is that I want to run very, very far away from what was left back in KL, and any expectations and obligations that will be waiting for me when I go back there. And just be here, fully immersed in the present.



I hear the wind across the plain
A sound so strong - that calls my name
It's wild like the river - it's warm like the sun
Ya it's here - this is where I belong

Under the starry skies - where eagles have flown
This place is paradise - it's the place I call home
The moon on the mountains
The whisper through the trees
The waves on the water
Let nothing come between this and me

Cuz everything I want - is everything that's here
And when when we're all together - there's nothing to fear
And wherever I wander - the one thing I've learned
It's to here - I will always... always return