Five things to keep in mind always

FIVE beautiful images to keep in mind …. always.

- hourglass, mozart, trapeze and the dots and a jigsaw puzzle.

(some taken from Margaret Lobeinstine’s RENAISSANCE SOUL book)

Consider : THE HOURGLASS.

Why do we always picture ourselves living at the top half of the hourglass, where time is always slipping away?

Instead, why don’t we imagine ourselves in the bottomhalf of the hourglass?

There, every minute is followed by another minute that comes pouring in. Every hour’s followed by another hour and everyday is just the first of many days to come …

We don’t have to worry about time being “spent’ or “lost’.

Panicking or being anxious about the future will only eat into our time, it will not add anything to it.

USE time, don’t try so hard to save it.

Consider : sharing our gifts, like MOZART

Mozart lived between 1756-1791, a time when Europe was still a largely agrarian society.

The nobility, which accounted for only 2 percent of the population, owned from 15-40 percent of the country’s most critical resource: land.

Consequently, a large part of the population lived with extreme hunger as a daily fact of life. Did Mozart spend his time doling out food to the hungry or crusading for change?

Obviously not.

What was he doing? Being paid to write minuets for the nobility, so they could dance to the very best. Yet, because Mozart was willing to share his gift, innumerable social workers, emergency room staff, teachers, personal care attendants and others doing stressful jobs can even today relax themselves with his melodies.

Mozart’s gift from 250 years back help them continue giving gifts of their own.

What is your GIFT and are you sharing it?
Sometimes that’s more important than just putting food on the table.

Consider : Fear and the trapeze act

Fear is absolutely normal, absolutely human response to the unknown. It is part of our survival instinct.

We fear that we will lose our footing, that doors may close on us and that we’ve burned our bridges.

But consider a trapeze act in a circus.

A trapeze leaps through midair swinging from one bar to another, scary, yes, but also SUBLIME.

Learn to replace fear with enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm comes from the Greek word entheos, which means “filled with God.”

consider : the big picture : CONNECTING the DOTS.

This is the game we all play when we were children and remember how excited it was to draw a nice picture, often complex one, most times beautiful by just connecting the dots?

Here’s what Steve Jobs (Apple, I-pod) has to say:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma.”

To that I would add: You have to trust GOD.

“”in Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will,” – Ephesians 1;11.

consider : the JIGSAW puzzle

We were made to be part of a WHOLE. By ourselves, we will never find our fit and our purpose, the meaning of our lives. Only together with other unique, specially created pieces will we make up a beautiful picture.

The picture is INCOMPLETE without any one piece. Our life’s purpose is to fit in and help others find their place in the puzzle, NOT shine by ourselves.

instantly stupid – the remote control-ed life

The instant experience.

We all want it QUICK and we wanted it five minutes ago. Yeah, you know that feeling …

The REMOTE CONTROL is probably one of the greatest inventions of all times and potentially, one of the most dangerous too.

Imagine …  if tomorrow your remote control starts malfunctioning or it takes one whole minute (that’s 60 long seconds!) for the TV to respond to every button you press..

How many people would die of a heart attack or suffer a stroke?

In a famously quoted line from IBM history, it was said that an executive once predicted that the (personal computer) PC would sell maybe a few thousand pieces.

It’s a little unfair to laugh at that executive. He would have been right if windows 95 wasn’t quickly followed by windows 98 and XP.

Imagine if computers were as slow as they were, just 15 years ago, do you think there would be mass demand for it? Lot at what VISTA (slower, supposed to be better) has done.

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The result is that we have a fast-paced life.

“Come on people” as queues want to make you want to shout.

The world didn’t get faster though. The SUN still rises and sets at the same pace it always has.

We still have 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – more or less. So its just YOU.

And lifetimes haven’t changed much at all. All of us, still have just one lifetime – no one has yet been reincarnated.

Pushed by technology and society, it is you that chose to run faster, work harder, so-called live MORE – it is you who rushed yourself in the toilet this morning – because you think you do not have time to waste.

You have too much to do and too much to think about.

Do you?

Stress happens when you can’t do it all and you think you should.

You look with green-eye on the many experiences that you will not have, things you cannot buy and chores you have not done.

So you are always chasing after something …

There will be not enough time, not enough money, not enough energy – not enough, just not enough.

Good things come to those who WAIT. and wait you must or you will be drinking ribena instead of wine.

Let me break it to you :Real life is s-l-o-w.

RICE, for example, takes months to grow.
Trees can take years.
Mountains need a millennium or more
and Land takes many times more than that…

Can you rush the rising and setting of the sun?
Can you make the Ocean waves roll faster?

So- why are you in a hurry? Where are you rushing to?

why are countries competing to build the tallest towers, grandest stadiums and biggest malls, longest highways etc … ?

We were made to think, to contemplate, to feel, to love and to converse. And to take care and enjoy nature.

These are our shared human experiences. They help make the MOMENTS that make up our lives.

But instead, in our fast-paced life, we often miss the MOMENTS and relish instead in doing without thought, seize the day rather than enjoying it, meeting deadlines rather than seeking perfection, we exchange information rather than converse, we look for solutions not explore options. we build unthinking cities and fill it with unthinking citizens.

- and worst of all, we prefer to REPLACE rather than LOVE and fix that which is broken.

Fighting against our true nature, trying to fit several lifetimes into just ONE,

why are we surprised then that when we truly have a quiet moment alone, time to spend by ourselves, we often feel uncomfortable.

We fear that this means we are lonely, miserable, unfulfilled, even unhappy, confused and we think ……

there must be something INSTANT, a quick solution within reach …

ah,… where’s the REMOTE CONTROL?

click. click. click.

end of thought.

…. and we let television take over.

Lessons from a COW

time, stress and problems

if a problem is defined as the gap between reality and expectation, then stress happens when you feel that you may not be able to narrow the gap in time.

The most stressful thing driving society today is MONEY, followed closely by POWER, both of which many of us feel we cannot have enough of.

We are the post-war generation who are brought up on movies, television, newspapers and now internet  – to  be superstars, millionaires, celebrity worshippers , who want equality but believe at the same time that we are SPECIAL.

We worship leisure, we hate work but we’d love nothing more than to strike it rich.

Stress happens when we have to wait for these good things to come.

If you put a watch on a cow, or if you put a clock on a mountaintop -

can you speed up the rising of the sun, can you make the cow piss faster, give more milk?

Then why do we put a clock on ourselves, right there on our wrists and force ourselves – because no one has a gun to your head – to run the RAT RACE ?

But even if we are NOT in the rat race, problems will inevitably EXIST. It is the persistent condition of imperfect human beings and the result of community living. Everything will not be as we expect it to be, expect that.

Narrowing the gap of expectations and reality  is what drives us and it’s a good thing.

It’s what makes us want to wake up every morning and try again.

To time it, I am not so sure.

Life is not a race against time.

Life is not about getting from point A to point B.

What is progress but a development plan to enslave the masses to working for the profit of the few?

Who cares what they are going to say about you when you are dead?

Who cares if you have a good death or not?

What’s more important is that you have a good life, that you enjoy the here and now – that you appreciate what you have in case you lose it, that you smile at adversity because you know nothing cannot be overcome.

Listen to yourself and make up your own mind.

And enjoy the moment – everyone of it ….

“So never worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own.” – Matthew 6:34

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Does God make transportation for ROBOTS?

Call it what you will – mass rapid transit (MRT) in Singapore, the TUBE (in London), the subway (New York) and Mass transit Rail (MTR) in Hong Kong and other names but the same creature exist in Tehran, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere in sizeable cities where many people live and work.

The city train.

I avoid the MRT and take it only when it’s the fastest way to get from point A to point B. Because it depresses me when I do.

Everytime I take the city train and look at the indifferent, sad, tired eyes, scanning around for advertisements for the things they can buy, thumbing through their handphones looking for a connection, or plugging out through plugged in music – it makes me sick.

It makes me sad to think how easily we sell our dreams for the sake of putting food on the table, how we ignore what makes us special for the sake of   FITTING IN.

It’s symptomatic – mass rapid transit – MRT – is the place where the government puts the rest of us who are not wealthy enough to buy a car, those who can’t afford the freedom to drive where we want to.

So we are crammed together in a train, forced to fit in to a moving compartment, so that we can transported every morning to our assembly line offices to become the “base” of the economy and soon-to-be if not already “middle class” consumers. We make up the foundations of a developing economy and there is a reason they call it “middle class hell.”

I don’t enjoy an MRT journey, it is functional and sometimes that is how our lives have become as well - not special, just functional.

Fuck middle class dreams and its icon of imprisonment – the MRT.

Why should I settle for someone’s else’s dreams and be who they say I should be? Because we are special – because God made us so.

Each of us carry information, from generations and generations in our genetic make-up that is unique. We are all survivors for one reason or another.

Our dreams, which I believe is imprinted in our soul and sometimes come when we sleep directly from God.

Making them a reality is following God’s instructions, and being used for what we were made for.

A pencil is not a doorstopper. A fridge is not a paperweight.

Although it can also do that.

Instead, many of us try hard to fit in, to jump from company to company as soon as we leave school -  begging for jobs, or staying loyal to one company building a so-called career – neither of which allows us to fully utilize our talent.

I see many of these people on the MRT and that’s why it makes me sad.

Not that they are poor and cannot afford a taxi ride ( I don’t pity poverty)  but because MRT riders exude a smell. The smell of people who have no dreams and are happy to take the most convenient way out. They are only there because the government offer this as the most affordable way to get to work and they have to comply and even pay for the displeasure of being FIT IN – stuck in the middle between the smelly armpit guy and the woman who chats loudly on her cellphone.

To join the rest of society, to conform to the pressure of the morning crowd. You don’t know what you are missing if you don’t MRT – mass rapid transit – that is.

We are INVENTORS, all of us. We are CREATORS because we are made in God’s image. We are not assembly line workers – these are trained not created.

Corporations do but I don’t think God makes robots,  moreso transportation for them.

5 lessons from a humble pencil

5 lessons to learn from a humble pencil

1. Everything you do will always leave a mark
2. You can always correct the mistakes you make (just turn the pencil around)
3. What is important  is what is inside you and not outside of you
4. In life you will undergo painful sharpenings which will make you better in what you do.
5.To be the best you can be, you must allow yourself to be held and guided by the Hand (God) that holds you.

A longer version of this lesson, from a Sikkhism Guru, can be found >here <

Is TRANSFORMERS distasteful and wrong?

The SINS of making a blockbuster  film

“If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn’t cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation.

When you’ve got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong.” -  legendary comics writer Alan Moore once said, explaining why he does not get involved in movies.

Moore wasn’t talking specifically about Transformers and he said this sometime back.

But his statement rings true as Hollywood  Blockbusters keep shattering  BOX OFFICE records year after year. But of course, Transformers was a comic book before (way before) and now it’s a near billion-dollar franchise.

This week, TRANSFORMERS 2  earned $387 million worldwide over a 5-day weekend. Last year, The DARK KNIGHT did similar business.

The same REUTERS report later described TRANSFORMERS 2 as -

“The storylines were similar: robots rampage across the landscape, and things explode.”

It reportedly cost $200 million to make.

We may not need it but I am sure we are going to get Transformers 3,4, and 5.

Have a heart, people. Don’t just let the market decide everything.

a mystery and a secret …

There is a difference.

A  mystery is withholding information that you want to reveal only when the time is right.  A secret is the opposite, something you can learn but never talk about afterwards.

For more than a century, Television, movies, books, comics and most popular media have mixed it up.

They have made MURDER a mystery and kept SEX a secret, when it should be the other way around.

Don’t believe me ? Try google for “murder” and then for “sex” and see what you get.

Is life like a playground or an arrow ?

One way is to think of your lifetime as a flying arrow, shot from the bow from the moment we are born and hits the target to rest only when we die. That way we are always flying in the air, straight ahead, in a set path – predetermined by the conditions under which we were launched and kept in check by the environment around us, all the time heading for our DESTINY.

But a better way is see life as a series of hellos and goodbyes. In this view, we are children in a ever-expanding playground constantly looking for something new to try – so many possibilities always open to us – some of which we jump upon and explore with some depth, others which we only peek at from a distance and still some which we ignore completely – but there is always something waiting for us to explore and we don’t get bored. And we will play until we are called home.

I like the second way better.

monoculture – let’s all love the same thing!

That’s what a monoculture is. It’s everywhere, and it’s all the same. And it takes up alien cultures and digests them and shits them out in a homogenous building-block shape that fits seamlessly into the vast
blank wall of the monoculture. This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn’t we? It is only our money that allows commercial
culture to flower. If we didn’t want to live like this, we could have changed it any time, by not fucking paying for it. So lets celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger.

- warren ellis – from Transmetropolitan comic

Why politicians hate God

God and Politicians are essentially competing for the same job – to control the destiny of a group of people, decide their future and take care of their needs.

So why would you, a fair-minded citizen, ever believe a politician, who has the state-owned media in his pocket, when he blatantly spread lies on TV and in the news – telling about how troubled the world is – giving you mounting and “truthful” evidence that God is dead.

Wake up people, especially you dumb-fuck Americans! The politician  needs a chaotic world to stay in power, because this gives him managerial authority – be it to start wars, spend money or save your masters’ business or fight evil. That’s how that incompetent idiot Bush got 8 years, 16 if you count his father too! Thanks to September 11.

The U.S. president’s most important job is the Commander in Chief, who can approve the military’s nearly $1 trillion spending a year.  Do your own research … the U.S. military is the biggest corp. in America.

“Change” as U.S. president Obama famously promise, after the media demonised Bush for him. And so, even a inexperienced black politician could stroll laughingly into a white house after that.

Shaping your worldview through media control – to keep you forever scared, feeling vulnerable and insecure about the wild and volatile world -where terrorist are everywhere, even if they only make up less than 0.000001 percent of the world’s population.

It is all part of the politicians plan to guarantee his employment and maybe even secure a pension plan by the side.

Unless of course, you prefer God to take care of your affairs.

Because, think about it : if God really exists (as some of us say we believe he does) - that means some greater power is out there taking care of our future, in Jesus’ case, even handing out eternal lifetimes, bread for free – why do we need politicians for?

And so, many politicians counter this. The U.S. president is one, Iran is another – and swear themselves into power abusing the name of God -

“…so help me God…” they say in their swearing in ceremonies, claiming false legitimacy as agents, even spokesman for God, just in case …

… for they know who the job really belongs to.