By The River Rhine I Might Find My Answer

Now I really get it…that it is tough getting older. I waited all my life to be there, to be an adult, so that life is just not about finishing your homework, getting the grades and waiting for mum and dad to come back from work. Yeah, I have never fitted well during my childhood. Maybe I am just a quintessential middle child.

Now, that I am here…few steps to be an adult. It already sucks and I don’t think I will fit well in it. I already feel I have alot of baggage on my back. I am not hopeful, I already see a burning bridge, what more thinking of crossing it. I am as lonely as I could be or want to be. I am confused, nothing seem to be black and white anymore. Too afraid to move forward, to open my heart. And I yearn that my life be that easy as it seem to be for most of people around me. Maybe I am just hurting too deep inside. But I am not sure why. Seem unbelievable to believe that a person is the main cause of my brokenness. Or maybe there is something deeper festering inside, an underlying cause that I failed to see it. It wasn’t where I’m looking at.

Just some thought I had. I will be going for a summer trip with my mum and aunts. We will be visiting Moscow, St. Petersburg, London and Paris. And then, I will spend 2 nights in Cologne by myself, my first time doing this sort of thing. I always thought that it was necessary cuz I hated the idea of spending a night in the airport alone and it’ll be an adventure…to the unknown land, seeing new sights, meeting new people bla bla bla.

But I just realized, I was more looking forward to be alone and away from everyone. Eventhough I dislike the idea of being alone, I just need the space…to be somewhere far far away from everyone I knew. Maybe it will be a vain attempt cuz I also realize I could never be away from one person, my mind wouldn’t let me, I just know that. 

Maybe that space will do me some good…allow me to think, to encounter that thing that is festering inside and to find my footing in life again. Because it just can’t be that coincidence that I’m leaving my university life with the same feeling I felt when I was leaving my high school life. In fact, it got so much worse. It is as if I have been sitting watching life pass from the sidelines, waiting for a dream to seep in through the blinds….and i’m still waiting…waiting but the hope is flickering away as if telling me that it’s just not going to happen to me.

So maybe by the river Rhine, maybe being inside the Kölner Dom, maybe just being somewhere foreign…I might clear my head, I might finally get to rest my soul (not the dying kind of resting soul la)….I might find the answer to thing I have been looking for or not looking…whatever it might be.

Detachment

In my 23 years living in this world, I felt I have never become this detached like this before. This is my last year of my university life and also, a break from someone who matters a lot to me – good and bad. I have spent a lot time reflecting on my past actions and re-learning myself again. In this journey, I have noticed that I have made one cardinal mistake that has resulted in many of my downfalls. I became attached. Becoming attached to something or someone is not a bad thing itself, but the big problem is your expectations toward this attachment. That was my problem.

I have allowed myself – my mentality and my emotional states be affected by this attachment. It affected my day, my self-esteem level, my way of life. I know from the beginning that I have baggage on my back, and that I don’t easily let people inside my circle. It is not I don’t care about people; it is mainly because I care way too much and feared the commitment, and the terrible consequences should it failed. To add to this flaw, I have developed high expectations on myself and people around me. Maybe it is the middle child syndrome – to be better than your other siblings so that people will notice you as yourself, not as someone’s sister or brother. I expected myself and others to do the right thing, to choose to do the right thing. I believe that wrong is wrong even when everybody doing it, and right is right even when nobody doing it. I realized that this is a lethal combination for anyone to want to be close to me, and vice-versa.

As a Christian, I should not have fall into this web because I should have put my trust, love and expectations in Him. That He should be my primary love, and others secondary. As much as I want to, I just couldn’t be able to do that. It sounds dubious to put God in the center of my life. I thought to myself, I won’t get feedbacks from Him and even if I get “feedbacks”, I will think twice whether it is from God or my subconscious mind. And it will be difficult to detach myself from the world, so that I will be attaching to Him. In the words of G.K Chesterton, “the Christian ideals had not been tried and found wanting; it had been found difficult and left untried.

During this period, I have read books from wise Christians who been around the block. It wasn’t motivational or self-help kinds, but a better understanding of Christian ideals. What I learned is as much as my short-term memory can serve me. But I realized that all of them point to the same thing – be detached from the world, and be attached to Him, and the rest will come to you, I promise you. In another word, sacrifice your comfort and security for His love. Because He desired our love, and just as greed is realized through money, and anger is realized through violence, love is realized through sacrifice. But in the same way that a man’s wife does not need roses, God does not need our filial sacrifice. Yet it is precisely in these sacrificial offerings that we measure our devotion – Gut Check (Tarek Saab)

In a few months time, I’ll be stepping out of my comfort zone into a war zone aka adulthood. There will be new responsibility, commitment and accountability not only to myself but to the world. And there will be temptations of the world to deal with, to stray me away. I have to be prepared for the unexpected. For a better chance of surviving it all, I’d have self-detached myself, sacrifice my comfort and freedom. I have to get rid of any attachments I have –the hurts and angers of the past, the alcohol binge drinking, the idea that nobody’s perfect and allowed the freedom to pile up sins in a careless and unchecked ways, and even the person I became attached to in the past – it is not a friendship to be cherished if all I could think of is the hurts I got from it. For that friendship to be fixed, I’d have to detach myself from it till I’m ready.

For all of it to work, I would have deal with my constant problem – to maintain a constant level of spirituality for any extended period of time. And this will call for discipline and remain still especially during the time of troubles. The orchestration of my new life would become a painstaking project, one in which I would adopt a decidedly subdued temperament. I would learn that confronting my flaws all at once would be an unmanageable assignment, akin mastering all the pieces of a musical arrangement simultaneously. To do this, I would have to divide my approach into five distinct areas – the mental, spiritual, physical, emotional and financial aspects, and at the same time, constantly detaching myself from the world, and attaching my life around God. This will be my ultimate life expectation, in fact, the only expectation I have for my life.

The Truth Behind It All

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend, and it turned out to be rather interesting, heated-up debate about Christian’s attitude. Ok, not much of a debate because I really sucked at it, and he used to compete in national debate competition. I was merely listening to his point of view, and trying to decipher the reasons behind his reasoning. He, being a non-Christian and a logical thinker (a man of science), I have to admit that whatever he been through with Christians…it wasn’t nice. Although both of us know the real reason behind his apprehension which I will not reveal it, I do agree with him that he does have some good points and that Christians can sometimes do more damage than good. Well, that also proves that Christians are humans.

I am not a Bible expert or theologian, so this is just only my personal views about the concerned matters:-

Christians tend to look down on other religions. In fact, they go around saying that other religions are forms of Satanism. What gives them the right to judge others religion when these religions (Hindu, Buddhist etc) are also teaching good morale values? They tend to think that they are more superior to the non-Christians.

I guess, the standard answer is that the Bible said that God is the only true God and Jesus is the son of God. This is what we are believed in and there are some who take it quite “excessively”. I don’t know if there is only one God or many Gods, because just by taking a look at all the world religions, it seem like there can’t be only one God as Christians believe in. But hey, God to us if we believe He is real and perfect and everything else, we just don’t have the capacity to fully understand Him and His bigger plans. Maybe it’s His way of letting people know that they are not alone and He does exist…in many different forms. There is not one religion that teaches us to do bad things. And I can go as far to say that those ideas of human sacrifices, defending the religion by using any ways including extreme measures – it is just human interpretations of the words of God, spewed with personal and political agendas. Religion has proven in history to be a powerful mob-mover.

Christians are also humans and capable of making mistakes, or in this matters, being insensitive. I certainly don’t agree how some Christians teach the kids that other religions are form of Satanism and the non-Christians will go to hell if they don’t convert. Nobody knows exactly what will happen to us afterlife. The concept of “heaven and hell” is something to believe in, not a matter of fact kinda thing. And I disagree how some Christians spread the Good Word by instilling the fear of hell. If someone converted into Christianity because of this, it will not serve the real purpose of God and that is love. We love something or someone because of the goodness we believe in it, not because we scared of it or the punishment we will face if we don’t love it. Is that love? I know it will be a long and difficult path, but I believed it is our duty to set things right and speak out if another brother/sister had the wrong ideas of Christianity. But how do we know what is right and wrong? I don’t really know everything nor is an expert. What will I do is listen to that ideas, be open about it and ask questions about it, do research about it and then have an open discussion. I’m not a supermarket Christian that believes in one thing, and don’t believe in another thing – I’m bold to say that I believe in what is right, whatever God wants us to believe in. He is the perfect source of belief.

I don’t blame some Christians for being too overly-enthusiastic about spreading the Good Word. Some really over-did it and it can be a very unpleasant situation to non-Christians who just wanna get on with their life. Imagine, a nice reunion dinner with a relative that came back to visit us after 20years, he suddenly spoke up that he has something important to tell us. The next thing I know, he was in tears and telling us that he doesn’t want us to go to hell, and telling us the suffering of our dead grandfather who is now burning in hell. Good intention but a rather disturbing method.

So why do Christians like to go around spreading Christianity around?

As I said, it is for good intention. Let’s have an analogue. Let’s say you found a cure for cancer – a vaccine that will eradicate the cancers in the world. What you are going to do next? Share it with the world right? Now is the thinker – will you give it for free or will you sell it to the people? I mean, it is cancer vaccine. There will be great demand for it. You could be super-duper rich even if you sell it even for a dollar. But, you found the vaccine meaning you are in medical line, meaning you decided to serve humanity with your life and work. Whichever way you choose, it is within your human right and you do have the good intention. And I can say, not everyone will choose to sacrifice their energy, resources, money to mass produce it and give it out for free. Coming back to Christianity, what I am trying to say is that we found an answer to Life. We were lost souls and found a cure to our personal suffering. Dig deeper in every souls, and you find a pain somewhere inside of them. So we have the answer, and we just want to help. That’s just it. We want to tell the world that there is something greater, something perfect beyond this world.

Yeah, you can say that I am angry at the Christians. They go around, showing their so-called superiority and judging others. They don’t answer the questions or tends to look another way. They justified their beliefs with fallible reasoning e.g. it is written in the Bible and we shouldn’t question it. And what does all of this do to us, the non-Christians? We are at the losing end. I’m always at the losing end just because I’m a non-Christian. They were so enthusiastic preaching to me but they are so quick to brush away my doubts as something immature, unreasonable. They think my religion is a form of Satanism – do I look like a Satan follower? What? My moral values just not good enough because I’m a non Christian. And if I so happened to fall in love with a Christian girl, I will have to convert. Why not another way round? I’m looking at their source of belief, the Bible and I’m finding out why they said that the Bible is the Word of God and it is infallible. So far, I’m not convinced by their reasons…

(Personal reasons aside) I could understand his anger and the way he is taking it. He is not going to let anything or anyone influence his belief system without him himself thinking through it thoroughly. Anyone else would have just keep quiet, not bothered to even think about it and some even converted without thinking much about what is he/she getting into. I know a lot people converted not because of they are convinced by The Truth, but for their own personal agendas – well, mostly because of a girl or a boy they are trying to impress and chase. Yeah, there are those kinds of people – vehemently deny it at first but once that relationship didn’t work out, just let’s say their spiritual journey stop too. But I digress…

It was difficult to have a conversation with him after that, realizing that he is just trying to find anything that is wrong in Christianity to throw at the Christians’ faces. You can’t participate in a biased debate. Wanting to know about another person’s belief is one thing, finding a fault in it is a whole different thing. It is wrong and you will never get to convince someone from his/her beliefs, or walk away and be satisfied. Simply because you can’t destroy a person’s source of belief. It is their way of life, the thing that makes them the person they are now. The only person who can even only question their source of belief is them themselves. Another analogue, you fell in love with girl. To you, she is the perfect girl in this whole wide world. How would you react if your friends and family hate her and tell you to your face that she is a selfish, traitorous bitch? You wouldn’t believe it no matter how much they tried to convince you. The only possible way you will believe it is when that girl did something to you and hurt you real bad. But then again, you will still think of her as someone special, couldn’t forget her bla bla bla.

And this is God. If we believe in Him and trust Him to lead our life, how can we be convinced even by ourselves that He is bad or not real? Even if our world crumbled before our eyes like Job, something inside of us believe that it is the works of Him and He has a much better, bigger plan for us. I really don’t think we can be convinced otherwise unless He is not our source of belief. To put it bluntly, there are always people of another religion been trying to find faults in the Bible, in our beliefs…they may find it. They may find a contradiction in the Bible and that’s about it. They will still have nothing, not a trophy or anything. Christians are also humans. They do make mistakes and misled other people. They can be also insensitive, arrogant and stubborn people as anyone else. I’m not sure how to fix the unpleasant situations that many non-Christians faced. Personally, I think as Christians, we should advocate for the non-Christians too. Not just brushing them aside but address it, and if one Christian can show them it is not what they think, it will make a whole difference in their thoughts about Christianity. We are dealing not with facts of science etc, but we are dealing with human relationships and deep spiritual connection. It is a tricky business. My hope…maybe one day no one will be prosecuted or suffered in the name of religion or their source of belief.

Emerson Hart – If you gonna leave

A Change is Gonna Come

Change. I am a person that resent changes and the irony is, I’m one person whom seems can’t stick to one thing for long. I’m a self-proclaimed ADD (attention deficit disorder person) But I know, life is like a river that never stops flowing. We adapt to changes, adapt it well and fast or we will be lost. Swept by the current and ended up drowning 10 feet under and upside down. And I learned this through the long and not hard, but a painful way.

What about me? When do I get what I want? I’m not sayin’ that but… what about me?

I’m not a spoiled very privileged child that needs to get everything she wants. I’m always the responsible one. I may not be the brightest or eloquent person, but whatever I achieved, I did it with the best I could. And all the years of my trainings and experiences made me independent as one should become…an adult. But I’m still someone that needs, from time to time to be hold by the hands and lead on. I need some kind of emotional security blanket. And the last thing I wished for was losing my identity at the same time being taken for granted, and then being abandoned when I have nothing more to take from. Who to blame? That person or, me for allowing it to happen?

I know nobody will ever understand that extend of my pains. I will never get my justice. I might not even be healed with time to come. And the most hurtful and perhaps the truth is I’m the only one that is suffering and bearing all the consequences. I am beating myself up. I don’t deny it. I am the only one who haven’t let go.

How I wish there is a delete button in my mind?

I need to close that door. And it has to be done in order for me to survive, and be a normal sociable person. But the thing is, I can so much delete that person from my emails, my contacts and my Facebook. But, the memory will always be there and that fear of bumping to her again. Why am I the one that is afraid to see her again when she was the one that hurts me? I don’t know. I know that if I ever see her again, if she ever tries to patch things up, I have a lot of things to say to her and it won’t be nice. But I know I’ll be tongue-tied when that time comes. I can’t.

I don’t understand fully who I have become, or how I will get through this bad patch of my life. I want this change to happen.

When I started this blog, I wanted it to be part of my life, to be shared by anyone who is interested. I was always eager to show my friends about it. But it all changed, unknowingly to me at first, which I clammed up after I realized that my best friend couldn’t share her enthusiasm and was so critical about what I post in my blog. I was afraid that if I mention something about my life which kind of related to her, she will be displeased greatly. To me, what’s good is that to share it with the world when you couldn’t share it with your best friend. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of how we became this way.

It’s all gonna change now. This is my life I’m getting back. This time, I am being real here and it isn’t vaguely anymore (ok, I did try to be vague before) I can say that I don’t care if she ever found out what I blogged about, I doubt that she will even remember the existence of this blog. Blogging is part of my life I quite enjoy. I don’t care what anyone think about it – whether I’m just pathetic or crazy or in real need of psyche help.

In this world, don’t ask why someone becomes crazy. Instead, ask why we don’t become crazy.

I’m a melancholic person. I have my bouts of melancholic episodes. I have thoughts that can only be shared in few-folds, few-levels whatever. It will be interesting to see where this thing will lead me to.

Change… We don’t like it. We fear it. But we can’t stop it from coming. We either adapt to change, or we get left behind. It hurts to grow. Anybody who tells you it doesn’t is lying. But here’s the truth; sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. And sometimes… oh, sometimes change is good… sometimes change… is everything