Soak and Drown

Being the reason of someone’s happiness, even if it’s just for a moment is a precious feeling. I love seeing, or if it’s possible, making people smile, because there’s something about smiling that brings out the best in individuals. For the same reason, I surround myself with those people who always try to make my days brighter and my nights warmer. I really love to be around those who constantly add sweet flavor into my dark chocolate ice cream. So, let me share the lesson I learnt through my sharing session with a beautiful individual who always lifts up others and helps as many people as possible bloom to their fullest potential.

One of my closest friends in my home club in Toastmasters, a passionate soul, dedicated educator, a kind-hearted woman with all of her imperfections and quirks, but somehow always manages to be an exemplary leader for everyone. Just like the meaning of her name, she’s a blazing honeycomb-yellow sun, born naturally with leading personalities. That evening, when we’re out for dinner, she taught me valuable lesson that I couldn’t find anywhere else, especially since we’re both are educators. It’s been quite some time since I had such memorable talk with someone and I felt content for many reasons I can’t elaborate.

She’s well-known and well-loved amongst kids. Not only because she’s motherly, but also because she has the capability of spreading joy and nurturing others into the best individuals alive. No wonder she’s loved. No wonder she’s beautiful. However the main ingredient to produce such great impact on those little monsters whom we called blessings might look simple but practically not so.

It’s love. It’s all about love. Pure. Wholeheartedly.

“I am even willing to roll on the floor with those kids, get my shirt dirty. I’m willing to do whatever I’m capable of to make them learn happily. None of them would ever heard something negative out of my mouth because positive words are the key to every locked door.” She said with an expression I almost couldn’t guess, but I’m pretty sure, it’s passion.

I was scratching my head, feeling astonished to know how someone’s able to pour so much love to whom she works for. Yes, she’s definitely not working for the school, but she’s working for better generation. A labor of love. A type of love that sometimes can’t be understood, where it overflows through our whole blood vessel and fills our system with euphoria and agony at the same time. Such a nonsense, but it exists.

“It’s easy to provide knowledge to them, but not just everyone can win their hearts. At the time we decided to jump into education field, we have to make sure that we soak ourselves and get drown—drown to the deepest point because there’s no way out. We have to do it wholeheartedly.”

They said, words are more powerful than any weapon on earth. The positive influence of words can reach millions of hearts and minds. Those words of hers that day have been ringing continuously and probably they’re going to stay for a long long time with me. Thus, I took time to reflect and found out that I had been living my life dishonestly.

Have I really soaked myself? Has it been deep enough? Have I done it right?

It’s never too late to get drown and love our lives wholeheartedly, it’s not only about the things we do, but also about those people around us. Give a full effort in everything, treat everyone with the same respect, love without restraint and reciprocation, because in the end of the day, those beautiful smiles of theirs would always be our most cherished memory.

-ASA-

Bridge of Mistakes

There are times when we make decisions that we aren’t proud of. No one likes to screw up and I guess, every of us wishes to make the right decision, one hundred percent of the time. Especially, living in a culture that glorify perfectionism, only two possible choices await in life: crossing the bridge by making one precise shot or not crossing at all and being a total failure. However, after a sharing session with one dedicated Toastmasters member, Robin, I realized that the mixture of both choices, somehow, makes an absolute great pair, just like seafood and Champagne or fried chicken and beer. And to our surprise, those bad mistakes we’ve made a few apparently turn to be the bridge.

Just for a few slices of background information, Robin is a businessman who has particular interest in networking and investment. One of the reasons why I possess a huge curiosity to interview him was because, like everybody else, he committed several mistakes too, even repeatedly but as I watched him grow, I am constantly fascinated by how prudent he has always been in terms of handling bad outcomes.

“I did regret a lot when I made my first few mistakes, but now as I look back, it wasn’t probably the right thing to do. So, what would I do, once an opportunity passed and I failed it, I’d try to look at another new thing.”

Those solid statements of his hit me, as I used to keep looking at the wreckage I made whenever I jumped into bad decisions and hate myself for what I’ve caused. But then, if only we tried one more time to bundle up those mistakes, stash them into our locked memory and look at things in a new perspective, there could be new opportunities behind those mistakes.

To add on, according to him, for the opportunities to come, understanding the cause is what we need the most instead of just mourning for the wrong track we took. When we are able to accept and understand our mistakes, that’s when we can turn them into opportunities.

“Just like how we pronounce this word ‘catastrophe’, there’s the word ‘trophy’ in ‘catastrophe’. So long story short, if I had not failed in my previous business, I wouldn’t have started this one. That is also why our little choices, even if they’re mistakes, they’re connected to what we’re today.”

To me, it sounds much like a blessing in disguise and also a chain reaction. Giving me new beautiful perspective, instead of locking up his mistakes in his deepest memory, he made use of them by building a bridge to cross for another new thing that might bring him success.

Afterall, to continue walking on the bridge could be scary, but at the same time it’s the place where we can reevaluate, restart, and cross to the other side. Life will throw so many things at us, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t able to handle the storms. It’s okay to make mistakes and it’s up to us whether or not we build the bridge.

-ASA-

A Masterpiece, Bursts in Colours

I used to describe a person in one specific colour, because it's easier to paint a picture of someone rather than to characterize him words by words. Well, not talking about skin colour obviously, but it's the colour that's displayed based on personality and attitude.

In 2017, when I first joined my home club in Toastmasters, I couldn't help but judged the other members based on colours too. That tall tidy guy with pomade hair and glasses, he has the colour of silver which describes elegance, wisdom, responsibility and dignity. That young girl who is still a student in a university, she has the colour of red which reflects bravery, passion and a very strong energy to learn. That athletic guy who speaks in a sophisticated accent showed a bright yellow colour as a representative of how a human being can be so intellectual, open-minded and attractive.

So, I saw them in colours. But generally, in just single colour. That was how I perceived people in general but then more and more details would come up after being trapped in an awkwardly beautiful connection called friendship.

As time passed by, it's not hard to get attached with one another after learning about and receiving each other's flaws. I was amazed on how we could build such strong bonding within a very short span of time. The road we're walking on isn't always smooth. We had disagreement and misunderstanding sometimes, but that bumpy road led us to be stronger, especially when we're finally willing to compromise. Gradually, I realized these people in my home club, they exist in more than just single colour because each of them is a masterpiece that bursts in colours. Even more than dozens of colours. And that's just how fascinating a human being can be.

Apart from always looking steady and professional, they taught me that it's totally fine if we messed up sometimes. Craving for love desperately today and having a desire of being alone the next day, it's understandable somehow. And by the time we run way too fast until we can't catch our breath, it's absolutely not a sin to slow down.

Just like them, you and I are not simply red, silver or yellow. We're not always static, we don't follow the same path. People learn throughout time and experience for continual growth and discovery ups and downs, it's just cruel to imprison them in one colour. Most often the case is, we get so disappointed when they don't appear as the colour we perceived.

But again, let's remind ourselves that we're not just happy or angry. There are numerous emotions running through our head, that's how splendid it is. We don't always know what we want and where we're headed and amazingly, it is fine too because our complex emotions, imperfection and vulnerability turn us to be a masterpiece.

And I guess, I am one of the luckiest because my home club is a non-judgemental community where I am free to burst in colours and watch them burst too.

That's how usually love starts.

-ASA-

The Flower That Blooms

I entered college when I was sixteen years old and graduated before I turned twenty. My entire life was a preconceived structure that had been set to certain goal, to certain time, where I was told to graduate before 21, get my first job before 23, get married before 25 and have my first child before 30.

And there I was, wondering if being on track to those numbers would deliver contentment. So there I was, questioning why everything in life has to be measured by numbers and why we couldn't free our sole existence from the rule established by the society: if we don't do something that should have been done at certain time or certain age, we're going to be trapped in a label of incompetence. It's how it gets started: we begin to compare our timelines to other people's timelines.

However, annual sunflowers sprout quickly, within seven to ten days, but it is necessary to wait for about 2 months before the bright flowers appear in shade of yellow, bronze, orange, red and brown. Lilies bloom within 18 months before they would spread their magical and sweet fragrance that resembles spicy bubblegum. And my favourite flower, rarely blooms the first year after planting. Only after 3 years, we could finally cheer on the glorious arrival of dazzling peonies with their spectacular display of colours, unbridled petals and delicate, intoxicating fragrance.

For all those facts I've stolen somewhere on the internet, what I had neglected all the time was even flowers bloom at different pace with incomparable charm. And one most important thing: they still bloom anyway.

Toastmasters is a garden full of flowers where diversity is real. I was amazed by how some flowers bloom at early stage with all their humbleness and some might bloom late but then truly cherish their long-awaited accomplishment. It was remarkable considering how life doesn't always what it seems, where looking accomplish is more important than being an accomplished person. Nonetheless, people in Toastmasters taught me that life is never a racing game.

So it's when I discovered, there is no way that our journey would mimic the journey of others as ours will be filled by its own exclusivity. We bloom exclusively with different dirt on our branches, different proportion of sunlight and different kisses of the insects' that come and go. We're allowed to follow our own timelines instead of letting others rush us to bloom.

It's okay to set our own deadlines as long as it serves aspirations to keep us blooming. But afterall, at this very moment, we're the one who formulate our distinct journey because our existence is all about living the moments. Everything else comes later.

In the end of the day, you and I, will always be the flower that blooms. Let's have faith in our own timing.

-ASA-

La Vie En Rose

I decided to bring this topic up for some reasons that might be too long to be elaborated. So, let me just keep it short. La vie en rose, a French phrase that could be translated to "life through pink tinted glasses", depicts a state of bliss where everything appears cheerful, to the person who wears the glasses, obviously. And in this case, I want it to be me because I have wasted almost my entire life whining about the things I couldn't change. So this time, allow me to sprinkle a pinch of positivism to neutralise all the negative ingredients on a giant plate called life.

It's beautiful to remind each other that when we change the way we look at things, that's how the things we look at change.

It's easy to be happy when everything in life goes well. Anyway, life itself is a constant journey of discovery. Although it's hard to accept, the journey isn't always pretty. It includes suffering, failure, doubts and most of the time, fear. It's full of a big fat mess of heartbreaks and betrayals, hence making us believe that happiness is abstract. Oh yes, it is indeed abstract.

Nonetheless, it's just miraculous to find that it's not entirely abstract since happiness depends on the way we look at things.

Let's take an example of how I spent more than two years regretting my decision of coming back to this town. I hated every part of it: the culture, where the youngsters have to be completely submissive; the traffic where hundreds of cars are stuck in the middle of intersection; and even the people, who define rudeness as some kind of achievement. How I wished I had been clever enough to make judgement for myself. How I wished I had never stepped on this forest full of "wild animals". How I wished I had been wiser.

Apart from those regrets, there's this one remorse of mine coming up later: I wished I had been seeing things differently.

For almost two years, I let myself immerse in my own scepticism. I was so frightened that I would change myself into one of those people I hated, so I drew back and stopped giving myself a shot. But slowly, as I met new great people in Toastmasters, I realised that I had been seeing things in a misguided way.

So I tried to put on those rose-tinted glasses and change the way I see things. Inevitably, a vague shape of happiness forms on that plate, leaving me in an awe. Happiness is no longer abstract for me, it is just a matter of perspective.

I no longer suffer and deny that I should have been in a better place, instead I accepted the reality that I had to move on, live and love my life to the fullest despite the pain, which eventually makes me feel much, much alive.

Just like me, I hope you find joy amidst your broken days. I hope that your heart collects itself whenever it gets broken and learns to love again. I hope you can see life through rose-tinted glasses.

La Vie En Rose.

-ASA-