The Journey Within

I dreamt I killed someone, and it’s not the first dream I had on this murder. As vivid as the dream is, I still couldn’t quite see who the victim was, until recently. It’s a realisation rather than being there again to witness the murder. The victim – was me.

Death has been a strong theme for me this week – the death of my 100 year old grandmother, the death of me, even the book I’m reading features death quite prominently (The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown). I spent almost a week going through the proceedings of my grandmother’s death, conducted very much like the business of death I wrote earlier. However, this time, I feel different.

I am not close to my grandmother, but her strength to live past the century mark gives great courage to all the living people around her. I think that’s what the proceedings are all about, it’s for the living to accept her death, but more importantly, it’s for the living to celebrate life! To remind us that death is inevitable, but it takes great will to live a long and full life.

I believe my dream is to strengthen this message – the will to live a strong and full life. Sometimes you must let go the life you had planned in order to make room for the life ahead of you. I believe that was why I killed myself. I killed my past me to release the future me.

My dream on death was a vivid dream, filled with remorse, guilt, the feeling that I can’t let go and clinging grudgingly to the past life. To experience death in my dream might be the kindest death experience to anyone, if you need to realise the importance of living fully through death. I hope you don’t have to wait till the real thing to realise the importance of living fully.

Some books on the wisdom of death and how to make full use of the present, the now.

• Tuesdays with Morrie
• The Last Lecture
• The Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality
• The Now Habit
• The Power of Now

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Today, I want to talk to you about having faith. Of course, i can’t actually “talk” to you about it in the normal sense. But I do hope it will generate some thoughts in you and maybe connect us in a way as though we’ve just had a conversation, just because you have read my post.

I have been wanting to verbalise my thoughts on faith for a while. In an attempt to show my wisdom or ignorance on this topic (you be the judge), let’s set the background a bit.

I have been learning tai ji for the past 10 years, without actually learning tai ji. I couldn’t understand why I can’t do the things I’m supposed to do. i couldn’t understand why I can’t learn the things I’m suppose to learn. I couldn’t understand why has it taken me so long to find out that I haven’t learnt anything!

Ok, to put things into perspective, I did learn something. I’ve learnt the movements associated with tai ji. You can instantly recognise someone doing tai ji by their slow movements in the park. I have learnt how to show those movements with reasonable proficiency which could pass as someone who knows a thing or two about tai ji to the untrained eye. They might see some grace in what I do, maybe even feel the softness and the calmness in the choreography.

To me, those are superficial, because I know I haven’t learnt the real thing yet. I can theorise the principles associated with tai ji. I can relate the philosophy into my everyday life, although I can’t apply it when I can, which goes back to my understanding of tai ji, which is not strong enough to apply in the everyday world.

To be fair, I have made some decisions in life based on the teachings of tai ji. So to say i can’t apply the principles is not entirely true. But to be able to say I understand tai ji, I’ll need to be able to apply it on a daily basis.

So what has all these got to do with having faith?

Some months ago, i started a private lesson in tai ji. There were plenty of doubts as you can see in this post. The top of the list of questions is “am I the worthy student”. After several months, I still doubt myself, more often than expected, which also has the side effect of reducing how long and how hard I’m willing to train.

I’m not conceding that this is an unsolvable problem. In fact, this is not a problem to the world at large! There are plenty more problems that need solving immediately. But what do we normally do when a problem is unsolvable? What do we normally do when we are in despair? The common approach is to call out for God, to say your prayers, to ask for miracles.

It is this call that I want to talk about today.

I believe we have been calling for the wrong things. Regardless of your religion, we normally call for what we cannot achieve. And by calling for that, it’s telling the whole world (and beyond) that you can’t achieve what you want to achieve. Somehow, by calling this way, you are conceding you need out-of-this-world powers to help you achieve what you need to achieve.

I believe this is a self-prophecy. By telling the whole world that you can’t do it, what you’re going to get is just an echo of “you can’t do it”, which will in turn become the loudest broadcast to yourself to remind you that you can’t do it. That’s just going against what we are actually calling out in the first place!

I believe the call should be a call out to the world that I am going to have faith in myself. A call out to the world that I can actually solve the problem. A call out to the world that the solution that’s presented to myself is for myself alone. And if that solution is not the solution I was expecting, maybe it’s a solution to the “real” question that I am actually asking!

What I’m trying to say (in a roundabout way!) is that whatever you need is already in you. You just need to have faith in yourself. Having faith will immediately attract the tools you need for your solution. Instead of calling for the whole world to gang up on you, to remind you that you can’t do it, you will have the whole world watching and urging you to succeed!

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Do you hate waiting? Waiting for your turn in the queue, waiting for the bus to arrive, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for the clothes to dry, waiting for the lift to open its doors while you frantically press the “up” button, waiting for the perfect Tai Ji teacher to appear? Waiting for this paragraph to end?

Personally, I don’t like waiting. So sometimes, I do wonder what attracted me to Tai Ji in the first place. As most people i’ve spoken to relate Tai Ji to slowly waving your hands and moving your legs – they can’t wait for it to be over! They’ll be thinking “what’s for dinner tonight” or “what if I don’t finish my work tonight” or “can that person stop coughing?”!!

Even people who do Tai Ji regularly, when being corrected by a teacher, they can’t wait for the instruction to be over because the legs hurt! It gets worse when the teacher is correcting you in front of the class, because you’re trying to listen to the explanation, but at the same time trying to maintain composure so as not to crumble under muscle stress!!

So why wait?

One of my teachers gave me the most interesting answer. It’s a measure of Gong Fu – i.e. a measure of how much skill you have acquired throughout the years. Execution of a technique takes patience – waiting for the right moment. To be able to wait is to be able to tell your body to hold on that bit longer, to have the will power to tell your muscles that another minute is still ok.

That’s my motivation to wait. To be able to tell myself that I can wait that bit longer. To be able to tell myself that my will power is strong. And hopefully one day, to be able to tell the guy on the floor that “I’ve waited for you for 30 years, that’s why i’m still standing and you’re on the floor…”

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Habit – a recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition. Note the word frequent!

I was doing Tai Ji in a public park today, when I came across a teacher telling his students to walk backwards! I was a bit amused at what teachers can come up with, and so I eavesdropped… Apparently, it’s got something to do with the spine (I couldn’t hear the full conversation).

However, it wasn’t the fact that walking backwards got me thinking. It was the message that the teacher is trying to tell them, whether the students, or the teacher realised it or not! The best training to improve is to incorporate the training into your daily life – like walking backwards in the park to get home!

A lot of the general training of Tai Ji can be incorporated into the daily life, like correct back posture. You can do that in front of the TV, standing up, walking to the toilet etc. What about at work? I knew someone who had to move parcels from one desk to the other, and he emphasised on the waist turning to move it from one to the other. What about push open the door using the waist? You get the drift…

So, try to put practice into your daily life. Remember, you’re trying to break habits your body has known for a long time. The best way to do that is to convert the training into your new habits by slotting them into your daily routine. You’re only limited by your imagination!

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Tai Ji is popular in Malaysia, which is where I was born. However, it’s always got that senior citizen stigma attached to it. When you’re a teenager, I wouldn’t brag or be seen that I was doing Tai Ji. It’s uncool and certainly not something I would tell girls about! At that age, anything not cool was not girl-friendly! It was only when I was doing university in Scotland that I first started doing Tai Ji, or more commonly known there as Tai Chi. I was 20 then.

Starting to learn anything new has its ups and downs moments. The upside is that you get to learn something new, meet new people and feel like a student in school again. The downside unfortunately, is also each and everyone of those things, learning something new (starting again), meeting new people (that you probably want to avoid) and feel like a student in school again (being corrected for every single mistake you make, feeling stupid and ignorant). It is very much a case of how you view it, a glass half full or half empty.

So why is starting something new so difficult? We can come up with a variety of reasons e.g. not cool, no shoes, no proper attire, no place to learn, no teacher, no motivation, no buddy to go with, no interest but forced to learn (by husband/wife/childern, by health or the lack of!), learning place too far, don’t like the people there, no result, too hot, too cold etc. The list just goes on and on, limited only by your own imagination.

Why not put this imagination into better use and focus on the outcome you want to achieve rather than the excuses for not achieving? By imagining the result, you’re building a goal for yourself, something to aspire to. By imagining excuses, you’re chaining yourself to a rock. With each new excuse, you’re adding another layer to the rock, making it harder and harder to move on, to start. One day, you’ll find yourself so reluctant to move that no amount of persuasion will let you leave your rock. You’ve become the rock!

So if you’ve built yourself a large rock, the first step is to stop adding more layers to the rock. Stop giving yourself more excuses not to start. Remember, more excuses, bigger rock! Lugging a big rock around is heavy, even though it’s metaphorical. You will feel its weight everytime you feel like starting but just can’t seem to motivate yourself to. It feeds on your negativity and becomes stronger as your will power becomes weaker. So stop feeding it. Your negative thoughts are its food.

Then, start chipping away at the rock by imagining the outcome you want. Removing layer upon layer by thinking the positive things you want to achieve like better health, expanding your social circle, meeting like-minded people, having strong legs, build stamina, feel good at work, feel motivated in life etc. Slowly but surely, your rock will reduce in size.

However, the key to each of these steps is to start. If you’re like me, you’ll probably need something to jump-start that engine. I set my alarm to go off at 6 in the morning today and forced myself to wake up eventhough it’s a weekend. Once out there in the open, all the laziness just fade away as soon as I start doing and stop thinking of excuses. Find something drastic that you need to do to jump-start your engine. All you need is that one time. So, stop reading this and go out now! Do come back some time today

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Food is a BIG thing in Malaysia. Ask anyone about a particular food say “bak kut teh” or “roti canai“, and they’ll be able to tell you where’s the best place for it. Lost for an inspiration? They’ll recommend something they like best, or a new place, or food they haven’t had for a long time so that they can go join you as well!

Coming back to food heaven, you just can’t resist stuffing yourself. The temptation is everywhere, the taste palette is being expanded, so is the waist line. The exercise I’m trying to do is just insufficient to keep up with the calories intake. No wonder obesity is a problem.

Ok, obesity is not the problem, I am the problem. Obesity is just the side effect. Stage 1 – acceptance of problem. I give in to the temptations of food. But my mum always say, don’t waste food. Of course, I selectively not waste specific food over others, like chocolate over bitter melon.

Ok, mum’s words of wisdom is not wise when applied selectively. Back to Stage 1, acceptance of problem. I can’t seem to escape Stage 1, how shall I proceed on to Stage 2 – solving the problem? Incidentally, with one stroke of luck/curse, a solution presented itself which bypassed both Stage 1 and Stage 2 – i’m having food indigestion. Great, just what I need to resist temptations.

Sometimes, we just need something to kick start breaking a particular habit, like eating too much, or exercising too little. We know the signs – expanding waist line, trouble walking up the stairs, trousers not fitting, bragging about how active I once was etc… We see these signs coming as well, yet we choose to ignore them, or procastinate as long as we can, hoping the problem will just go away.

I guess the problems will not go away as what’s referred to as problems are actually side effects of the main problem – me. I need to change first before tackling the “problems”. The “lucky” ones, like me, will have indigestion, something mild that can’t kill you, yet. The unlucky ones will have something they couldn’t recover from, e.g. lung cancer from smoking, a stroke, or a fatal heart attack.

So, choose life, and make your own kick-start before something else make it for you!

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Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.

- Albert Einstein

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Have you got a mentor? A guide in life that you want to aspire to? Have you got an eye on that manager’s position for some time now but you are still unable to fit into that position? Do you feel like you’re trying to catch up with that someone just so you can actually BE more like that someone, be it a mentor, a position, a competitor, a friend, someone you love, or even someone you hate? Do you feel tired playing catch up?

A sportsman trains hard so that he can beat that champion who was just faster or stronger the last time. An employee works harder than the next person so that she can reach the next rung on the corporate ladder. A boyfriend spends more time and effort with that someone special so that he can fend off all competition and be the ultimate winner. A friend tries to catch up with another friend with what’s going on with her life and find out if they’re still on the same wavelength. A parent tries to find out what his son is up to so that he still recognises his son. Does any of these apply to you?

We all find ourselves catching up with someone at some point in life, whether we do it consciously or not. This is sometimes a good thing, as only by trying to catch up will we actually improve ourselves. The flip side of catching up is summed up by a common Chinese proverb – there will always be a higher mountain. Put it differently, will you ever know that you have caught up? by following the exact same path as a predecessor, will you end up at the same point on the mountain? or worse, when you think you’ve caught up, what if you find yourself climbing the wrong mountain?

I was working late one night when a very senior manager came over and asked about my work. He went on to ask if it was really necessary that i worked late that night (he is a really nice boss!). What I remembered from the conversation with him was an advice he gave me – always choose your battle.

Some battles are worth fighting for. Some are not. Not all battles are meant to be won. Victory for a battle may not mean victory for you.

By playing catch up with someone, you’re setting yourself a goal, and that goal post is fixed in your mind. The person may have moved on, but you still cling on to that imaginary goal post. You will battle your way through so that you eventually (and hopefully) end up in a place you want to be.

I think setting up a goal post is important. You have to know where you want to shoot the ball. But we can only use that goal post as a guide, and not as an end. We’ve heard of the saying “the journey is more important than the goal”. I believe the choice of journey is more important than being in any journey. It’s not just about enjoying the journey or keeping calm in the journey while battling hard. The journey itself is an important choice. The path will always need to be reassessed according to yourself. Your level of maturity may have changed, your thought process may have changed, your perception of life and the world may have changed, the environment may have changed. You will have to look at your current path and see whether this is still the path you want to walk on.

Remember, you have a choice. You always have a choice. So choose your battle, and don’t just play catch up.

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Bonsai, the art of cultivating a tree in a small pot. What has this got to do with the big boys? by that i mean large corporations!

I don’t myself grow anything green. i’ve even had a cactus died in my house! i guess that sums up the traces of any green genes i have in my DNA make up… (i do remind myself that they could be dormant, until maybe the next generation… can’t really see myself mutating in my life time!) but speaking to a friend this morning, due to the outgrowth of the only plant he displays in a non-plant related shop, he had to change his pot. He also made a passing comment on how you need to shape the plant when it’s young such that it doesn’t outgrow the pot easily, or rather, make full use of the space in the existing pot.

His comment somehow reminds me of bonsai, how people painstakingly mould the plant into a shape. Initially, the owner of the bonsai (let’s call this person the bonsaier for simplicity) has to let it grow and see what kind of shape it’ll take. When the growth is to a certain level, the bonsaier will have to mould it with some support (wire frames come to mind!) and trim it now and again to keep that mould. If the bonsaier allows the plant to grow on past a threshold level without any intervention, it could easily outgrow its existing environment.

A large corporation will also need to grow its staff from before a certain threshold level, the infancy stage. A free reign although promotes flexibility and creativity, if undisciplined, will just be wasted and discarded, causing frustration on both the corporation and the employee. The corporation will think it has wasted all the resources on the employee, and the employee will think that all his/her creative energy has been let out in all directions, but nothing comes out on the other end.

So if you ever think of being frustrated as an employee, don’t fight discipline as though it restricts who you actually want to be. Think of it as a focus for your creative energies. Suddenly, all your creative energy will seem to flow like the river.

If you’re the boss… just think of the bonsai.

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