Be Not So Fearful

The title of the post is a title of a song I first heard in The Walking Dead. The song was accompanying the first group who reached Terminus and it made such an impression on me. The lyric was quite hopeful even though in the context of The Walking Dead, it's kinda sad because they're walking into a trap. Still, I chose the song to start my playlist. What playlist? I'm off to New Zealand and as usual when I travel, I make a playlist. It's another alone trip and I have to say I am very very scared from the beginning. My mom texted me yesterday and I told her that I am already in "pasrah" mode, that's a word with no equivalent in English. It's something like ... I have stopped resisting, I have stopped fighting, and I am leaving it to God and the universe. It hasn't been a very encouraging planning process. Booked 5 day tours and 2 of them are not available. Darn it. I have to say even though I travel alone, I am not that adventurous. I often booked day tours (is it like cheating doing this?) and I don't do backpacking and stay in hostels. As I was researching this, I stumbled into a blog of an Indonesian girl who backpacked alone in New Zealand and I thought that was so awesome. Oh yeah, maybe it's surprising, mom actually didn't want me to travel anymore because she thinks I should be saving my money and I think she's worried. I told her about the plan when I went home for Chinese New Year and she didn't even ask whom I will travel with. I guess she's already assuming that I'll be alone. She also told me that no matter what she says, I will still do what I want, right? Yes, I said and with that I guess my mom does what any mom can do at this point which is to be supportive. I am nervous, I am scared. I don't know if I was ever this scared in my other alone trips. I don't know why I am this scared now. I hope everything will be alright. I'll see you when I come back and here's the lyric from Be Not So Fearful. By the way, the second song in my playlist after Be Not So Fearful is Denison Witmer's, Keep Moving Brother, Keep Moving Sister. I am really trying to make myself brave.

Be not so nervous
Be not so frail
Someone watches you
You will not fail

Be not so nervous
Be not so frail
Be not so nervous
Be not so frail

Be not so sorry
For what you have done
You must forget them now
It's done

And when you wake up
You will find that you can run
Be not so sorry
For what you have done

Be not so fearful
Be not so pale
Someone watches you
You won't leave the rails

Be not so fearful
Be not so pale
Be not so fearful
Be not so pale

You must forget them now
It's done

And when you wake up
You will find that you can run
Be not so sorry
For what you have done

Be not so sorry
For what you have done

:) eKa @ 5:04:00 PM • 0 comments

A Lesson in Disappointment and Jealousy

I'm not so sure how to start this post, no actually I know how I should start this post and even the title above. I guess I am having second thought if I should write these thoughts at all. Sometime it's a good thing to just not say out whatever in your head and heart especially when the thoughts are formed due to emotional distress. I don't know why I feel the need to write this. Couldn't I just write about how everything is fine? It wouldn't matter perhaps because I don't think I have regular readers (?) who would so miss things in my life. However maybe by writing about the bad things, if someone with similar situations stumble into it, it would be good for that someone to know that he / she is not that alone or crazy to be feeling what he / she is feeling or thinking. I know I am really comforted when I found out other people also feel what I have felt. I'm not insane! So here we go.

Last year when I went to Japan, I made my way to Sapporo too all because I was planning to see some sakura. However mother nature cannot be that predictable sometime and though I have tried to shift around the dates following the forecast, until the end when I was there, it was still cold and there's no sakura. Sad. Disappointed. I remember thinking that it was God's way to teach me about having to deal with disappointment, that no matter how I tried, sometime things couldn't go the way I want it to be. In fact many things in your life just wouldn't go the way you want it to be. However, I just couldn't let it go and I know I haven't learned the lesson because I am feeling exactly the same thing now. I just feel that I have done the research, I have planned, I have tried so hard, why can't it happen the way it should happen in my plan? Why can't I be rewarded for my effort? Perhaps it's a tragedy that a 32-year old like me hasn't learned this life lesson and still get all riled up when things don't go my way. I'm such a child or perhaps the OCD is too great, too consuming. I just couldn't deal with it. I am sad and like a spoiled brat, I am angry that I have prayed and prayed and yet God is not giving me what I want. I watched Grey's Anatomy yesterday and April was having a fight with Jackson about her Christian faith and she said that it's a sad thing that he cannot have faith in something he cannot see and that made me question myself so much. If I have faith that God will take care of it, why do I keep on praying on it religiously everyday and what's with all the pessimism that has been hovering around me for a long time that nothing is quite right, things that I just take as "I have a bad feeling about this". With my faith not being that strong, why am I surprised that things are falling apart? I practically bring this to myself?

Casyrn went to Japan last week and I saw pictures of the beautiful sakura she took while she was there and there's this big jealousy that I didn't get to see all that. I know how bad that is to feel all that. I am thinking she has a much better trip than me because of the things that I didn't get to see while it's a fact that there were many great things in my trip, I got to see the giant Buddha of Nara and Kamakura, I got to see the amazing hall of Sanjūsangen-dō, I got to see the beautiful garden of Hase-dera, as well as many other things that had moved me. All in all, I have managed to experience something that many do not get the chance to experience and yet I am feeling sad about the fact that someone else managed to see beautiful flowers and I didn't?

As I went through these thoughts today, I remembered this small clip in CNN that I watched about its journalist giving poor chocolate farmers in Ivory Coast a taste of chocolate for the first time in their lives. These farmers have toiled all their lives for the chocolate beans and yet they have never tasted what chocolate taste like after it's been processed into the form we know all too well and take for granted. I remember the farmer's reaction was that he's laughing in glee and said, "c'est bon!". It's nice. There's just glee and no bitterness at all in the way they felt even though they worked so hard and was still very very poor because only a tiny bit of money from the amount we pay for our chocolate bar go to these farmers. As I remembered that, I was feeling what a bad person I am for not feeling satisfied and grateful for my good fortune. I am always seeing things that I don't have, the things missing in my life and I have difficulty reconciling that with my life. I guess that's why I am always so unhappy. I try to fix it, to hope, to pray, but things very often do not go the way I want it to be.

I think there is a lesson in all this. To feel okay when things don't work out the way I want it to be. To feel okay when other people have what they have. Perhaps most importantly to remember that God will always give me sustenance. It all seems like the right thing to say, but I am not there yet, and me the way I am it's like I don't have the discipline to pull myself out of all these negativity and keep my faith strong. It's been a long time now, I've joked about it, but I think I realize it now that my faith in God has wavered so strongly :( I guess the points of all these words is just to vent. I am planning something and yet things are not going the way I want it to be. I am filled with a lot of disappointment and I know I should be thankful that even though it's not according to what I want it to be, the fact that I get to do something is already beyond what other people can experience and also God may actually help make my backup plan work and perhaps it's going to be even more beautiful than my first plan.

Let me end this post with a movie write-up. Watched Transcendence yesterday. It actually has many interesting components, we have topics which were explored in HER, we have zombies (I call everything which cannot die as zombie), and we have the usual thought provoking topics like what is our consciousness and what happens to it when we die (something which came to my mind when I was really really young) and how technology that was made to make our lives better can actually make us not quite human anymore. Very interesting things coming together, but I don't find it mind blowing. So many awesome actors in it and Johnny Depp is a really beautiful person. It's an okay movie I think, but I guess some people would find it boring and not interesting at all, not the wee bit thought provoking because many humans don't put much care about how technology has had bad impacts in their lives. So that's it for me guys. I do hope things will work out for me as I hope they will work out well for you too. Take care!

:) eKa @ 8:03:00 PM • 0 comments

Noah, The Bible, and Finales

Watched Noah today. Wanted to watch this because it's banned in Indonesia, so I am pretty curious, though when I saw bits of the trailer, I was already kinda squirming because of the artistic license taken on the story. The movie did put that disclaimer at the start of the movie. After watching it, I can see why people may find this offensive. It's not like the bible story I know and I hate artistic license that goes too far away from the true story. Of course one can argue, what is the true story in this case? Who knows what actually went down with the story of Noah? I guess for me, watching it from a background of the bible lessons I had when I was young, this movie is not a good one. Why for the purpose of artistic license there are transformers like rock acting as the fallen angels? Why is there another person in the ark aside from Noah's family? Why the focus on one of the son's wanting to have a wife? I googled, the sons already had wives, they were in the ark too. Why the focus on the sexual tension between the oldest son and Emma Watson's character? Why made Noah to be rather insane? The oldest son said out loud what I was thinking, "Are you mad?". Then there are also small things that made me feel weird, like the costumes. They were pretty modern, they wore boots, boots with sole! Again who to say that there wasn't any boots before the flood? Seeing those costumes and the setting, it feels more like it's being set far into the future after the earth has been destroyed badly and humans have to start from the beginning as has been explored by many movies. Perhaps if this movie just say that it's inspired by the story of Noah and set it far into the future and change a few names, this could work. However when you present it as the story of Noah, well that's a rather sensitive issue. As purely entertainment, I don't think it's that amazing, it's not that exhilarating and at times felt like it's moving rather slowly, or perhaps it's just me getting quite annoyed from the many times I felt not that happy that the story moves that way. So as a movie it's not that amazing, the story is not that true to what people may know, but do these things warrant a ban in Indonesia? I don't think so. I don't think it's damaging to anyone's faith. Let the people watch it and let them form their own opinion of the movie. Darn over zealous muslims in Indonesia :(

So I don't fancy the movie much, but I have to say Logan Lerman was interesting in this. I only watched a bit of Percy Jackson from tv but I do love him a lot in The Perks of Being a Wallflower where he also worked with Emma Watson. Too bad his character in Noah is not that amazingly written, but at least he has more screen time than the elder brother. What's interesting for me is seeing this different side of him. Perhaps it's the haircut, but I feel like there's a bit of Paul Dano in the way he looks. There's a bit of creepyness in it, so it's interesting and it's nice to see him in a different look, to not be all soft and lovable :P

Since we're in the subject of bible story, I have started watching The Bible. I thought it's just gonna be a drama, but it's presented more like a historical reinterpretation with narration and all, I'm not sure how to explain it. Anyway, it is in the History channel after all. It's interesting but there's also some things that I didn't expect to be depicted the way they did it, for example the gladiators like angels in the Sodom and Gomorrah destruction. It was interesting though that they chose an Asian to portray one of the angels. I haven't finished watching the whole thing. I have to admit, I didn't enjoy it much because it's a bit boring for me, but since I've started, I think I will finish it. It made me dig into my brain about all those religion lessons in school. For example there was one part when I was thinking, I think Lot's wife looked back as they left and she was turned into salt and yes my memory served me right. A lesson there for people who look back when they're supposed to be moving forward, don't do it! Turning into salt is awful :P It's different learning all these stories as a child and then seeing them again as an adult. This maybe blasphemous of me to say, but really there's some insane things in the bible, burning bushes speaking to you, having to sacrifice your own son, a God that destroys everything and kills, they all make it kinda hard to be a believer. I mean if now someone says he hears God in whispers or dreams or perhaps burning bushes and God asks this person to sacrifice his son, we would think that this guy is crazy, no? I don't know, I guess my spiritual crisis is still lingering even though right now I am praying more to God to help me in life. Anyway, not sure if I'll watch the movie Son of God which is also part of this series. By the way, I read an interesting article in CNN about this movie, about why Jesus has to be sexy? Really though, the Jesus in this movie is hot :P

On other tv news, did you all watch the series finale of How I Met Your Mother? I hate it a lot! I don't like the last season, as the episode goes, I was thinking what a shame that this was the direction they chose for the last season. I would rather watch the friends being back in their apartment and bar rather than in a new different setting altogether and not even together in the early episodes with Marshall not being there. Then the finale was just like a stab stab to my heart. I'm not gonna give any spoiler here, but darn I was made to be Team Barney and to see that's what happened to him, damn it. I imagine Marshall and Lily rolling their eyes with all the stupidity their friends make in the years ahead. In the end, they are really the true couple. This is another example of how the ending of something can ruin all the good work that's been put - in the case of HIMYM, the work of many years :( I know the writers have planned it this way since from the beginning, but I guess the last season is what did them in. The additional season to tell a different story made it really really hard for people to buy the ending :( In contrast, I love the finale of this season of The Walking Dead, simply because no one died! The last episode started with Rick all bloody, looking dazed, sitting alone and I was like what, what happened? Where's Carl?!? I was pretty much preparing myself for major death as the story goes, even until the end I felt maybe it's really gonna be Carl, but no one died and that made me feel really happy :P

I finished reading Si Cacing dan Kotoran Kesayangannya by Ajahn Brahm. I think it's better in the original language, English. I can't say I am much inspired by the book. It has its moments but it also didn't really make a lasting impression. I think I've forgotten most of what I read. So that is the first book of this year. Got a new book today, Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. I chose it because the cover was interesting and also it won some award :P The author also wrote Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I didn't read the book, but the movie was very moving, I cried a lot. It's April and I am only in my second book, not sure if I get 5 by the end of the year. I need to try harder.

One last thing to get off my chest. I debated if I should write this down, but I need to vent. Told someone that I will do something, didn't even plan to, but then it just happened, so anyway I asked her to let me know if she's interested. She told me she'll let me know soon. It's been 3 weeks and no news. I feel so pissed off. I know you can say, why don't you just ask her? I just feel that if you say you're gonna do something, you should do it! If she wants in on the plan, the plan has to change and the deadline is coming soon and now I just feel I am left hanging and this is not the first time it happened with her. I just feel it's rather disrespectful. I guess I feel even more pissed because I often feel people don't appreciate and value me much. Things like this and like finding out big news from Facebook damages me because I feel people don't care about me and you have no idea how true I believe that to be :( So anyway, I gotta move forward and stick with my original plan. Hope all will be well.

:) eKa @ 10:25:00 PM • 0 comments

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