Leaving A Trail

A year-and-a-half old journal entry.  A reminder… for another soul… and for joy…

Half past nine in the evening.  Traveling down Riverside Drive to Mount Seymour Parkway on my way to Mountain Highway, with the blinding lights of cars coming from the opposite direction, taking a very narrow path, and being all alone in that lane is a mixture of fear (when you’re not properly geared up), excitement and thrill.  It’s liberating!  I got my wheels.  Model: Cheetah 12 mountain bike — a two-wheeler!  :D  I got a helmet on.  Ain’t that cool?  Now I don’t have to depend on anyone to drive me to and from work.  Given time, the 20-minute frequent bike rides will probably give me a hard sexy butt I won’t be needing kickboxing, spirulina or yoga.  Biking is such a splendid way to keep in shape and maintain balance — body, heart, mind, and soul.

Being on the road does great things to the psyche.  Be it a ride on a bus, car, train, or bike (the greater).  As you keep your physical self in tune with your surroundings, in rhythm with the vehicle, you’re mentally aware of the road signs, traffic lights, fellow travelers, other vehicles, and danger.  Your heart leaps for joy for the sheer experience of being at that particular moment, purely connected with the present, and with your inner self.

As in biking, I find deeper connection with myself in writing.  I speak my emotional truth, allowing myself to be known in my wholeness, my longing and shame exposed.  This extends to my human relationships.  Deep connection with oneself beget deep connection with others.  When I start to make myself matter to me, I make people matter more to me.  When I take care of myself, I can take better care of my loved ones.  The change begins within.  Through writing, I came to realize I was an anti-social, hiding behind indifference just as a child hides behind her mother’s skirt;  hiding my pain, fear, and bitterness behind anger; then gradually bringing it all to the surface.

Just as fever is a symptom of a disease, anger is a symptom of a deeper problem much too awful to face.  Until you welcome and accept pain, it’ll just keep rearing its ugly head in the form of rage.  Making friends with pain will eventually stop the anger.  Allowing yourself to feel it until you grow tired and bored of it that you will eventually drop it.  I found my core issues.  No way would I beat myself up with crazy, dark thoughts nor allow myself to ever again get lost in my own wilderness.  Anger is an outmoded feeling I no longer want to wear around my heart.  It’s well-deserving to be chucked.

Pain is a given when you open yourself up to the whole world… but you become transformed.  You develop faith in yourself by allowing others to know you because they make you see lovely, hidden parts of yourself you’ve been blind to.  You meet God’s beautiful creatures who tell you and show you their faith in you.  You find faith in yourself and extend that to other creatures as well.  You learn to deeply appreciate the criticisms, bluntness, and honesty of genuine people who tell you things such as having lipstick on your teeth, dry seeds of sleep in the corner of your eyes, your breath stinks, or your pants’ zippers is open… knowing they mean well, instead of being offended, hurt and angry.

It takes the blunt honesty of someone to let us see the sides of us which we are unaware of, or have been neglecting, to improve us and keep us on track.  My aunt’s comment on my photo in the maiden issue of eFootprints magazine sent me to fits of laughter and overwhelming love for her.  Here’s my dear aunt in her late-70’s telling me these, “You look healthy but, please, do something to look more modern; fix your hair better, dress more in-step with the times.  You dress so oldish like a 50-year old lady… I don’t mean to have you look, all of a sudden, ultra-modern that you’ll be running to the store to buy new cleavage-showing, upper thigh length skirts or dresses.  NO-O-O.  I mean, improve your looks by not looking so oldish and backward.  Change your hairstyle (no ‘pinggol‘).  Use more color in your dress…”   She’s perfectly right.  I got outmoded hairstyle, I’ve been wearing my hair tied-up since primary school.  I wear outmoded eyeglasses.  I got outmoded wardrobe: jeans, sweatshirts, rubber shoes, hi-cut boots, and gray, black, brown, dark blue, dull-colored tops.

My aunt’s letter was followed by phone calls from Los Angeles.  The first call I’d been out shopping for a new wardrobe:  bright colored shirts (so motorists could see me on the road when I travel at night); those yoga pants — not the shiny cycling pants! — so I can pedal comfortably; soft running shoes; reflectors, bike lights, backpack…my biking gears.  I was back in the house on her second call.  “Have you been to church?”, she asked.  “No, Auntie I stopped going to church years earlier.”  There’s the big “WHY?” and then the lengthy talk on religion.  I used to be afraid to communicate with her, on the phone or through letters.  Being a retired lawyer, she’s sharp, blunt, and keen on the other person’s words.  I heard years ago that she returned a cousin’s letter to her… after marks of corrections.  Speaking my mind had always been my biggest problem.  I get easily intimidated by other’s status, older age, intelligence, power, or just mere looks (Oh, geez, my knees melt conversing with a good-looking dude, my mind flies out the window, I lose my tongue!)  My distorted belief that my opinion doesn’t matter, my thinking shallow, my beliefs foolish, and people are out to swallow me up whole and eat me alive… that’s pure fear.  I used to think very lowly and too tiny of myself.  I had a very strong sense of ego-self, too overly conscious of others’ opinion of me that I ended up hushing my inner voice and spent a lifetime being a yes-person and ass-kisser wanting to please everyone to avoid outer conflict (but pushing deeper inner ones).

When you fear expressing your thoughts, longings and needs you end up being resentful.  The resentment builds up, eats you up inside, and blow you to bits.  The masochistic case of lack of faith in one’s self will get you nowhere forward or upward, but rather backward and downward.  How you view yourself greatly affects your relationship with others, the church, the whole universe.

I may have turned agnostic at one point in my life but never into an atheist.  I may have lost my religion but I worship Him on my own special way.  I chose to have a direct line to God.  My relationship with my old church had gone astray yet I’m not out to find a new one.  It doesn’t work that way in any relationship — when something doesn’t go right in the existing one, you run away fast to a new one.  When the old problems and issues had not been addressed, the same old ones will keep resurfacing in the next relationship, then the next, and the next, ad infinitum…  The problem usually lies within yourself, and your relationship with yourself can definitely be mended before you can mend your other relationships.  If a relationship remains unmendable and conflicts remain unresolvable, you move on to a new one… where you can grow into a better being.

I had met two atheists.  One in the past, who doesn’t believe in the story of Creation but believes in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.  The other, in the present, who believes that believers in God are weak and stupid who got nothing else to believe in.  On this end, I’m a weak one who draw strength from that one belief in the One-Up-There which make me believe in a whole lot more wonderful things… including myself.  And because of that, I don’t allow other people’s beliefs (or non-beliefs) shatter mine and sway me in their way of thinking nor will make it a barrier between us.  I listen but I don’t need to agree.  Recognizing and accepting our differences matter most.

Sometimes we see parts of ourselves in a person, like a mirror.  If we hate him for it, it tells us we haven’t come to terms nor done any positive change with that dark parts of us; when we feel compassion and understanding towards that person, we’re at home with ourselves, extending it to others.  We reach out a hand then we completely open our arms and embrace the whole world.  Instead of looking for sore, dark spots, we seek beauty in all beings and non-beings, even the itsy bitsy tiny things.  When we do stumble on non-wondrous things, we may momentarily lose our balance but prop ourselves up fast and steady.

There are things you learn which you cannot unlearn.  It become a part of you.  Without practice you become poor at it.  With lots of practice you become better and better at it.  You never will forget the ways and tricks of doing it.  Just like love, life… and biking.  Though you haven’t been on a bike for ages, you still will know how to ride it.  You may be wobbly at first, uncomfortable, and unconfident finding your balance but you’ll soon get the gist of it, love it and find such joy in doing it.  You get safety gears to protect yourself, reflectors to make your presence known, and open all your senses.  Then you take the busy highway and soon consider venturing out into the woods… nah, nah, not on a bike but on foot.