Still incomplete

     For my sister, Ling, who always provides me the biggest pieces in this evolving thing...

Many of us go through life looking for that single, perfect person who will make us happy, make us whole. We go around looking vulnerable, showing the gaping hole in our hearts, thinking that someone special out there has the power to stop the bleeding. Maybe it will be a guru who will provide all the answers to our life questions. Or a soul-mate who will always be in sync with our thoughts and will rejoice in our shared idiosyncracies. Or the love of one's life who will feed our desires and provide the reasons for bliss and contentment. And of course, many of us, if not all, end up disappointed in this impossible quest.

In my fading years, I can say with utmost certainty that we can never rely on any one person to make us complete. Aside from holes in our heart and spirit which call for mending, parts of us were never with us to begin with.  I think that one purpose of life is to find those missing pieces in our family, our friends, and maybe that one great love. Those who love us unconditionally, those who reject us, and those who can no longer be part of our lives - all of them have given us something to make us whole. The search for completion goes on all throughout our lives. The journey ends only when we, and no one else, decide that we are done.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Like butter, slowly melting

Time to sip chamomile tea... Oh so deliberately Time to really listen to the music ... Word for word, note for note Life, not gulped by the cupful Memories of first love, savored Like watching butter slowly melting on oven-hot rolls Like watching the soft blue of clouds Seamlessly turn to orange And then grey Solace, at the end of day
Read more

The Fear of Excess

Image
"You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings.  It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake,   to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."                                                                                                                                                  - Anais Nin I have always thought of myself as being creative ( as distinct from being artistic ). Facing limited resources in my growing-up years presented many opportunities to come up with alternatives to things I wish I  had or
Read more

Falling out of Love?

Image
Tree in the Academic Oval For the last 17 years, I've been having a affair... with teaching... at UP. Being a teacher at UP has always made me feel like I'm in a forbidden romance. Many days, I  feel giddy just being here but for an equal amount of days, I feel unworthy to be part of such an illustrious institution.  As an undergraduate student,  I was in awe of my professors. There they were, up in the star-decked sky and I could only marvel at their brilliance from my place among the riffraff of the academic world. Although I grew up helping my teacher mother with her preparations for class,  entering the academe was never part of my plan on how to conquer the world. I admit, once in a while, I did imagine myself in front of the classroom but never actually believed I could do it in real life. It was like having a secret crush on that gentle-looking hunk in the library but knowing it would remain just that because he was someone else's boyfriend. And even if he we
Read more