Saturday, April 19, 2014

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 •