Strong woman, you stand steady in the winds.

Strength. So often associated with the male and mightier sex. So often misjudged to be something the women lack. So often portrayed inaccurately by the masculinity and larger stature of physique. So often unassuming, like the calm before a storm.

Strong woman, you hold steadfast to your beliefs; your steadiness is derived from the firm hold your roots have grasped; not the form and breath and width of your dominance. Strong woman, you are the tree that swings with the wind, yet still stays rooted and sincere.

Strength doesn’t reveal itself in gracious moments, champagne glasses tinkering in the background. Strength unveils its unpresumptious nature in spite of the silence and lack of boasts.

Strong woman, your quiet is your peace; your few words are your carefully chosen weapons, straight to what you need. Strong woman, your respect is gained when others lose theirs, because your confidence shines bright and casts the rest in silhouettes.

Strength is benignly sturdy, revealed through deliberate and concise planning. Strong woman, you stand steady in the winds.

Bleakness of conformity

What a terribly disturbing phenomena–

“Japan is a conformist society, and life, it is said, is bleak for those who do not fit in.”

Secret garden lost beyond the hills

Perhaps it is true, like Spencer guessed, that I am a private person, whose affairs are closely guarded like a treasure chest beholding great jewels. I never thought of myself as full of secrets; nothing was there that I intentionally hid from others; yet so much there was that I just did not feel I needed to share with a world in which I hardly could understand, or with the many that seem to know me, but never honestly felt the beating of my heart.

I sometimes feel like a lost castle surrounded by a moat that never has the gate extended over. People travel nearby and admire the structure from afar, and claim to have seen and appreciated the beauty that seemed to emanate from inside out; but apart from photographs lauded with smiling faces, they do not have memories of living there, of the sad times when cries were withheld until they could be held no more, or of the building it used to be before it finally became a castle and ultimately a fortress.

Secrets are guarded when the guardian knows that no one else will keep it well; for secrets are guarded because sometimes there are so few that the guardian must tell.

Like a secret garden locked in a far off corner of the fields, behind the yellow daffofils in a sprig of sunburst colours, I guard my secrets or my thoughts with equal fervour; afraid of any intrusion that might ruin the little haven of fortitude that I had chanced so pleasantly upon. I cover it up; hide its opening with straws of hay and bits of broken wet wood to deter anyone from venturing further than his eyes can see. I am selfish; i dont really want to invite anyone in except for those I trust. But trust is hard to give, and even harder to maintain. I hide the secret garden, and I hide it well.

So perhaps it is true, he may be right; somewhere I’ve hidden the secret garden, lost beyond the hills.

Time for a wake-up call.

I need DRIVE.

I need friends who will drive me and motivate me to push myself beyond the limits set by others. I need people who I see myself growing together with for years ahead; friends whose constant aim to improve themselves and development of character spur me to better myself with each passing day.

The past 6 weeks have been repetitive and humdrum; I do the same data entry work everyday; I rotate between meeting friends, trying to catch up with what each of them are doing in their internships; but I feel so empty and unfulfilled; like a huge crater in the middle of the desert; dry and desperate for an oasis.

I am sick of conversations that lead nowhere; of constant discussion of the same old issues; I feel that with some people I am forever stuck in a rut; a same cycle of topics that I dreadfully want to stop discussing. I crave a new burst of enthusiasm and encouragement; I want to meet people who have so much passion in them for all the right reasons to make me want to burn with fire just like them. I need a goal with a proper target that I can focus my attention on and know that at any point in time, I am nearer to that goal than I was before.

I want to make every day an improvement to my life; not one day a waste that I will look back and waste more time regretting. I want to live a life, each moment moving forward with the exuberance and adrenaline rush that comes with knowing where I am heading, and so very excited at reaching there because I know I have come so far and put in so much.

I decided today to embark on a tangible project– research on poverty and income disparity in Asia; and how microfinancing has helped to eliminate a tiny bit of that. I hope anyone of you who has information on that will be kind enough to share your knowledge; let’s be iron sharpening iron. To contribute is to give a part of yourself, and in doing so, is to learn much more than you would have keeping it to yourself.

Dear friends, I honestly need encouragement and motivation from you, and if you think you would like to be that one person who would want to push me further, to help me and to help yourself, please, by all means do so. Thank you.

Intertwined

Love, so rare a chance,
So happenstance.

Knowing the beat of yours,
My heart soars.

Your mind so entwined,
With my thoughts so inclined.

The patterns formed with each of your breaths taken,
Map themselves around the atlas of my soul, forsaken.

Yours is a love I found so preciously rare,
Gratitude overflows for your love always there.

I love you. Wo ai ni. Aiishiteru.

Forgotten pearls

I speak to this someone in solitude,
The one who knows me well.
Whom else may I find solace in,
In whom else may I dwell?

I like to talk to this someone,
Who makes me feel like no one else.
This very one not at all like some,
That wish me be somebody else.

We are all fools that have no where to hide
Falling in great disguise
To shield our precious fallible hearts
That like oysters if opened must die.

We forget that we have pearls
All waiting in full glory.
To push open the hard cracked shell
Bursting to tell their story.

We can’t remember what we
Refused to commit to memory;
So we choose instead to flip and move on
And choose no more to tarry.

This was written after being inspired by Shakespeare’s famous comedy As You Like It, whose most well know phrase has been so oft used that no one really knew its source:

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” — Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

Such a luxury most do not embrace

Literature is a luxury; popular fiction is a neccesity.

How very true; we feed ourselves everything but the very best; we read mostly trash yet do not bother flipping pages of greater writers; we mix around and engage in flippant chatter with inconsequential people.

We are a sum of the things we read, eat and the people we hang around with. How does that work for you?

Thirst

What life do we search for besides the mundane;
What is it from life that we so unsatiatingly seek?

We were not created for dull, repetitive lives;
Without a meaning we cannot survive.

Snakes and ladders

We were told to climb the ladder of success
They called it the corporate ladder;
But those who tried to climb it know best–
Beware the snakes that slide and slither.

you promised me…

you often promised me so many things
things that I felt you did not fulfil,
so often was I sad and disappointed
because what I got was not what I wanted.

you promised me the sky, and gave me the universe instead;
you promised me the sea, but thrusted me with the deep blue ocean.
you held my hand to touch the rain and i found instead
those beautiful snowflakes, sweet as maple pancakes.

you promised me one season– autumn,
where the auburn leaves fell and crowned my head,
but what I found surprised me more,
you allowed me winter,summer, spring and much much more.

you promised me the pretty flowers in bloom, 
you said they would sing for me and I would swoon; 
yet you presented me with a whole field of not just yellow daffodils,
but also the dancing butterflies and chriping birds in slew.

you promised me the whistling wind,
you said I would break into a song;
who was to know you brought nature, friends and all
and orchestrated the loveliest musical I will ever recall?

you promised me so many things; 
yet to deliver them was not your goal, 
you always strove to exceed and ride
high above the wave of my expectations on which you thrive and glide

you promised me and now I have stopped getting disappointed
which I did because you never gave me what you promised,
but always provided that you agreed to, 
and yet also so much more.