To love or be loved

Three women set about their daily jobs, spinning the wheels of time. One was name Faith, the other Love and the last one Life. They spun the wheels on and on when suddenly Love gave a loud gasp. The others looked up from their wheels though their feets still pressing on the paddle of the wheel.

"What seems to be the problem Love?" asked Faith.

"Come take a look" repiled Love. The other two set their spinning wheels to automatum (thanks to techonolgy) and came to see what had troubled Love so much.

Love was staring rather confused at the thread that was running in her hands. Faith and Life wondered what she was staring at. As they looked they saw something amazing, the white thread was splitting itself into two before it went into the spinning wheel. As it entered the wheel it the threads changed into two different colours. One turned blue while the other turned red. This was obviously strange for the rule was that, any thread that goes into the spinning will change back to white which is combines together with Faith and Life's works.

"Aye! This is strange Love. How come the thread is not changing back? There is something obviously wrong. Did something happen?" enquired Life. Love got up and went to open her thread case which she has not done for a long time. When she did so, what she saw surprised her. Half of the thread cocoon was white but the edges of the thread was made up of blue and red. Love panicked. Something was happening but she could not understand what. She turned and beckon the other two. Life was puzzled as well but Faith smile.

"Why, love can't you see what is happening?" asked Faith. Love shook her head.

"It is a dilemma my dear love. It is the thread of the heart. The red one symbolizes the true love while the blue represents the love one begets but may not truely desire. The heart loves but fears that its love is nothing but only of an illusion. But at the same time, it begets love in which it is happy with but truely does not feel any form of happiness. The dilemma to which the heart has no idea which to let go"

"Why isn't that simple? The heart should choose to love the love it begets instead of holding on to a love that may an illusion" repiled Life

"Alas, if only the matters of the heart is that simple. The heart loves and yet is afraid that it will not be loved in return. The doubt that the heart has is stopping it to procced on. What if what the heart loves is not what keeps it happy and what if the love it begets is the one that will satisfy the heart?"

"But then the heart has to make a decision if not it will affect all our work, inclusive of yours" cried Love

"It has to take the leap of Faith" repiled Life

Faith smiled, "Yes, but the heart must be willing to take the risk. A risk that it does not want to take. It is begging for more time"

"Well... time is something that we all know is unpredictable. If the heart is not going to make a decision then as Life i will have to decide"

Love looked at the both of them and stared back at the thread that was still spilting itself in her hands.

picture from: http://www.sikh-heritage.co.uk/heritage/WoP/wp6.jpg

Knowing what you want

I had the pleasure of attending a friend's wedding over the weekend and it really was an interesting ceremony and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Funny huh? How can wedding be that entertaining? Don't mistake me, but this is a normal church wedding ceremony but what is interesting is the content of the wedding. In the wedding we had certain speakers who shared their experience of being married and my friend shared her story how she met her husband. Let me share that story with you as my entry is the reaction and reflection of what she had shared.

At the age of 21, my friend attended a talk organized by her church on single hood. During that talk the speaker shared with the participants her views of what kind of men a girl should look out for. She listed the following five of which I could only remember four. Firstly the guy must be God fearing so he does not stray after marriage. Second he should be responsible, after all its about sharing life and responsibility. Third is that the guy must be mentally stable. This I so agree there are weirdos out there but, yes, you do need matured guys. The last one i remember was the guy must love you for who you are. Now when my friend met her husband she knew that he had all that but the problem was that she did not like him. After two years, she finally said yes. So she was telling us that for five years she prayed for this. She told us singles that we could add in the fact that we should like the guy. She was telling us that we needed to be specific and ask GOD cause he cannot just read our mind, which is true because he has a lot more to do.

At first I agreed but after much thought, I question myself, how do we know what we want? Let's say these are the qualities we want but then the guy is old and married then how? I mean my friend was lucky she found someone that suits what she wanted and she was his first girlfriend but not everyone gets that. And what if what we want and desire is not something that will keep us happy and what if what we don't want keeps us happy? What do we choose then? Many a times my mother told me that we will learn to love someone, lets assume that God gives us someone we don't favour but my argument is yes we will learn to love but what happens when you married this person and then discover your 'right' man? What are you going to do? Moralistically you can choose to live with the person and forget about the other 'right man" (which is called compromise) or you could leave your spouse and go leave with that person. Go watch the bollywood movie Kabi Alvida. To sum it up, the idea of compromise is not something that is easy to live with. As I was discussing with my friend, Gurpreet, learning to love a person is very much different from loving the person. For instance you love GOD, you don't learn to love him. When you learn to love someone it is easier to be swayed when you discover something more desirable. You cannot learn to love someone, you need to love the person because you really love the person at free will.

That brings me to the second notion, what if the person you love is for the wrong reason? Over the course of four years in my Uni, I have seen couples who have been together and then broke up after four years. The reason is that they realise that they no longer love each other. But how could you not see that in the four years that while you were together? Then you realise that many people don't understand what they are getting into when it comes to relationship. What do you want out of a relationship?

Thus, the idea of knowing what you want is not easy especially when it comes to relationship. You see I have not been in a relationship but the way some guys treat me sometimes I feel as if I was in a relationship and went through a lot and ended up with a break up. The catch here is that, I wasn't even in a relationship with them in the first place. But as I mention in the blog post before, the problem is that they assume that I knew what they were talking about (i.e these guys already assume that I know that they are interested in me) and go about treating me as if we were in a relationship already. At times I find it hilarious but in reality it can be really traumatising. Life is complicated and amazingly interesting for me. These experiences make me think about what I want and what I need. I feel at times I am doing a life anthropology course exploring myself and society I live in. I have become the subject and the object of my own study.

Like what my best friend Cassius always say to me when she seeks me for relationship problem is that ," For a girl who have never had a boyfriend, its ironic I am seeking advice from you on this subject" To which I reply that it is because I give another perspective and that when you are not in that situation you tend to think rationally. My biggest concern however is that when i do get into a relationship, I wonder how I would view it in that situation. Well I shall never know until I get into one. But again what if i do get into one without realising it, then how??? Sigh there is no right or wrong answer

Perceptions and Assumptions

This is my first entry for the year and as one can infer from this entry that I have been so busy having my date with time that ironically time had robbed me of time for myself. So many things have happened and one can say that I have gained and lost and most of the time left flabbergasted and confused cause things are moving way ahead of me. A mist of this roller coaster ride both physically and emotionally I usually try to find time to analyze what is happening in my life and sometimes it works when you can sit down and talk it out.

I am not at the stage of my life where once again I am involved with so many projects and assignments and not forgetting school that is supposedly my first priority (I usually forget that). It is good to feel the gust of the race but sometimes it can be tiring. Sometimes when I feel so tired and voice it up, people think I am complaining or they ask me why I take on so much things at the same time. However, they don't realise that I am not complaining but actually just thinking aloud and reminding myself that I have certain task to full fill, perhaps the way I express it varies according to the people who hears it.

Talking about perceptions and assumptions, I learned very valuable lessons during the past two months. Sometimes we have a certain perception and assume that the other person knows about it. But the truth is that the other party may not know what you are thinking. A person's thought is very relative and subjective in nature (DUH!!!) but most of the time we make the mistake in certain circumstances to assume the other party knows what you are thinking. Such an assumption is fatal in most circumstances. A person does not know what you are thinking until you tell them what you are thinking. Mostly when you don't tell them what you feel then you will think that the other person is playing mind games when he or she is not reacting to how you expect them to behave. One may think that this is common sensible in nature, but the truth is many of us don't really realise that. We tend to do it over and over again. Sometimes I feel the best way to solve thing is to clarify things but you see another problem that arises is when the other party refuses to clarify because he or she is totally involved in their own world. Trying reasoning out and telling them that they will tell you that you don't understand them and that they are incomprehensible. Trust me that it can be frustrating at times but after a while you learn to live with it because the other person has decided to move away from the situation without realising that they are running away and that there is no closure to the problem. So what do you do? You learn to move on. But for a person like me, I do feel a pinch of uncomfortability due to the non closure of the issue.

Well I have a lot to write so don't be surprise if you see two or more entries on the same date. I am just compartmentalizing my thoughts. I just hope that whoever reads this and knows what I am talking about think about what I say in a more rational and practical manner and for once think about where I am coming from. Though I am skeptical about the person reading it or even taking it up with me, I just wish he or she would so I can bring it to a closure. Or on the other hand I can leave it up to my date (time) to seal the case.