End of the year reminiscing
Catch up 1
I've missed out a few blogs. It's not that I don't want to update just that the earth-quake in Taiwan brought the communication line down to a near halt and I couldn't go online. I could go online just that I couldn't go to my Yahoo! mail account, and every other international sites that I normally visit.
So that brings me to my postings of three weeks all at once.
Let's see. My missing week number 1. What shall I write? I wonder. I guess everyone's idea of a blog at end of the year is re-cap all that has happened since the beginning of the year. So I'll post something from my "other" blog site and paste it here in this blog regarding just that.
-----------------------------
I had a problem figuring out a title for this piece since most people would say goodbye to the year 2006 and hello to 2006. As much as I can guess, a lot of people would have written or would be writing about the end of the year and what it means to them and their hope(s) for the new year. I would not be different after all blog is suppose to be your thoughts, fears, what-nots for daily /weekly /monthly /yearly experience.
How do you say goodbye to 2006? In fact, how do you say goodbye to any year at all. Let bygones be bygones. Yeah right. How do you say goodbye to any experience that is burned into your memory and from time to time you will recall THAT memory be it good or bad? We definitely would want to try to remember the good ones. Yes, I do not believe that you have the whole year round a bad time. There will be at least one or two instances where it does favour you. If it is bad, we try not to remember. Fat chance (or slim chance if you prefer). How can we then do something about the bad stuff? I believe that good or bad will impact your lives no matter what because of your memory. Humans, thank God, have limited memory and thus we don't constantly remember the bad memory so often. Some we even forget until you are reminded of the situation. This is good for some especially if you owe people money, unless you are the person to be paid back. The situation mentioned is only possible if it did not hit you hard and leaving a mark in your life that you constantly remembers. Such as when you were mugged and the person that mugged you pulled out a knife and manage to stab you, wounded but not fatal, traumatized from the ordeal you are scarred for life. You wish you could forget but you couldn't. Every time you walk, it reminded you of that incident. Every stranger that so much as glance at you, you felt the stabbing of the knife although the wound healed. How does one try to forget this? The answer? I'll tell you mine.
Forgive and forget. Phooey! No such thing exists but does it? Let's see. You can forget things that you don't like but you CAN forgive the situation that you were in. It's in human nature to blame on something. Most people blame on others, some just accepts both but less, very less, blame on themselves. In all the situation mentioned, you can, I repeat CAN forgive. Forgiving is a choice. You can choose who to forgive even yourself. In most cases, I fall into the last category as I often blame myself. I am now trying to forgive myself for the things I have done. I can be subtle in doing selfish stuff that only I would know that it is wrong. Things like asking a friend to pick me up by giving some plausible excuse and my intentions were to save my car's petrol. Bad huh? Selfish huh? Sigh. Only God and I know.
So in all cases, you can choose to forgive but with forgiving is not easy. It's easy to forgive the storekeeper for short-changing you and you do not go back but it is darn not easy to forgive the ones that you love or are closer to who had wronged you. So the solution that I often choose to use? Keep forgiving, the more often that you forgive, the easier it becomes. It's not easy but keep doing it you will find that it's easier. Most of the time, the first year (Yes, first year) is tough. Very tough. Wash, rinse and repeat then it becomes easier. With that, your memories, especially bad ones, becomes more bearable. If you do not forgive, then your memories will continue to haunt you and thus the memories /ghosts from the past will haunt you and control your lives. The method of controlling that they have on you is through fear. Fear is powerful and left unchecked, it will take hold of you can control your life. Whatever fear you currently have, already caused some changes to your life and how you live. Real fear, such as fear of death through eating nuts because you have an allergic reaction by eating nuts (I know some that they can't even smell peanut butter otherwise, they will have allergic reaction and die, very real stuff). Such real fears already controls you but these kind of fears can't do anything about it. I'm talking about traumatized fears. Fears that have developed upon experiencing something though may not happen again but could happen and you would not want to have the feeling again.
Once bitten, twice shy. This kind of fear is not real but it feels so real in your life and controls you. It is something that is beyond my scope of this blog and I don't have THAT much counseling experience in this area but I'll say this much; don't let fear control you if you can do something about it. Fear of a person because he/she has done you wrong is something that can be done and you can forgive. By forgiving, you have over come your fear or even anger that has/had control your life and when you keep forgiving (since memories will haunt you over and over), you now control the fear/anger in return. This makes it easier to bear the bad memories. Each attack thereafter will be just a short remembrance and nothing comes out of it.
Thinking back, reminiscing my past days of the year 2006, I have some good, some bad and some reliving the 2005 days. My resolution failed to mature even though I started and will carry on to the next. Hope. Hope is something I am holding on to, "it's worth fighting for" as Frodo was reminded of why they should continue their torturing journey and their reason to not give up by his faithful friend, Samwise. Forgiving will be part of my hope as I hope to forgive enough so that I will not develop fear and/or anger that will control me. I have learnt as much as I can, just like everyone else this 2006 year and will carry those experiences as my battle scars of life and can tell/show others how I live my life. These I will carry on whether I like it or not. I'll give a good fight, I'll run the race, on towards 2007.
I've missed out a few blogs. It's not that I don't want to update just that the earth-quake in Taiwan brought the communication line down to a near halt and I couldn't go online. I could go online just that I couldn't go to my Yahoo! mail account, and every other international sites that I normally visit.
So that brings me to my postings of three weeks all at once.
Let's see. My missing week number 1. What shall I write? I wonder. I guess everyone's idea of a blog at end of the year is re-cap all that has happened since the beginning of the year. So I'll post something from my "other" blog site and paste it here in this blog regarding just that.
-----------------------------
I had a problem figuring out a title for this piece since most people would say goodbye to the year 2006 and hello to 2006. As much as I can guess, a lot of people would have written or would be writing about the end of the year and what it means to them and their hope(s) for the new year. I would not be different after all blog is suppose to be your thoughts, fears, what-nots for daily /weekly /monthly /yearly experience.
How do you say goodbye to 2006? In fact, how do you say goodbye to any year at all. Let bygones be bygones. Yeah right. How do you say goodbye to any experience that is burned into your memory and from time to time you will recall THAT memory be it good or bad? We definitely would want to try to remember the good ones. Yes, I do not believe that you have the whole year round a bad time. There will be at least one or two instances where it does favour you. If it is bad, we try not to remember. Fat chance (or slim chance if you prefer). How can we then do something about the bad stuff? I believe that good or bad will impact your lives no matter what because of your memory. Humans, thank God, have limited memory and thus we don't constantly remember the bad memory so often. Some we even forget until you are reminded of the situation. This is good for some especially if you owe people money, unless you are the person to be paid back. The situation mentioned is only possible if it did not hit you hard and leaving a mark in your life that you constantly remembers. Such as when you were mugged and the person that mugged you pulled out a knife and manage to stab you, wounded but not fatal, traumatized from the ordeal you are scarred for life. You wish you could forget but you couldn't. Every time you walk, it reminded you of that incident. Every stranger that so much as glance at you, you felt the stabbing of the knife although the wound healed. How does one try to forget this? The answer? I'll tell you mine.
Forgive and forget. Phooey! No such thing exists but does it? Let's see. You can forget things that you don't like but you CAN forgive the situation that you were in. It's in human nature to blame on something. Most people blame on others, some just accepts both but less, very less, blame on themselves. In all the situation mentioned, you can, I repeat CAN forgive. Forgiving is a choice. You can choose who to forgive even yourself. In most cases, I fall into the last category as I often blame myself. I am now trying to forgive myself for the things I have done. I can be subtle in doing selfish stuff that only I would know that it is wrong. Things like asking a friend to pick me up by giving some plausible excuse and my intentions were to save my car's petrol. Bad huh? Selfish huh? Sigh. Only God and I know.
So in all cases, you can choose to forgive but with forgiving is not easy. It's easy to forgive the storekeeper for short-changing you and you do not go back but it is darn not easy to forgive the ones that you love or are closer to who had wronged you. So the solution that I often choose to use? Keep forgiving, the more often that you forgive, the easier it becomes. It's not easy but keep doing it you will find that it's easier. Most of the time, the first year (Yes, first year) is tough. Very tough. Wash, rinse and repeat then it becomes easier. With that, your memories, especially bad ones, becomes more bearable. If you do not forgive, then your memories will continue to haunt you and thus the memories /ghosts from the past will haunt you and control your lives. The method of controlling that they have on you is through fear. Fear is powerful and left unchecked, it will take hold of you can control your life. Whatever fear you currently have, already caused some changes to your life and how you live. Real fear, such as fear of death through eating nuts because you have an allergic reaction by eating nuts (I know some that they can't even smell peanut butter otherwise, they will have allergic reaction and die, very real stuff). Such real fears already controls you but these kind of fears can't do anything about it. I'm talking about traumatized fears. Fears that have developed upon experiencing something though may not happen again but could happen and you would not want to have the feeling again.
Once bitten, twice shy. This kind of fear is not real but it feels so real in your life and controls you. It is something that is beyond my scope of this blog and I don't have THAT much counseling experience in this area but I'll say this much; don't let fear control you if you can do something about it. Fear of a person because he/she has done you wrong is something that can be done and you can forgive. By forgiving, you have over come your fear or even anger that has/had control your life and when you keep forgiving (since memories will haunt you over and over), you now control the fear/anger in return. This makes it easier to bear the bad memories. Each attack thereafter will be just a short remembrance and nothing comes out of it.
Thinking back, reminiscing my past days of the year 2006, I have some good, some bad and some reliving the 2005 days. My resolution failed to mature even though I started and will carry on to the next. Hope. Hope is something I am holding on to, "it's worth fighting for" as Frodo was reminded of why they should continue their torturing journey and their reason to not give up by his faithful friend, Samwise. Forgiving will be part of my hope as I hope to forgive enough so that I will not develop fear and/or anger that will control me. I have learnt as much as I can, just like everyone else this 2006 year and will carry those experiences as my battle scars of life and can tell/show others how I live my life. These I will carry on whether I like it or not. I'll give a good fight, I'll run the race, on towards 2007.
posted by Brian at
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
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