the feeling that you get when you don't know who you are or what you need to do. and you can't get out.


that there is nothing.

but everything else around you keeps moving away.

what i read and what i think

from "do hard things" by alex and brett harris

five kinds of hard things

1. things that are outside your comfort zone.

2. things that go beyond what is expected or required.

3. things that are too big to accomplish alone.

4. things that don't earn immediate payoff.

5. things that challenge the cultural norm.

*ideas that were come up by teenagers, the fact that i cannot do them though i am past that age is disappointing, though understandable that such things require lifelong learning. with reading this as well as the observations made at men's group camp, i feel like doing hard things can be a good theme for this term's men's cell.*

from "you can experience... a spiritual life" by james emery white

three deceptions of spiritual living

1. deception of morality

2. deception of knowledge

3. deception of religion

*another shock here. i came across this book when i made a trip to the scbc library, because i didn't feel like talking to people at church. i read through the first chapter and found the deceptions of spiritual living. i thought that i was a good person, that i knew a lot about christianity, and that i did the right things at church. oh how i've been deceived.*

from "the five love languages (for singles)" by gary chapman

the five love languages

1. quality time

2. acts of service

3. gifts

4. physical affection

5. words of affirmation

*loving and unloving at the same time. when i try to think about the things that i do, it is almost never a deliberate act of love toward other people, and often the exact opposite of loving. yet there are many things that i do by nature that cause many (certain) people to notice the intricate caring that i give. reminds me most of doing hard things.. be it that my conditional loving be expanded to much more. *

i'm a smart guy.
i've got a few talents.
and i'm a good person.


but i'm not as smart as i think i am.
and i'm not as talented as i think i am.
and i'm not as good a person as i think i am.

that episode of fairly oddparents where timmy gets made fun of, so he wishes that everyone looks exactly the same. and the entire world end up turning into gray blobs. because of that, all the fairy godparents can't find their kids and turn to dust. and cosmo and wanda freak out because they are about to turn to dust because they also can't find timmy among all the gray blobs. so timmy had to find some way to make himself stand out in all the gray blobs.

and then they find him and timmy wishes everything back to normal so that everyone looks just what they look like again.

we take a lot of fun in comparing people with other people or other things, and sometimes it's for a good laugh and other times it's an avenue to understand someone from a different perspective. once that has passed, one may end up musing further on how accurate the comparison truly is.

i have been compared to chandler byng because of his wit and sarcastic humour (haven't we all been compared to all of the friends?). i thought that was pretty accurate, but after dismissing it as comparison of fun, i proceeded to think about it more. and that's when i remembered mr heckles.

who is mr heckles? well haven't you seen that episode? mr heckles is the friends' upstairs neighbour, and he's appeared on multiple occasions. but mr heckles' last appearance was when he died. during that episode, chandler had been single for some time, and he didn't know why. while the friends grieved for the passing of their neighbour, they were allowed (for some reason) to search through his stuff. chandler rummaged through some of his boxes and found some of mr heckles' old yearbook. as he flipped through it, he found that there were numerous comments next to the pictures of girls. comments like "too fat." "buck teeth." "crooked nose." "manly voice." as chandler read on, he realized that.. "I'M mr heckles!" that he was still single because he was so picky on little imperfections that he wouldn't give any girls a chance.

now if i were to be commenting on why i'm single, i would obviously be digging my own grave for people to make fun, but no that wasn't what i was referring to. what i was referring to was how i've been very easily agitated or annoyed at something/someone for the past few years. to listen to myself talk, i could learn firstly of how stupid some of the things i say actually sound (haha), but also how annoying my complaints about my pet peeves of other people are. my most recent episode of that involved a harmless conversation of which i was trying to steer towards asking the person about their opinion on marriage and the planning that they've done so far about marriage and future. i asked a tangent question about whether they have thought about what kind of home they would live in, but the response i was given was approximately asking me "who i thought i was, and why i would think i deserve to know such information because i'm not that close with her". to me that was a rude and cocky response, especially in the light that i was just trying to direct a conversation to something more meaningful for the group of people in the room to also participate in. i personally didn't feel the question that sensitive at all. my response to her response was frustration and annoyance, and i just gave up that effort altogether.

sometimes there are situations where my frustrations toward people are justified (to me), but who says what justification is enough? i used to think that my tolerance for people was very high, but over the years, for some reason, it has slipped away, and things like repetitive statements, high pitched or odd noises, defiant interceptions of my purposes or other things that might bother me (better not list so much haha) has led me to become easily agitated with people, and, as a result, more critical of people as well.

where is that patience to dismiss all those little things that bother you?
perhaps then life would become a little bit more beautiful.
perhaps then others will know that i'm a boy with a heart.