Glasses

He walks along the garden path
His glasses covered in grime
“The world is dark!” he says
Then he plants the bitter seeds

Blinded by the filth-masked specs
He trips over his own two feet
“The world is treacherous!” he says
As he tastes the bitter fruit

He scrapes at the dense dirt one day
Spots of sunrays shine through
“The world has light!” he says
Then he plants the sweet, sweet seeds

He walks along the garden path
His glasses sparkling clean
“The world is wonderful!” he says
As he tastes the sweet, sweet fruit

Whether the world is bad or good
Depends on what glasses you wear
It all comes down to your perception
Then you plant the seeds for your fruit

Written: 26 January 2009
Published in: Unibuds Annual Magazine 2008 "Fruition: The Ripening of Kamma"

Mastering Your Mind

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is being self-aware. That is, the process of carefully monitoring your own thoughts, speech and actions.

While only you can observe your own thoughts, your speech and actions can be observed by and directly affect others. How many times have we said something to someone that we later on regretted? How many times have we done something that we know others would consider as inappropriate or unskilful?

Humans are social animals. With some exceptions, most of us are constantly interacting with others. Since human interaction is part and parcel of being a member of society, we need to be mindful about managing our words and behaviour in order to enhance our relationships with others.

But where to begin? Our words and actions are a consequence of our inner world. That is, our thoughts and emotions, which interact and reinforce each other. What we think and feel determine how we act and express ourselves.

Consider the following propositions (refer to Diagram):

1. Thoughts and emotions are intertwined.
2. Thoughts and emotions impact directly on yourself and lead to your words and actions.
3. Thoughts and emotions impact on yourself and others through your words and actions.
4. Reactions of others impact on you, which feed back to your thoughts and emotions.
5. The cycle continues in an iterative process.

Impact of Our Thoughts & Emotions

What does this all mean? If the impact of your words and actions on others and yourself stem from your own thoughts and emotions, then it makes sense to first and foremost be mindful of those thoughts and emotions that arise.

Consider the following examples.


Illustrative Examples

1. One of your best friends is habitually late. Often she arrives an hour late to meet you. This has been going on for quite some time but you have always put up with it. Even though it annoys you, sometimes you just tease her about being late. You love her like a sister but you feel like you cannot tolerate this bad habit for much longer. One day she was late again and even forgot her mobile at home so you could not contact her. You are now furious. When she finally arrives, do you:

A. Give her the ‘silent treatment’. Why should I talk to her?
B. Give her a piece of your mind, i.e. tell her what a moron she is.
C. Pretend nothing is wrong but deliberately come one hour late the next time you meet.
D. Tell her calmly that her lateness affects you and the long-term health of this friendship.
E. Do none of the above. You choose an alternative response.

2. You live in a shared apartment with a timetable assigning household chores to all housemates. It is your turn to wash the dishes this week. One of the house rules is that whoever does the dishes that week gets to assign someone to clean the bathroom. You have assigned bathroom duties to Ben but by the end of the week, the bathroom is still a mess. This is not the first time that Ben has neglected his household chores and you are extremely unimpressed with his laziness. Do you:

A. Clean up the bathroom yourself. If you don’t do it, no-one else will.
B. Yell at him for being the slob that he is.
C. Continue to assign him with the nastiest household chores possible.
D. Find out why he neglects his duties and ask him again to clean the bathroom.
E. Do none of the above. You choose an alternative response.

Putting it Together – Managing Your Thoughts & Emotions

While you may not have had exactly the same experience as illustrated above, most of us at some point in our lives would have experienced similar situations. How would these situations make us feel? Angry? Frustrated? Cheated? You name it. What about the thoughts that arise in our minds? Unless you are extremely tolerant or enlightened, you would experience at least some negative thoughts towards these individuals who disappoint you.

Review options A, B and C for each example. Option A represents an avoidant/passive approach; option B represents an aggressive approach; and option C represents a retaliatory approach. How effective are each of these actions? Although there is no 100% guarantee since each individual and situation differs to the next, we can imagine that these approaches are probably not very effective in achieving the desired outcome. Unless what you really want is to continue being angry (options A to C) or to make the other person suffer (options B and C).

Feeling negative emotions and thinking negative thoughts are completely normal. We are only human after all. But ask yourself: does this achieve the outcome that you want? Is seething with fury helpful? If it is – provided that it is not unduly harmful to yourself and others – by all means, hold on to your anger. Sometimes anger can move us into productive action. For example, protesting for a worthy cause.

However, if the anger does nothing more than pointlessly hurting yourself and others, why not let it go? Observe these negative thoughts and emotions and recognise them for what they are. Then simply release it to the air. You have no obligation to be a slave to your thoughts and emotions.

Review option D in each example. These represent an emotionally intelligent or skilful approach. Again, although there is no 100% guarantee, this option is likely to have the least negative effect on yourself and others.

So how can we act in this emotionally intelligent or skilful manner? This involves first being mindful of our own thoughts and emotions, then understanding how these may play out in the situation and what consequences each option may have. The next step is controlling those thoughts and emotions so you can choose and enact the most effective response.

Options A to D are by no means an exhaustive list of the possible actions that you can take in each situation – hence the extra option E. But what it demonstrates is that while there are many responses that you can choose from, some responses may be more effective than others. It is up to you to be mindful and skilfully select the best response that is of benefit to both yourself and others.

Will you be the master or slave to your thoughts and emotions? The choice is yours.

Written: 30 November 2008
Published in: Unibuds Sacca Dec 08/Feb 09 Edition "Mindfulness and Me"

Parent-Child Conflict

Have you ever seen that lopsided expression on a teenager's face - where the mouth is turned upwards on one side only? This expression has probably appeared on your face at some point in your life. However, this lopsided smirk kind of expression is extremely hard to label for most people. So what is it?

It is the expression of contempt. When it appears on a rebelling teenager's face, it is a signal for the parents that new rules of engagement need to be negotiated if this relationship is to continue to work for both parties.

Why rebel? Often times parents have a hard time letting go of the old contract, the old rules of relating to the child. The child outgrows those old rules and is seeking more independence as he or she progresses into adulthood.

Sometimes the child is ready. Other times not. But in any case, eventually the child needs to find his/her own direction, own voice. When one is young, it is perfectly reasonable for the child to follow the parents wishes (most of the time), because parents are more experienced and they do know better. However, as the child grows up and times change - do parents always know better than the child just because they have more life experience?

You cannot always please everyone - and by definition, that includes your parents. Your parents care about you and want what's best for you. However, stemming from this love and concern for your well-being, they may put pressure on you to be who they want you to be or do what they want you to do. This may not necessarily coincide neatly with your own direction in life.

Therein lies the difficulty. Do we please our parents and sacrifice what we really want? Or do we follow our hearts even though it is against our parents' wishes?

Many people's experience is that they have indeed chosen the latter option. Yes, it is difficult to defy your parents' wishes. It is an extremely uncomfortable, unsettling feeling - especially for those of us who are close to our parents. But in the end - who is living your life? Your parents? No. It is you who needs to live with your choices.

If you constantly go through life trying to please your parents in every way, you are doing yourself a complete injustice. Why? Because it effectively cuts you off from great experiences that you could be having - the life that you could be living.

There is always a fear that if it all falls down, your parents will be proven right and the dreaded "I told you so" will happen. But you know what, you will make mistakes, but it is up to you to learn from them so you can do it differently next time.

This is not to say that we should be unreasonable and defy our parents for the sake of it. But if it is something that you really believe in, why not give it a chance? As long as you don't harm others.

So how can we reconcile what we want with what our parents want? I recently learnt a nifty technique called a balancing exercise. This is about getting real and balancing the positives with the negatives.

For any item e.g. starting a new job, list all the positives and then balance each positive with something negative. Allow me to demonstrate:

New Job/Career

Positive => Negative
New opportunities => New challenges
Learning new skills => Forgetting skills that you don't get to use
Money! => Less time for other things

What's the point of this? Often times we just think about the positives of what we are pursuing and neglect the possible negatives.

Newton's third law of motion states:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

What happens is, while you're all gung-ho and optimistic about what you're going after, your parents are pulling in the opposite direction and raining on your parade.

What does this balancing exercise have to do with parental expectations and what we want? I think perhaps the best way to reconcile the two within yourself is to use our parents' opinions as the "negative" column, and use your own opinions in the "positive" column.

It may be hard to hear what your parents have to say about what you are pursuing, but there is often some truth in what they say. Yes, wisdom from the years that they've walked this earth. Although what they say may be opposed to what you think, there may be elements of their advice that could be incorporated into your thinking pattern.

While it is confronting to think about the negatives, it will keep you grounded and prepared for obstacles that may come. It may be this very opinion that keeps you in check, so you don't fly off with the fairies in the pursuit of your dream. The cold shower, the rain on your parade - call it what you will, but it may actually be good for you.

This is by no means a magic pill. Sometimes parents will continue to disagree with what you want. But at least you can resolve this dilemma within yourself rather than having this internal dissonance churning over and over again. Perhaps if you can show to the parentals that you are dealing with the conflict in a mature way, they will eventually accept things.

Let's hope for the best.

Butterfly Effect

Butterfly Effect

The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. Of course the butterfly cannot literally cause a tornado. The kinetic energy in a tornado is enormously larger than the energy in the turbulence of a butterfly. The kinetic energy of a tornado is ultimately provided by the sun and the butterfly can only influence certain details of weather events in a chaotic manner.

If you've ever seen the movie The Butterfly Effect (2004), starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart, you would know that a small change in the system can lead to massive, irreversible changes through a series of flow-on effects.



What does this mean in everyday life?

I remember an anecdote told by one of our Psychology professors at uni. As a young boy in high school, he was one of those class clowns, trouble-makers. Call him what you will. One day, as he was being his usual mischievous, obnoxious self - his teacher reprimanded him:

"When you go to university, you cannot behave that way."

Let's backtrack a bit. This was a boy who was not performing well academically and never in his wildest dreams even contemplated going to university. These words changed his life forever. How?

The key was in the word "when". The teacher said "when you go to university", not "if you go to university". At that moment, it was as if a light that the boy didn't even know existed had been switched on inside him. He never realised until that point that his teacher believed in him that much, despite his poor academic performance. His teacher saw something that he didn't see - that he was a bright boy underneath all the disruptive behaviours.

From then, he went on to do his PhD, became a professor in Psychology, had many successful publications, and the rest is history.

Profound isn't it? How that one word can have so much impact.

I can recall a couple of turning points in my own life to illustrate. Not one-word-changed-my-life stories, but more actions that perhaps people didn't realise would have such an impact on me. Although temporally spaced quite far apart - they were indeed defining moments that have made me who I am today.


Primary School
When I was little, I loved to draw but I never thought I was that good. I took sketching classes in Hong Kong with my older brother and I was by no means the best in the class.

I was initially placed in a year 4 class when I first arrived in Sydney, even though I should have been in year 3. My teacher immediately took me under her wing.

In primary school, you often do art classes or have to draw for exercise book title pages. My teacher saw something special in me that I didn't see. She always encouraged me to draw and told me how beautiful my drawings were. My work would always grace the classroom display boards.

Coming from a culture where teachers didn't often give praise and encouragement to students, at first I thought she was lying. But after a while, I started believing her words and... believing in myself.

From then on, I continued to develop my art. At the age of 14, I probably produced the best drawing I have ever done (although a little sad... peaking at 14 years old). The following is a drawing that I did of a picture of a model from my Dolly-magazine diary back in year 9.


Amazing things happen when someone believes in you.


Winter Retreat 2008
The treacherous four-hour bush walk in the Sunnataram Forest was another defining moment in my life. As someone who is not keen on outdoor pursuits, it was an immense challenge - both mentally and physically - for me to climb rocks and dense bushes in the depths of a forest. I struggled and complained endlessly for the first half of the journey. I wanted it to end in a hurry and wished I was back in my comfy home, rather than getting myself all dirty in the wilderness.

However, during my times of struggle - many kind people lent their helping hand. They guided and walked with me to make sure I was safe, they recalled their first bush walk experiences to draw parallels on what I was feeling at the time, they encouraged me to keep going...

By the second half of the journey, despite my growing tiredness, I was coping much better with the rough terrain. And finally, we reached pot of gold on the end of the rainbow - The Cliff. I had my doubts about this Cliff - who cares about some stupid Cliff anyway? But seeing the world from mountain-top, the view took my breath away. This is what I achieved. I had reached the top.


Something I took away from this trip was that there are always obstacles in life. But with the support and encouragement from people around you - you can achieve what you initially thought was impossible.

Words cannot express how grateful I am to my fellow bush walkers for offering their support.


Flowing On
Just as the butterfly does not cause the tornado, but rather, changes the trajectory of the tornado - others' speech and actions towards you do not create the path in your life. Rather, they act as a catalyst. Then only if you are receptive and proactive, can you find the strength within yourself to change your own destiny. But indeed, those catalysts are necessary ingredients to provide the impetus for change.

How many hearts do we touch by our kindness? What impact does that have on those individuals whose hearts you touch, who then go on to touch others' hearts? This is the Butterfly Effect.


One word...

One gesture...

Can change a person's life forever.

What impact are you having on others today?

Breaking the Trend

While I really should be sleeping right now since I got up at some weird-as hour this morning (i.e. 4am) to finish off the third last assignment of my university career, I am blogging instead. This is completely and utterly a break from the trend. What trend? Well, apart from the most recent entry of my post-BN speech, my posts have been almost devoid of personal references. Why so? I have issues. Privacy issues. Who reads this stuff? Why break my silence now?

The answer is: I have no answer. Once upon a time I would have kept a regularly and faithfully updated personal blog to detail every major (or minor) events of my life. After a while it became a total drag. Blogging for the sake of blogging, with no real content. It was somewhat like a shopping list... Who really cares about what I had for breakfast? Just kidding, I didn't actually talk about that. But I probably would have recounted things that are just as trivial.

Blogging is a dangerous fad. You do it just because everyone else is. You can put your foot right in where it doesn't belong and burn yourself senseless with scalding hot water. Watch what you say coz it could get around the web-neighbourhood faster than you can say "boo". If rumours travel at the speed of a bullet, then stupid things unskillfully posted on blogs travel even faster and can come back around and bite you on where the sun don't shine.

As a self-protection strategy, I wisely chose to be silent - or relatively silent. Sometimes things are better left unsaid and untold. Knowledge can be burden, and knowledge that others have too much knowledge about you can be even more of a burden. Are you really ok with people knowing more about you than you know about them? Is this emotional exhibitionism in the age of Blogs any different to exposing yourself in public?

Just like what TV-show police say when they make arrests, "You may choose to remain silent but anything you say can and will be held against you" (or something like that) - the same can be said for Blogs. Or any written communication for that matter. How many times have you shown personal emails or MSN chats to your friends. How many times do you think the same thing has been done to you without your knowledge? Scary.

Anything documented in written form can be a double-edge sword. While they do provide records and evidence of things that would easily escape our faulty memories, they are in fact also records and evidence of incriminating information that you may have unintentionally let slip because at the time you did not realise what impact it could have. Or fallen into the wrong hands... I shiver at the thought.

This is precisely the reason why professionals try to communicate (in written format) as diplomatically as they can in the business world. Just in case they get served. Let's try not to leave room for any alternative explanations of the words, phrases, sentences, and emoticons you may have included. But of course, nothing is fool-proof.

Humans have this incredible ability to read between the lines, the dots and even the spaces between letters. Admit it, you're guilty of doing that at some stage. "Hm... That capital letter there... Is he mad at me?", "Wow.. that emoticon there, she's in love with me now" and etc, etc. Sound familiar? Nothing is straight-forward with online communication these days. Misunderstandings are rampant, much worse than face-to-face communications...

After my little rant, I have realised that I still have not really made a lot of personal references i.e. events in my life. More so about my current views on the world of online and written communications. So hah, I have not broken my "silence" still. So this is not really breaking the trend.

Now is it?

Things Fall into Place

Things don't always go as I expect,

But they seem to fall into place -

Often in ways better than I hoped.

The common saying goes -

"When one door closes, another opens".

Doors I have closed,

I have not looked back at.

Doors I have opened,

I walk through with a new sense of joy.

End of an Era

A sickening, yet familiar feeling of fear washes over me. Although smaller battles have already been fought and won a few months past, the thought of facing my most dreaded enemy yet again is too frightening. I have put off this major battle for as long as I could - distracting myself with other, more manageable battles. Which by the way, have also been victorious.

Why should I be scared? I have fought a much bigger, more monstrous version of this enemy two years ago. That battle was brilliant - so many struggles and obstacles along the way to victory. But I won it. I won it...

Today is the day. There is no more excuses, no more hiding, no more running away. I must be brave. I must.

So today marks the end of an Era. The Era of Procrastination.

I shall now take a stab at my most dreaded Masters thesis. *Haaaaaii-YAAA!!!*