The Spider in Daj's Lair...

The past two weeks have brought many stuff in my life that I don't really know where to start. I've had the days leading up to the one special day in my life where I communed with the spirit of my dad. Then I had moments of quiet revelation about my life, how the hell have I been really, and where life is taking me too. At the same period, I experienced a felt reconnection with familial ties.

Not many people know this about me, but I have been on a trek to find myself back. For a host of reasons, I lost myself along the way. Yet in spite of this, I reentered the journey back home, and this past few years have been a road that is filled with painstaking struggle, with so many hides to shed, and so many scabs to heal. It is in this past two weeks though that I am realizing how far I have traveled, and how much I have gained along the way. Through it all, I have learned a few things that I will now share. A little bit of quiet reflection, please. Here it goes...

1. Love and life is how you make of it. Just like how the glass is half-empty or half-full, it is in the point of view that will lead one to his/her own future. And contrary to public opinion, seeing the glass as half-full is quite a brave act actually. Folks who look at it half-empty needs more work to transform their lives (that's if they first and foremost choose to).
2. There is a lesson to be learned about humility in the face of one's denial of aspirations. There is a quiet consolation in knowing that such is life, and that it is okay, really. And that half the things in this world is really not within your power, because the other half is with someone else. But that's the beauty of it, you see. Because in the sharing of sentiments, feelings, and aspirations, it opens one to the real profound experience in the sharing of each other's lives, in the communion of each other's souls.
3. Some call it the Gestalt theory, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Others call it the systems paradigm, where nature (and existence for that matter) cannot merely be deduced into a mechanistic view that is soulless and utterly predictable, but is rather alive and very much dynamic. In religious parlance however (the place where I am from), I am slowly coming to realize a more profound understanding of who I am in this world, and what my part is in the whole, and like Tolstoy in so many ways ---coming to terms with one's existence in the face of one's Creator. In other words, we are not alone. We are intricately a part of a "web design."
4. Just like learning humility, one must know a sense of what can be done and what is purely illusory. While imagination can bring forth so much satisfaction (especially for a daydreamer like me, hehe!), there is a deeper happiness in knowing that you have brought about intentions into reality, especially when it is done together.
5. There are so many things that are wrong in this world. The way our relations are set-up is backwards in so many ways. I'm talking about wars, about indifference to each other, about alienation from the human heart. But, at the same token, it can only be that we work to bring out the humanity in all of us. It can only be but our goal to create a better future, and a more harmonious state of our children. However, one must also not forget to fill one's self with the treasures that life has bestowed to us along the way, in the midst of struggle, in the communion with others, with the universe, with our "Creator", with love and life.

Life is beautiful, or so the movie says...

The calender month quote in our house reads, "Teach us delight in simple things." (Rudyard Kipling). Funny. In a distant past, I would have thought it a cheesy expression. But now, it strikes me, not as an idealistic quote, but rather as a thought that has already passed me twice over.