I wonder

I keep on searching for the old me

I keep on thinking I can change

I keep on hoping for a new day

Will I ever feel the same

Now I wonder..

*Chris Isaak

Betrayal: the residue

Hurt

Pain

Hollow

Aching

Pain

Can't eat

Can't sleep

Can't breathe

Pain

Heavy

Tearing

Pain

Why why why

What did I ever do to you?

Was this what you meant by

always and forever?

Passage

Winter shreds

the leaves from the trees;

denuded, desolate, defenceless,

they stand in silence.

But Spring comes

and out of the bleak nothingness,

a new life breathes.

The old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Getting back to Basics

Seems like a small lifetime's come and gone since my last post, so much has happened or so it seems like. Or maybe it's just me and my perspectives on things. One happenstance being that I've realised how badly addicted I am to the internet. Ok I've known that for a while but never really wanted to own up to it. But it took something devastating in my personal life recently to shock me out of my complacency and realise how my Net addiction has eaten up huge chunks of my time and life. Most damagingly, I've realised how far away I've drifted from the Lord and that hasn't been simply because I sit for hours on end before the computor but in what goes on in that time. I know some of you probably imagine I surf a lot of porn. Hah, if only. No, my favourite online activity for these many years has been chatting and making friends with people I'd never have got to know otherwise. I started out hanging out in MIRC chatrooms, then graduated on to forums, and that was where I think the rot set in. There are so many different kinds of people online as there are offline obviously - some decent, normal, God-fearing folks, some plain antagonistic towards any kind of religious talk, and some, the most dangerous kind I now think, are those who are quite normal, ordinary, fun-loving, nice, everyday folks, born and brought up in Christian homes but have no religious/spiritual personal beliefs or experiences, and so tend to rationalize everything from a logical point of view. Looking back, I know for certain that's where I began to lose my rock solid beliefs and my faith began eroding.

Deaddiction, I've found, is incredibly tough. I've bought a book called Breaking Everday Addictions by a Dr. David Hawkins, which I'd picked up and glanced through idly several months ago but didn't think necessary to actually buy. Obviously it's a huge step forward that I bought the book and am reading it - accepting the fact that you have an addiction and want to reclaim your life being the first requirement. I quote from the book: "Besides taking us away from ourselves, addictions take us away from God. Every hour we spend sitting in front of the computor screen or gazing mindlessly at the slot machine or even texting friends is time we are not spending with God. Gambling and Internet addictions take us away from the real world and an important part of that real world is our relationship with God. Breaking the bonds of addiction therefore must include a conscious decision to increase our contact with God - we must be deliberate about making time for God in our lives."

As I said earlier, it's tough getting deaddicted and I'm only just starting out. But I've also found small ways of getting even, if you can call it that, by consciously making time for God in my online activities by being more careful in the people I interact with and the things I read online. Every little bit helps.

Thoughts that lie too deep for tears

One of the most poignant things I've ever heard about the pain of bereavement came from a Sunday School colleague a few years ago. The older brother of D, another fellow teacher, had died and as we assembled together at their house to condole with him, this guy A, normally the most jovial, joke-cracking kind, spoke of how the dead guy had always been like an older brother for him. Struggling to hold back tears, he wondered why God allowed us to love each other so deeply when we must die and be parted forever. Why couldn't He have made us to love less deeply so that when death came, the parting would be more bearable and less heartbreaking.

Two weeks ago, on the evening of the 3rd of February, a good friend died. Parteii had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer two years ago and I had written about her here. At the time, I had wondered idly how it'd feel if she died. I've experienced a few bereavements in my time: first my father, then my mother, and in between and after, assorted blood relations, well-loved pets. This is the first time ever that a close friend has died.

I don't make friends easily and don't have many either. P and I got to be friends from being Sunday School teachers in the children's departments for several years, and this would've been the 17th. In many ways, we didn't have a lot in common. She had been born and brought up in a village and then came to continue college in Aizawl, found a good government job and settled down here, accomodating assorted nieces and nephews while her folks continued to live in Thenzawl. In many other ways though, we bonded instantly. It was a time when my mother had recently died and the onus of visiting bereaved families and paying condolences, in Mizo social tradition, fell on me. P was also active in Church and lived alone with no one else to rely on to do the condolence visiting thing. With another friend MB, also in circumstances similar to hers, we met up and went for these obligatory condolence visits together. Over time, we became close friends, being in the same age group, and single and childless.

A gentle spirit, steady, consistent, unassuming and unobtrusive, and coming from a religious family, clean-living and church-minded, her cancer came as a shock to us all. But in the months that followed, she remained calm and upbeat, invariably comforting us instead with her cheerful, philosophical attitude. A memory that shames me every time I think back on it is when I had been going through a low time at the beginning of last year. I visited her at home and cribbed about how everyone else seemed to be moving ahead while I was stuck in a rut and going nowhere. She listened quietly and spoke a few encouraging words, not caring to remind me that she had cancer and was in a far less advantageous position.

It saddened us all that she didn't have an adult relative living with her, taking care of her and her medical treatments. But when I once broached the subject with her, she said quite firmly that she had consciously taken the decision not to marry so she did not ever want to trouble her siblings or family in any way. Of course, when her final days came, her family came together for her. By then, she had grown skeletal and gaunt, and it was painful to even see her. We all knew there was no hope of recovery and prayed for a painless release, but when she eventually passed on, it was and still is, something that's difficult to come to terms with.

What I shall miss most about her as I realise belatedly was her always obliging readiness in coming to condolence visits with me. There were times when she'd have already gone with someone else but if I mentioned that I hadn't done my bit yet, she would say, "Do you want to go, Zualte? Then I'll come with you. I don't mind going again."

Rest in peace, my friend. Hon hoi theoi philousin apothneskei neos. They, whom the gods love, die young. And we shall meet again some day.

I Meant To Do My Work Today

I meant to do my work today

But a brown bird sang in the apple tree

And a butterfly flitted across the field

And all the leaves were calling me

And the buttercups nodded their smiling heads

Greeting the bees who came to call

And I asked the lizard the time of day

As he sunned himself on a moss-grown wall

And the wind went sighing over the land

Tossing the grasses to and fro

And a rainbow held out its shining hand

So what could I do but laugh and go?

- Richard Le Gallienne

This post links back to this one. I finally managed to grab an extremely rare (and slightly blurry) download the other day and among other exquisite (forgive me the overuse of the word) scenes, this is one that's lingered on in my mind for years and years. "....and I asked the lizard the time..." I've googled that line a few countless times but never got it until now. What a wonderful treasure trove of memories technology is.

The Name-tag Put-down

Question: as children how many of you were tagged a cruel, unkind nickname by your peers? A tag that grew out of something that was part of your physical features or personality? I was watching The King’s Speech last night (starring the lovely Mr Darcy) and felt impotently enraged when the infatuated-with-Wallis, new king Edward VIII spitefully taunts his well-meaning younger brother "B..B..Bertie" in the way that the Darcy character was often heartlessly ridiculed as a child for his painful stammer.

As a child, and even later in my teens and early to mid adulthood, I was often ruthlessly ragged for my quiet personality. I remember once in high school when we were doing Treasure Island in English class and the teacher was reading the passage about Captain Bones which went “He was a very silent man by custom…” She looked around the room and asked, “And who is that like?” and everyone went, “Zualteii!” and laughed. "Zual-tawng-duh-i", "Zual-kam-tam-i", "Zual-ngawi-reng-i." I hated gibes like that. I’d put on a forced smile but feel like dying of humiliation inside.

Name-tags are hilariously funny for the people calling them. Usually based on some aspect of the victim, admittedly they can be extremely clever and witty. But for the victim, since it’s based on some part of his/her personal make-up, it can be hurtful and distressing. Especially more so for shy, timid introverts with shaky self-esteem. I know, I’ve been there. The more self-assured ones take it with aplomb, flinging back something wittier and funnier, or even counter-attacking so sharply the teasers back off in a hurry. The less fortunate cringe and helplessly bear the brunt of childish/adolescent malice and insensitivity.

Happily, most of us grow up both physically and mentally. Life experiences help us outgrow our gauche ineptitude. We learn to know ourselves better, our strengths and weaknesses, to look out for ourselves, to grow thicker skins. We pick up self-defence mechanisms and social graces and how to smoothen away an awkward moment. We even learn to take a slight and deflect it into a joke, laughing at ourselves along with everyone else.

But every once in a while, an unexpected name-tag put-down still comes out of nowhere and gets you in the solar plexus. Ouch, some things never change.

4 days into the new year

A new year resolution is hopefully hopping onto your treadmill on an early January morning for an 8 minute walkathon in three layers of woollies..