different colours, up and down

We share two things in common when it comes to our daily lives. Colours and direction. Colours and direction can then be best described by a fairy wheel!

Ferris wheel always comes in many different colours, much like how our moods can be described by colours. At the same time a fairy wheel always goes round and round, up and down.

I took a picture of the ferris wheel but never really got the chance to sit on it because I had too heavy a meal and didn't want to risk myself puking out the window of the ferris wheel when I was on vacation in Adelaide. But towards the end of the day when I was leaving the Royal Adelaide Show, it dawn on me that our lives are like one big ferris wheel.

Each time we step into a different ferris wheel, we sit in a different coloured cabin, like how our moods and experiences differ from day to day. Then, once we sit into the fairy wheel cabin, it takes us on a ride. We go up and come back down. Again, we are continuously going up and down in our lives experiencing the peaks and valleys life has to offer.

As we come to the end of 2011, the fairy wheel of life is slowly coming back to where it started before taking us on a ride. It'll then proceed to take another round bringing up and down again.

Just remember this - up or down, peak or valley, no one promises a smooth ride all the time in anything we do but whether it's up or down, only we can keep ourselves going no matter how tough things are. God gave us the science defying brain, mind and emotions. These are the three tools we must continue to use and not take for granted if we want to survive the ups and downs of our lives.

Happy New Year to all of you out there and for those who have continued reading my posts. I thank you very much and hope my writings have been reading pleasures to you.

How do you deal with it?

Growing up entails more than just growing taller, looking older and in certain cases, balding. Growing up or older probably often involves a certain degree of pain. Pain because we tend to lose something along our journey of growing up as we get absorbed in the only constant in our life - change.

But the pain of losing something dear to us - favourite toy, favourite blanket, favourite pillow, will always linger because we tend to cling on to these favourite items. Clinging on to these items tend to give us a form of security. It's when we lose it, we suddenly feel naked.

Losing the attachment is what that really makes us feel that sorrow in our hearts, the pain of losing something. But I once read somewhere that sometimes even though we may feel the sadness of loss, our heart rejoice deep in us for what we have gained.

Our first reaction when faced with loss is typically stress, anxiety and sometimes anger. We lash out or try to reach out to anything we can grab to feel a sense of security like trying to hug your lucky bolster when you were a toddler. It is times like this we truly grow, from the process of evolution, we learn to cope and handle our anxieties. We are actually truly adaptive creatures, naturally seeking out opportunities in adversity. Every valley we stumble upon will be temporary and we soon find ourselves on the peek staring down the valley you just overcame.

Like waiting for your turn to get a train ticket in a massively packed train station during the holiday season. You can choose to wait patiently, knowing that it will be a matter of time before it is your turn. Likewise, you can wait with the utmost frustration, cursing the crowd in your heart, but it wouldn't miraculously move you up the queue. We just have to deal with it as it comes.

So how do you deal with it?

Maybe it's time to let nature take control

When we talk about movies, inspirational stories, success stories, have you ever stopped to think and notice that there is always a common theme across all the media mediums and genre?

Personally, I'd say yes - it will always be about someone following low and bringing himself back up. It is after all a good seller in terms of stories because otherwise there really wouldn't be much to write about and shoot about.

Let's look about real life instead. Our lives. Yours and mine. Our lives, if you ever stopped to notice revolves a whole lot of trial and error before we finally get things right. I don't know if I would be right to say this but it is almost as if it is embedded in our DNA for us to be naturally inquisitive - always asking questions about everything about us. I do not deny, it is this inquisitiveness that brings about progress and technologies that continue to leap frog upon exiting technologies. Progress has been burgeoning over the last few decades, to say the very least!

However, there are certain aspects to things that could categorically describe us as, "pushing things a bit too far". For example, when you if you drop a couple of apple seeds on a vacant piece of land (assuming it has the basic nutrients to be deemed fertile). Come rain and shine, what you will initially see are a couple of small apple plants popping out from the ground. That's nature's work.

Just leave them there and let nature take its cause, those plants will eventually become apple bearing trees. That too is nature's work.

Now, if you leave them alone for too long, branches grow out of control, dead leaves fall all over the place. Eventually, enough branches cross each other and the trees start fighting for nutrients from the limited land. Plus, enough dampness and nature's call will bring about insects that basically do more damage to the plants and the soil around it. That's nature's work too.

Question is - at what point do we step in to ensure that nature does not erode itself?

For example, as a baby grows up into kid, we step in to make sure school is there to ensure that education brings him up in the right direction from a social standpoint. Without education, a child is at the minimum illiterate.

Pollution happens, we step in to establish controls to control the level of pollution and hopefully have a more sustainable future.

When we fall sick, we take antibiotics and other types of medication to recover from the sickness.

Still in the beginning stages of the 21st century, have you notice lately, that we have not been very successful in correcting nature's cause? Flood becoming more uncontrollable, weather going crazy, earthquakes, volcanoes, oil leakages in the ocean. All this is happening and all we can do is be reactive in implementing damage control.

For the past decades, maybe we have been stepping in between nature for far too long and too much - building dams, hydroelectric plants, mining, tree felling.

From the context of an apple farm earlier, maybe it's time we stop trying to improve the apple fruit from the apple tree but instead try to trim the edges of the tree to keep them nice and neat. We may have been too near sighted constantly harping on the fruit not realising the trees have been growing out of control.

Maybe it's time to let nature take control instead.........

WIP

I am certain many of you out there have heard of the term, 'W.I.P" or commonly spoken as WIP. WIP stands for Work In Progress. We always say WIP for something that's in the works, still in building, still in the formation stages and all the other pre-completion stages.

If you ponder about it in depth, you will realise that our lives are always in the WIP stages. We never really completely complete, no? Everyday we learn new things, experience new things, see new things, hear new things, do new things. That's us in WIP stages because we are never ever truly complete even if we finally breathed our last breath and kick the bucket.

But the best thing you can do for yourself is to keep maintaining the WIP and better still, grow the WIP!

If it's one thing I have learned since I started my professional career in an accounting firm is that constant learning and development is part and parcel of my career. But it applies even in my personal life trying to learn other things I can learn from reading the burgeoning myriad of knowledge bases that's out there - magazines, books, e-books, etc.........

Continuously being in WIP doesn't mean imperfection but rather it means you are always on the road to perfection because you never stop progressing. Even the most beautifully hand crafted building is still in WIP because it can never stay as beautiful as it is right now unless someone constantly maintains it (i.e. WIP!).

Business continue to grow, evolve and when necessary down size. Again, that's WIP!. WIP is everywhere if you'd take a step back and look around you. The globe spins constantly and continuously keeps us on our toes to make sure we continue to wake up in the morning and sleep in the night knowing that we have to do something about our lives that constantly in WIP.

If there's one favour you can do for someone, it'd be doing yourself a favour and making sure your WIP never stops growing and progressing........ But remember, being in WIP means you are bound to bump into rough spots, face doubts but being in WIP also means you will eventually progress out of glitches as long as you try earnestly to progress and grow.