Walk the fine line

Slumdog Millionaire moves beyond words, it's a reminder of a home long buried in materiality, to people who dive in to the heart of everything that matters.

It fascinates me that someone like Jamal's life brushes on the fine line of luck and misfortune, yet all the misfortune precisely makes him value whatever "luck" there's left for him. On a retrospective, all his luck were heavily disguised as his misfortunes. It reminds me of the home where people scrounged savagely for whatever the better of human nature has left behind. It's dirty, wild with raw emotions that are brought forefront and revealed through their eyes.

This is much unlike what is happening around me: people are self-interested, even if it jeopardizes the reputation of their career and their family. Money talks without integrity, with a loud voice that bounces off even a filled room. It's almost like humanity has to be thrown out the window everyday to justify that asset size.

All in all, this is a must-watch movie, with much room for character development, both for the actors/actresses and ourselves.

Hold out for more

Splinter,
on a rock,
small stones,
scattered.

Settle,
for less,
or hold out,
for more.

Choose,
among them,
the one,
who'd hurt the least.
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This is probably the simplest one I've written, ever. Am trying to simplify this complex thought process that's been on my mind. You could say I'm trying to convey my feelings really loudly with just a few words.

I wrote an email to my best friend last weekend, poured my feelings out, putting them into the rawest words I can find. He replied back with a very simple response to my rhetorical question. So, the style here is partly inspired by him.

To love is to be selfish

Part of my job is that I have to account for every transaction that goes in the client’s account, with their permission, then document that permission and then document everything else. In every request, every step has to be permissible and well (if over) documented. This is because of fear, fear of lawsuits, fear of not being responsible, fear of being accused wrongly etc.

On the grander scheme of perspective, we’ve built a nation on fear and possession, fearful of possibilities (more so on the negative ones), on challenges that may throw us off at our game, scatter our logic, and our process. We’ve built in so much selfishness, to not get hurt, to not get the short end of the stick. Do you think it’s because we’re determined to get the best for ourselves or because we’re built to be innately selfish? Then again, love can brew out of that need to be selfish and possessiveness.

I mean, think about it, the brighter end of the line on being selfish is that we love ourselves enough. It doesn’t sound like an appealing thought to someone else, but really, everyone can love himself or herself enough to protect themselves, to not let our stomach hurt, to not let the bad people in our lives, in our homes and so on. Similarly, we can love ourselves enough to let in other people who can love us just as well, if not more.

So, maybe, love is about being selfish, increasingly being selfish can just simply mean that we love ourselves increasingly over time.

I've been trying really hard to write lately, but as soon as I have the first sentence down, I stop and proceed to save my one line sentence on my Mac. I think it's partly because I've deciphered all my thoughts out in my private journals or with my best friend that I don't feel the need to write a more paraphrased entry here. Or I muster up my thoughts on the GO train and then forget it all by the time I get home. And all the unfinished stories are just sitting there, taking up micro spaces in my hard drive.

The closest relationship to writing in the next few months would be all the proof reading I'll be doing for my friend's course. Thank God he at least writes good English haha. Or I'm hoping (I kid, if you're reading this haha). I just can't stand the thought of having to rewrite the whole essay for someone, especially since I tend to use a formal tone on writing in general. Then there's the problem of actually understanding what I'll be editing haha. I suppose engineering will be a lot easier to understand than my sister's biology paper.
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In other thoughts, the rest of my January's going to be so busy but there's so many exciting events going on! Sometimes, I say yes to things at the spur of the moment, then as the day gets closer, I want to cancel cuz of over exhaustion. haha, I'm really feeling the age nowadays.

Right now, I'm trying to fit a particular trip into my tentative vacations. I'm going to be an aunt to my best cousin's baby!! At first, I was planning (in my head) for 2 vacations but now I have to cancel one of them, or find a way to fit China into this too.