a little box

It all started when he picked up a nicely shaped stone when he was at the park with his mother when he was 5 years old. He decided he wanted to keep the stone and asked his mother where should he keep it. His mother gave him a little box. It was a colourful box that was used to store a mug. Jimmy boy place his stone in that little box. That little box was like Jimmy's little treasure chest.

That little stone was the impetus to Jimmy's habit of collecting items around him that were unique or simply special to him. Although, most people simply thought he was collecting rubbish.

Within a span of one month, Jimmy had filled up the little box his mother gave him. In there you could find all sorts of stuff. From stones, marbles, cards, leaves, even patterned tissue! It was Jimmy's little vault of unique items.

As the days, months and years passed by, that little box became so full Jimmy had to find a new box if he wanted to continue collecting random items he found interesting. Collecting random items he saw in his daily life quickly became a second nature of his. The number of boxes grew with the number of items he continued to collect. So much so that he had to keep all the smaller boxes into a bigger box.

As the years went by, Jimmy eventually grew out of his eccentric habit.

When he realised he finally stopped collecting, he saw that he had turn the house store room into a "museum" for his humble collection of random items. His mom took the trouble to furnished the 10 X 15 feet room with wall racks where all the boxes were placed neatly.

He walked in one day and started taking a look at all the little things he picked up along the way of growing up. It brought some really memorable moments back to him. The Zippo lighter he found in a park, a Metallica guitar pick he picked up near his university entrance. So many items that Jimmy surprised himself! Going through his collection, he had unconsciously spent half a day in the room.

When he finally got out, he had to ask his mom why she never complained about his habit, that would have been considered as rubbish collecting to most mothers. "Hey mom, why didn't you stop me from collecting stuff?"

"Why should I my dear? All of us have unique hobbies and different ways of expressing yourself. When I noticed you had this little thing for collecting random stuff at 5, I decided why not give you some encouragement."

"Encouragement?"

"Can't really say encouragement but I wanted you to try things out on your own. At 5 years of age, any child would be inquisitive and you were down right open about it. I found it amusing and at the same time I think it was just a good way for you to explore the environment around you. It gave me a good opportunity to see you grow. You may not know but I notice the items you pick up and they have changed as you grow. All those little items in those little boxes are my memories of you. How you have grown and I think it probably encouraged you to become who you are now professionally, an archeologist. Hahaha......"

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We view things differently just like how many would view Jimmy's habit as rubbish collecting as opposed to collecting memories like the way his mom viewed it. At the same time, each of us have our own ways of satisfying our curiousity and have different hobbies that appeal to us....

Go on out there and explore the real you.... you might just surprise yourself... if a little box can do so much wonders, I am sure you can do more!

you don't mean it at all~

It was a Friday night, I was tired and worked up after having pushed to the limit at work. Deadlines coming in like the Niagara falls, irritating clients that think their account is the one-and-only account in your portfolio, bosses chasing you for deliverables and some bosses who want things yesterday. You can imagine how cheesed off I would probably have been on that Friday night after one whole week of all that! Not to mention, knowing I had to come in the weekend to continue only made my Friday all the "brighter" for me.

Anyway, I decided to go for a drink. Try to knock out my senses in the bid to forget all work related matters and put the stress as the last thing on the list in my head. That's when things go from bad to worse, to completely out of proportion.

Typically I take 6 to 8 mugs of beer before I head home every Friday night. Simply to really enjoy my alone time and really enjoying the beer I am paying for with my hard earned cash (alright... some of you may disagree drastically on my way of appreciating my hard earned cash on alchohol). But anyway, on that particular night I was awfully tired and I was mentally strong enough to contain the stress from the work since I had been doing the graveyard shift for over 3 weeks in a row leaving the office about 3am everyday.

So much so that by after the 5th beer, I was literally falling asleep at the bar.

I decided to head home. As I got into the car, my hand phone rang and the caller ID displayed on the screen surprised me because it wasn't someone I'd expect to call me at all. For anonymity's sake I am just going to call her Beans.

I answered the call.

"Hey! How are you doing? I know it's your peak period this time around... Hanging in there?"

"Yea, why do you care?!"

"You alright there? You don't sound fine."

"I'll be fine...... I am just recovering from the shock from you calling me up."

"What's the supposed to mean?"

"Like I said, you calling me up is as good as an enigma..."

"If you don't want to talk just tell me, you don't have to be mean."

"Good night and good riddance!"

Before Beans could even reply, I hit the red button on my phone to hang up and headed home.

It wasn't until the next morning when I woke up that I realised what I just did to Beans. As much as I was being mean and literally being an idiot for the way I reacted, Beans didn't deserve getting what she got from me.

With all honesty, I was stressed, tired, worked up and I merely wanted to be alone. Somehow, I just lashed out at Beans like a can of Coke after being shaken really hard. When all I could have said was, "hey I am kinda tired so I am going have to call you back", or something along those lines instead of what I said.

The point I am trying to get at is this - there are times when you and I are faced with awful situations you'd wish you could get out from; and there could be times when you will do or say things you don't mean but simply at the spur of the moment you can pop just like that when everything is bottled up for too long.

Like what I did, telling Beans I didn't mean it all as much as it was true will never suffice to heal the wound because it's as good as slapping someone in the face and telling them you are sorry immediately.

When times are tough, you feel like you are going explode from the inside.... take a step back for 5 seconds and think about the repercussions that could occur because of your actions. You never know that one day because you forgot to take that 5 seconds, you could end up hearting your friends and most importantly, the people you love......