use an eraser or liquid paper

Last week I had a very unfortunate chance to know a very close friend of mine had suffered a massive brain stem stroke. I am no medical expert so I don't know what it means but only that he is now in coma state and that his family and close friends are all hoping for him to wake up and go home with his family. I say go home with his family and to his family because I want to see them walking out the hospital together headed for home, where they belong together.

Needless to say, his wife and kids are truly worried sick and praying for him. I am fairly close to his son and seeing some of his Facebook saddens me and I don't think I would even come close to understanding the depth of sadness his family members must be experiencing.

I found this Facebook post particular interesting:
"I won't complain about the ciggy smoke. I won't whine about the TV volume. I won't nag about the bills. Please just wake up and come home."

I guess we all know, especially those of us who still live with our parents or with other family members, living under one roof is really an ultimate display of tolerance. I mean imagine a family of 4, all with different personal preferences and domestic demands. It's quite amazing to see that albeit the fact that quarrels do happen, you'll realise that it happens not as often as you would think it should or does.

Anyway, let me regress to my original purpose of this post before I get too caught up with family domestic squabbles. No matter how close family members are, there will be arguments one way or the other without fail. That's because we are humans and we think differently from each other. And, undeniably there are and there will be instances when we say or do things we wish we hadn't said or done. It's like scars, either mental ones or emotional ones, which don't go away easily and sometimes even sticks in your mind or heart until the day you kick the bucket. You can not think about these "scars" but you can never eliminate them forever.

Like erasers and liquid paper, they can erase the markings you have made but you would see the effects of the earlier markings no matter how well you erase them with an eraser or liquid paper. You'd see some minor scratchings on the paper, or the harden liquid paper on the paper. That's just the way it is.

And my point is??

My point is this - notwithstanding that there are going to be "scars" no matter what you do in your effort to eliminate them, those "scars" will continue to remain there. But at the end of the day, really, the question is, "so what if those scares are there?". There is nothing to stop you from mending those broken down relationships and to patch things up. Patchwork may not mean everything will be back to square one like with super glue fixes but it's still at a minimum a fix.

What was mention in the Facebook status I quoted says just that - differences are differences only if you let them be differences. If you can ignore them or work around it, those differences are tolerated and eventually becomes a mere anomaly in your life. If there is an issue, use an eraser or liquid paper and rewrite on top of it and start afresh!

heart to heart

There's always much talk about being a good listener. You might have encountered people who have said, "talk  less and you can listen to what the other person is saying because your voice will drown what the other person is saying."

But being a good listener isn't just about opening up your ears to pick up auditory signals for your brain to make sense of. It's more than that. It's about having connectivity between one another. More often than not, you and I will be caught up in all the formalities, politeness, controlled, well thought (not always) of responses. Basically means either you give or you get mundane, boring and more often than not, not sincere responses.

Have you ever observed any 2 people sit down over a cup of coffee talking to each other but realise it's more than just 2 people talking. Meaning, you see interaction. Like those 2 people are really engaging each other's attention and what's being spoken to each other. That's the kind of connectivity I am referring to, which normally expresses itself in interesting, honest discussion, kinship, relatedness and love (not just couple love, but family love, love among friends).

Before I start to sound convoluted, what it really means is simply for us to be honest with who we are interacting with. It means overcoming the fear of being worried of saying, reacting in a way that might offend someone or invite rejection from that someone. I don't mean you being rude but really just offer someone your honest attention, opinion, words of wisdom. In fact, just give them the all of you.

Try to recollect the number of times you have practiced some form of censorship or held back from responding to someone your real thoughts and ended up just giving them what they wanted to hear or something contrary to your own beliefs. I think you will very quickly find that it happens practically on a daily basis with virtually everyone you interact with.

Why not just give them what you really think in your heart albeit it might come to be something as simple or silly as, "huh?". That "huh?" could be an honest, "I am sorry, I missed what you said earlier. Could you please repeat yourself?". You'd be amazed how many people will appreciate an honest "huh?" instead of trying to cover up your miss with some vague and probably irrelevant response.

Make that someone talking to you count. Have a  <3 to <3 talk, heart 2 heart talk......... =0)

hiatus!

After having been online on the ~Path of Time~ since 2006..... it is going to be hard, painful and sad.

As of today, I will officially stop writing on the ~Path of Time~. For those who have continued to read my posts, I thank you very much for taking timeout to read my posts. I am not sure if all my writings were great but I'll be happy to know even if it was only one post that reached your heart.

I may one day pick up from where I left off here but only time will tell. Who knows I might even start afresh? Until next time.......... time stops ticking for the ~Path of Time~

There's always tomorrow....

After so many years since the passing of my late grandfather, I still remember he's favourite words every time my grandmother nagged him about procrastinating and having a bad habit of taking his time to get things done - "There's always tomorrow.....".

In today's environment and the burgeoning need to make money and earn millions, that phrase may longer be valid. Notwithstanding that, I would still like to emphasize that sometimes there could be a great need to wait for tomorrow to do something!

Let's ponder about this for a moment or two. Speeding through things and always being in the mode of trying to get things done is good because you are efficient but whilst being efficient enables you to get things done, you may not be so effective. Okay, I admit I might be over-exaggerating on the bit of being ineffective as more often than not you would be effective along with being efficient if you have exercised due care in whatever you are doing. 

My point is should we some times take breaks in between and allocate tasks one day at a time instead of insisting of getting everything now, today, right this moment? You may not know it but today's world that constantly revolves on delivering results within short periods of time has made us into machines that simply demand things on go. In fact it may have even deferred from, "I need it now" to "I need it yesterday" to "I need it months ago!". Has the world become so focused on profit making that all that matters is that we just get things done now so that decisions can made now so that every single cent of profit can be made? Is that all that matters today?

I guess we sometimes forget that if we do take a step back and scan things through one more round before getting something done, we could be better off. For example, sometimes one more reading of the email before you click send points you to a couple of grammatical or typo errors, waiting one more day to buy something off the shelf leads you to realise there is another shop down the road offering the same product at a higher discount or sometimes by some divine fluke you decided to pump petrol the next day and find out the petrol station you wanted to go to got robbed around the time you wanted to pop by to fill up petrol.

Although sometimes certain things do happen beyond your control either by chance or some higher authority above, getting things done and having it now simply may not be ideal. Waiting another day or two really couldn't hurt anyone. At the end of the day, we are not machines that manufacture things at a specific speed, specific quantity and at specific time and we can't discount the fact that even machines fail - imagine us? Humans are prone to fatigue and wrong judgement calls, and yet we are pushed to perform like machines.

So, my grandfather may not have been wrong in delaying matters..... there really is always tomorrow......

you'll never get 100% acceptability

It is very common for us to get second opinions especially on the things that matter most to us like matters concerning our health, relationship, property investments, changing a car, etc. It is in such situations we tend not to trust our own judgement entirely and seek the opinion of others. Not surprising since the stakes would generally be higher when we need to decide on important matters in our lives.

I guess the main stem of the problem is all about trying to balance out the formula below:

PROS + OPPORTUNITIES - CONS - RISKS = DECISION

When standing at the crossroad of our lives, we end up trying to juggle how much benefits and opportunities we want to maximise from our choices without giving away too much cons and opening ourselves to unnecessary risk. That's when we start doing what we accountants call, "opinion shopping" - we go all out speaking to as many as people as we can trying to see if everyone can give us a piece of the formula so that we can finally make our minds. 

It is all well and good trying to get different sides of the story because different people have different experiences that can make us grow and learn. Whilst absorbing the views of others are good in terms of giving you a holistic view but we absorb too much of the views of others we end up with a myriad of views and end up spinning to many permutations and thus, blurring our observation. At the end of all the opinion shopping, instead of a decision you get indecision.

Hence, it may be good to sometimes just take some time out to think for yourself what you want out of the decision you are trying to make. At the end of the day, the decision you intend to make affects you the most so why let the opinion of others cloud your mind into fearing the unknown. Trying to figure out and break down every unknown in your life is as good as trying to play God and predict the future, which you can try and not get any results in a million years. Those who try, don't get it right all the time - weather forecast, stock exchange analysts, horse racing pundits, football pundits and the list goes on.

What you need in a decision making process is an acceptable level of acceptability - acceptability in your mind and not others. Set a threshold and if you think it meets that threshold, that's when you know whether it's a go or no go. At the end of the day you'll never get 100% acceptability for one reason - life's hardly perfect.

anachronism or good 'ole observation

I recently attended a "full moon" celebration of my colleague's child. "Full moon" here means one month old. It's a Chinese tradition to celebrate a child's coming of a month old. My colleague comes from a traditional Chinese family and so during the dinner whilst his mom was carrying the baby, she brought up the topic of what you shouldn't do during pregnancy and after pregnancy to ensure the toddler's and the mom's health.

Some of the interesting ones were:
1. Always get a confinement lady to help around for the first couple of weeks after mommy has given birth;
2. During pregnancy don't drill holes or hammer nails around the house the family is going live in;
3. Don't eat certain food stuff during pregnancy;
4. During the first few months of the child's life, ensure proper sleep posture, use pillows to keep the head straight; and
5. A whole lot more of stuff you should or shouldn't do (I really couldn't keep track of so many when she was talking about it).

So that's what I heard from "old school" mom so to speak.

On the flip side, a relative of mine is a pharmacist. She has got very differing views when it comes to such practices. Well, to put it in a nutshell you can call her "non old-school" or simply, modern-thinking. I found out her hard stand on not believing old popular beliefs. She called it anachronistic. I wouldn't say she's wrong since I am not qualified and even if I did say she's wrong, I probably can't own up to it anyway.

Despite the fact that medical professionals discount these so called "old beliefs", I can't help but think there's got to be some truth to these so called "old beliefs". If such beliefs were indeed untrue, how is it possible that so many old folks seem to come up with the same or at least very similar beliefs? It couldn't possibly have just popped out from nowhere or some genius decided to say, "Don't do this during pregnancy lest you want this to happen".

Big question is - are we now in a day and time where we face anachronism or were all these practices an accumulation of observation done by those people during that day and time?

I guess at the end of the day, call it old fashioned, anachronism or superstition or whatever you wish to brand it, you can't really deny this - whether you believe in it or not, there is no harm playing it safe. Either way, sometimes the old folks do know more than us for one simple reason - experience.

Something to ponder about maybe?

ever noticed dew?

Water is pretty the beacon of life. Staying sufficiently hydrated throughout the day keeps us going. But all that is water at a medium to large scale. Ever wondered how significant a water droplet can be? 

I don't think most of us take a step back to imagine where all the water come from. I guess, like everything else around us, there must be a start from someone or somewhere or somewhat. So let's see where a water droplet may lead us to and how we can relate to a tiny drop of water.

The easiest of an example of a water droplet would be dew. Tiny little drops of water that form on leaves or surfaces early in the morning when its pretty cold. For those of us who are fairly early birds, you can catch the sight of dew in the your garden or your backyard. It may not be noticeable but if you notice areas in your home where it is leafy, you quickly notice that some parts of your garden tend to collect a small pool of water. I haven't sat down beside a plant to observe where all the dew goes to but I can logically hypothesize that the dew get accumulated on leaves and as more and more accumulate, the leaves cannot hold the weight of the dew, and then gravity does the rest.

So let's take a step back and ask ourselves, "have we ever stopped to realise when dew forms, where does it go to or what it does for us?". I am guess probably be not because even I never really thought about it, being too busy with life (or at least that's what all of us say). I may have noticed dew on the plants in my backyard but let's face it, we tend not to notice small stuff like this given that we are cultured by society to think BIG, look BIG, no?

Notwithstanding that dew can be the impetus for unruly fungus that inhibit the growth of certain plants, did you know that all that dew either goes into the earth to hydrate the plants around it or evaporates to create the moisture in the air so that we get rain and not dry up?

Whilst its the big waves, and continuous rains that causes the likes of tsunamis and unwanted floods, we often forget its dew that keep our soil furtilised and moisture in the air, and who knows the tiny drop of dew was the advent of great lakes and wonderful scenery that come with it!

I guess if we equate it to our lives, big splashes sure hits the headlines but headlines create expectations and with great expectations comes great pressure, which can turn ugly - famous people in divorce cases, family problems, unwanted publicity and what not. Small little miracles in our lives on the other hand creates the big waves in our hearts - the birth of a newborn, your first pay check, your first car......... Small little miracles are like dew in that they don't make the news but it complete us from the inside!