Closure

Since when did everybody start telling me that i have a happy soul, and the most cheerful expressions on my face? That when i started smiling, i could smile from my heart.

It's been weeks or months, of indulging myself in a seemingly meaningful reconstructive process, of trying so earnestly hard to bring my life path back to normality with whatever faith left in me, for me, of seeking a mutual understanding between what goes on inside me and what goes out to represent the inside.





Sometimes i just could not resist the temptation to have a good laugh, for the tiniest joke, and have the brightest smile on my face, when i meet people like you.





It's all part of the process, isn't it? When you begin to drop all your expectations, you start your degree in the pursuit of life's happiness. What's wrong with zero expectations? What's wrong with a Rafflesian working at Fish and Co and get paid $5 per hour? What's wrong with minimising appointments and spending more time on books, badminton and casual stroll? What's wrong if i cannot make it to Boston? What's wrong with having no big dreams, but simple, realistic goals in life?

To say the least, i am enjoying my work as much as i can. Serving people has never been an easy job. Sometimes you have customers slamming straight on your face with harsh words and unmannerly behaviours, and you have the management unappreciative and sacarstic response for your hard work at others. And you think about your strengths and weaknesses, and realise it's all part of growing up, of accepting offensive attitude, of letting go your dignified value of self-worth, of converting complacencies into humility, of reverting complications back to its basis of simplicity.





You've reached the first milestone, where you are perfectly alright with smiling your heart out and not feeling estranged by the way people perceive who you are. That whatever it takes, you have enough faith in you to feel no alienations to how you carry yourself in front of people and the way you really are. You feel a sence of liberation, like you are free of all judgements and criticism. At once, you feel like the biggest enemy is from the crowd, the people, the way things are. You feel like you are not given a choice, all of these, this life, that career path, this family, that university placement, and you just feel like you are living, but in a solemn, unglamourous, shaky and gloomy kind of world. You question everything, and you keep telling yourself there should be more, much more to this dry routine of seeing dreams broken, hopes lost, love departed. And you forget how to be yourself, and have the inner strength to accommodate everything that is mortal, non-lasting and uncertain.






There are things that you have been fighting so hard for. Your first car, first 1 Million dollars, first condominium, first heart-to-heart conversation with your teenager kids, first family holiday, even first love. We price them as our purposes of live and set foot on each day to acquire them, brushing off your children's request for support at school performances, substituting cash with time for love for your parents, rejecting your good friends' invitations to social gatherings... and then you suddenly realise you don't know what you have been working so hard for.





Of late, i've had to ask myself the implications for being who you truly are and being ignorant of what people want you to be. It's so challenging to manage that, because we have been taught to set the right expectation for ourselves based on those's whom we respected.





Just ask yourself this : Who is there to be responsible if you fail to meet the expectations of others?





And how can you say you're comfortable with yourself when you fear what others think of you?
How can you expect people to love you the way you want them to love you if are selfish with your love?





I am not hiding anymore. That to play hide-and-seek is a deceitful, cowardly and destroying way of seeking the sense of superiority because you are lying your own life away for an instant, short-lived sense of satisfaction. When in fact everyone who plays hide-and-seek gets found out in the end and everyone loses





-that you must hide in order to win is no longer a way out for a day of freedom, wholeness and peace.





I am bringing this part of my life into a closure, this hiding of self-identity, this masking of emotional weakness, this disguising of stormy weathers with squeezed dimples, because i want to start learning to accommodate myself, so that in time to come i would have a heart big enough to have rooms for one, two, three, four, five, six, sever, eight, nine, ten or more souls.