Ciao, 2021

 is this how it's gonna be for the rest of our lives? time dissolving into thick dark fog, things that happened last week seeming years ago, & things that happened last year feeling like yesterday. i guess it's simply the consequence of growing older. 

there’s no debating the fact that the last 12 months have been confusing & such a crazy emotional roller coaster on one level or another. but there's so much to be thankful for of course, & the incredible degrees of courage, fortitude, selflessness, & compassion around me truly meant a lot.

as much as we’ll enjoy seeing 2021 recede into rearview mirror, we also know deep down that 2022 isn’t likely to be much better. with the climate crisis & all. idk. 

but the beginning of a new year remains an ideal time to take stock of what's working in our lives, make plans to change what's not, & forge ahead in the knowledge that we're so much stronger than most of us give ourselves credit for. ciao, 2021.

Beautiful World, Where are You

 

it centers around 4 protagonists, realistically flawed, set in the backdrop of Brexit/Trump era, seeking connections with each other & the messiness of living in 21st century & struggling to honestly convey their thoughts & emotions. it's about navigating careers, friendship, love, politics, capitalism, religion, children, climate change, & the idealism of celebrities. 

it doesn't have a strong plot & it's mostly conversations. life's not always about huge gestures & drama. but i'm so invested in the characters as there's the sense of connection to them & i don't always like how they behave but i care about them, & that’s what i want in a novel.

the author's prose is straightforward & engaging. she paints the emotional & intellectual lives of ordinary people with such care & sincerity. she portrays a complete emotional mess in a really brilliant way. 

i think i really haven't come across other writers who communicates trivial human tendencies so accurately & effortlessly, who blends fiction with social commentary and philosophy so seamlessly, who writes sex thru conversation more so than action, & who creates characters that i can see myself in, so much so that it feels personal. one of the best i've ever read.

The Steadfastness of Love

 there was a time, for example when he's supposed to come back early but running late instead, even though it wasn't his choice, i had an opportunity to resent him. there was a part of me that did, a knee-jerk emotion that made me wanna blame him. but i didn't. bcoz something reminded me of what i know to be true but sometimes still forget: love is how we choose to act in moments like these.

i think what it takes to make love work is easy to say & difficult to explain. in a way it's obvious: it's kindness. but while we often talk about kindness as small gestures, it's also more complicated & less pretty than a note saying 'i love you'. sometimes kindness is mentally walking yourself back from the rush of emotion that makes you wanna blame someone, & trying to understand them instead (& then trying to share the truth of how you feel with them too).

for me, that meant asking him about his day when he got home & finding out how sad he feels when he’s not back early enough as promised. it meant being honest about why i felt resentful, even if i understood it's not his fault, & him listening without pointing that out. i think we should always choose kindness, & therefore love, in moments like these, whether your 1st reaction is to resent a parent or a friend or a partner. 

love is this invisible thing in the atmosphere that connects you to someone, & you can sense the feelings between you & them. it's ever-moving, like the sea. but it's also a stability that i never expected, like a steady hand on my shoulder. it's difficult to describe something so quiet, that's effortless & effortful, the easiest thing & also the most complicated.

i know it's there in those everyday moments when you don’t always have to put something into words, bcoz the other person just gets it. they understand a certain look, or something simple in your body language, & then they know what you feel without you needing to say it. i love the way he knows when it’s time to leave, or when something's awkward or overwhelming, without it needing to be said. it's like you have your own language, of being understood.

he'd hold space for me to share my feelings, & that takes a lot of strength, to allow someone to say things that could hurt you from a place of love. & even to allow them to hurt you, bcoz you understand they're upset & feel something deeply. with others that could've escalated, bcoz if a person needs to hurt you back then it can go on & on. the fact that he didn't do that, even though i might've pushed for it, made me feel very understood. he'd say, "you're right, this is absolutely shitty. it's not fair on you. what do we need to do to make it okay again?"

there can be a dark side to relationship, an unkindness, & you can have big arguments over trivial things. it's interesting how you can potentially say horrible things to people & then pretend you never said them, & somehow that's excused just bcoz you're related. where does that licence to hurt come from? why does love give you the right to do that? it's fascinating.

the kindness love requires is effortful. the kindness comes in the effort to understand that certain things are no one's fault. it takes effort to step back, to have perspective & to make that choice, instead of rushing into saying whatever it is you want to. you have to make a choice to be kind. i think that’s what sustaining a relationship is about, & it looks easier than it is.

there's that feeling of trembling after you've said something horrible in the heat of the moment. you know how much it's gonna hurt the other person, but you go ahead & say it anyway, & the instant you've said it you feel deep regret. there's a shame that comes with it too. we all have the potential in us to be that hurtful, & yet it's a choice to either say it or not say it; to make things better or not to. isn't it amazing that most of us don't say the mean thing? isn't that credence to humanity that most of us don’t set out to hurt people, & yet the potential is always there?

it's all about the beauty of a shared knowledge that exists without explanation, the versions inside us that change & remain, how lonely it can be when we don't feel understood, & how love can still be deeply instinctive, as well as a choice. in the ordinariness of the everyday, the steadfastness of love is revealed.

Coping Mechanism

i'm quite aware that everybody sees fandoms differently & i respect that everyone has their own pov. it's human nature to enjoy being right. the thing is, we all need criticism. although we're drawn to like-minded ppl, those who disagree with us truly help us grow. but i'm not gonna lie, some comments can be a bit too harsh & intolerably grotesque.

i often heard fangirls of kdrama & kpop connote some sort of notoriety & are labelled as emotional, shallow & unintelligent. so i've been having curiosity of why do ppl always wanna generalize everything? why kpop/kdrama stans are being judged & attacked like it's a crime? why are they not accepted the same way as marvel fans, football fans, harry potter fans, black metal fans, etc? 

you might have thought that fangirls set high standards for some aspects: friendship always makes it thru, love never breaks your heart & a "good guy" is a handsome romantic gentleman. fret not, dude. we know very well life doesn't work like that. reality might suck but if you got faith & believe in God's plan, you know it wouldn't necessarily suck for a lifetime.

a girl could dream of dating a flawless oppa but may eventually end up with a simple decent guy who accepts the way she is. before i go on with more nonsense, let's just cut to the chase: be kind. save your sadistic comments for the real criminals out there. as long as it doesn't turn into mindless obsession or crazy cult, fandom isn't meant to be delusional, it's just a coping mechanism. 

Independence Day

when i was a kid i used to think that this land was the greatest place on earth to live in. a unique melding of cultures woven into a tapestry of bright colours that dominated my childhood. i loved Malaysia with all my heart.

but that childlike emotion doesn't survive into adulthood, especially in a time such as this. love's a feeling that waxes & wanes with the tides of time. we all eventually grow up & leave our childhood notions behind. i now feel for Malaysia like a love-hate relationship. it's a mess, & there's very little to be proud of right now.

nevertheless, i still love my country, even when it's getting a lil harder to love & a lil easier to be disillusioned. while love comes easy when we're young, you can't seem to settle for just a feeling as you get older. we're all inexplicably tied to the country of our birth, for better or for worse. some days,  it's so hard to love. other days, we live amicably enough without butting heads.

patriotism comes with the understanding that there are things we can be proud of and things that are shameful. there are lessons learnt to shape the nation to be what it is today, & all it will be in the future. we can be frustrated, but the work never ends. it'll always be a work in progress.

Violence

 it seems like some ppl are convinced of the moral worth of violence without really thinking about it. 

what is violence for? what purpose is served? what consequences does violence carry with itself? why do these people reach for violence as if it were the only tool in the box? what problem are they trying to solve?

the reality is that violence is the tool of the unthinking. the resort to violence is an unintelligent & unimaginative way to deal with matters. even those who think that violence is serving some purpose need to realize that it only destroys.

it's utterly destructive, pointless & futile. it achieved nothing. it sent ripples out through time all the way till today. it's a single moment of violence that echoes through the decades. it's the tool of the frustrated & the angry. it achieves nothing for us as human beings. 

Of Being an Outsider

how to respond to the fact of being an outsider & could never be seen as authentic? there are  2 accessible response options, with a good dose of Nietzsche.

1st is to recognize rejection & follow its consequences. even if the group rejects you, this doesn't necessarily mean that you're not part of the group. absorb the rejection & wonder where to fit in. the world is a mix of ethnicities & nationalities, & it's a  typical human desire to belong. of course, there are inclusion & exclusion from groups, but these groupings aren't important tho. anyone can be an outsider by any classification, & it's actually in the outsider position that we're able to observe & think.

2nd option is to impose yourself as the standard & measure others by it. stop accepting others as role models. fashion yourself, knowing that no one could ever be 100% perfect. stop accepting the low & impossible standards of others around you, if you're too different for their standards to make any sense in life as an individual with dignity. this is a more complex way of saying that you have to just be yourself. 

there are one-dimensional social standards for what it is to be a person in our particular philosophical universe. such standards display a misreading of how the modern world operates. each of us has a name & a face & a set of dreams, wishes, & desires. we have our own set of motivations & sources of pride. not allowing for these dreams & motivations & desires to be translated into social mechanisms that afford them the chance to be realized is catastrophic. 

in memory

it was 2006. but it still seems like yesterday we walked along the river banks shouting your name, wishing for a miracle that you'd show up & come out of the water. we knew in our hearts that you're already gone, since you spent too much time in there.. just your lifeless body waiting to be found.

the day you were supposed to meet us all for a reunion was the day we sent you away on your funeral. i didn't know about the others, but the world stopped spinning for me. i didn't have a slightest idea how to face the upcoming days, months & years without seeing you again. i didn't even get the chance to say thank you for the joys & laughs you brought us, for the good times like we played chess while singing Snoop Dogg's in classroom & hit the city on school holidays.

it's been over a decade & some of us still thought about you sometimes. i wonder what a successful, great man you would've been if you're still here. you would be 31 today, my friend. may Allah bless your soul in eternal peace & grant you a place among the pious. al-Fatihah..

My Dark Vanessa

this is by far the most disturbing & painful book i've ever read. it's crushing my soul & like a glass piece cutting thru my mind but i don't cry, just bleed out like Vanessa did. it F me up pretty bad. she's 15, the kind of teenager yearning for adulthood, desperate to be taken seriously. well, who wasn’t like that as a teenager? unfortunately, when Strane, a 42 years old English teacher, starts to give her the attention that she thinks she needs, she falls for his manipulative, mind-twisting sexual abuse. this leads her into decades-long battle convincing herself that it's love, not abuse. 

thing is, the system & everyone failed Vanessa. other teachers do nothing. her friends vilify her. she’s a victim, not a participant, whether she thinks so or not. but we live in society where she isn’t permitted to be deemed a victim, she’s deemed troubled, willing, a slut. it’s a student sleeping with a teacher to get good grades, not a child being sexually abused by a grown man. even her mother drops the ball. it's so disappointing.

well, i think that this is a very well-written & thought-provoking novel about pedophile. it’s important that we learn not to draw distinct parameters of what's deemed abuse, thus marginalizing women who didn’t understand they were being abused, like Vanessa.

trigger warning: the story's a little too graphic at times. understand the shock-value of the explicit scenes, that it’s meant to be uncomfortable. it can be bit too much for some of you.

This is How you Lose the Time War

 

it tells the story of 2 agents, Red & Blue, from opposing factions that are in the race of controlling the time flow. it begins with Red receiving a taunting letter from Blue, which kick-started a long history of letters exchanged in the most unexpected ways. from being enemies to confidantes & eventually falling prey to inescapable passion, making them question their missions & their very existence. no one ever waits for another, instead they seek each other out & that makes a whole different world. all this while trying to avoid getting caught by their factions, or else it'd spell death. 

i cried in several moments of this book bcoz the words just hurt & they felt too real. so heartbreaking in its beauty. it ruined me. it's like a love story of epic proportions. the way Red & Blue write & send their letters? come on! the deliberate care each of them makes these? unbelievable & i was in awe. such a unique & revolutionary take on time travel & romance. 

the writing is divine. the little things & the subtle way they show their affection to each other, omg. the prose is breathtakingly good. the sort of book that comes one in a thousand for me. GOLD. a glowing, solid 5/5. i may sound like i'm exaggerating, but i'm not! and oh, it won many literary awards. so if that's not saying something, idk what will.

Otherness

i used to think that loving someone meant knowing everything about them. every mole on their back, every childhood memory that left a mark, every corner of their mind, however dark. i longed for these precious pieces of knowledge, to be trusted with them, and to trust someone with the pieces of me in return. i longed for them for the same reason we often long for things: bcoz we lack them in another place.

at the time, my relationships were sustained by the opposite of knowledge, by concealment: stories not told, feelings unexpressed, opinions withheld. and so, in a quiet place in my mind where i knew i wanted intimacy and this wasn't it, i dreamt of knowing every beat of another person. of a place where nothing was held back, not a single thought left unshared.

now i know that intimacy doesn’t work like that. not really. it does require us to share stories, feelings and opinions. but it also asks that we find the courage to accept that there are some parts of another person, and of ourselves, that we will never know entirely. as much as it is about intimately knowing someone, love is about accepting the mystery in each other too. not being threatened by the pieces of a partner or friend that are beyond your reach, and instead seeing that these unknown parts are what allow for mystery and beauty and newness, even after decades of knowing a person. isn't that a gift? 

i wish we'd realised sooner that love is about closeness, but it's also about tolerating the gap between all people. it might have spared us some heartbreak to understand that we can still engage and connect and be close, but respecting otherness is really valuable. when we can accept that we don’t know everything about each other, or ourselves, then we can remain open to experience.

 

We are Finite

 it's easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, gone to Paris, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

it takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. it's not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you're all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. it's easy to regret, and keep regretting, forevermore, until our time runs out.

but it's not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. it's the regret itself. it's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.

we can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. those lives are happening, it's true, but you're happening as well, and that's the happening we have to focus on.

of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. we don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. we don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. 

we just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. we're as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.

we only need to be one person.

we only need to feel one existence.

we don't have to do everything in order to be everything, bcoz we're already infinite. while we're alive we always contain a future of various possibilities. 

so let's be kind to the people in our own existence. let's occasionally look up from the spot in which we are bcoz, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever.

Letters to Young Muslim

 

a series of letters written by Omar Saif Ghobash to his son, & to all of us especially the young muslims of 21st century. Ghobash is an Arab-Russian diplomat from UAE. his multicultural & multilingual upbringing combined with his education in UK exposed him to a diverse range of philosophies & perspectives, which he learned to appreciate while staying true to Islam. 

it's an honest, thought-provoking book that speaks the uncomfortable truth & has given me a religious perspective in a refreshing way. he stresses the importance of thinking critically & allowing room for good questioning in the process. questions like how much responsibility we carry, when will political leaders stop dividing & plundering, why are some of clerics still living in time capsule of glory days of Islam in the past, & why women are given lesser place in some countries. 

he holds the mirror up & the reflection isn't pretty. Ghobash is not making excuses for what's wrong with Islam today. he's asking us to stop accepting the order of things, to reflect, to study, to pause, to think & to engage with others. bcoz at the end of the day we do have a shared humanity & we owe it to educate ourselves, work hard & find answers to life's difficult questions. 

we gotta look beyond the binary world of black & white while welcoming the diverse opinions which are made up of all shades of grey. for a long time we've been told to follow the clerics & just accept the orders that it is what it is, without allowing a single doubt, uncertainty or curiosity, while ignoring the gray area of things. not many of us realize that as much as we stick to Quran & hadis, Islam also encourages questions & different opinions. 

my favorite quotes from the book:

"you can choose to live as a Muslim who insists that only Muslims are able to have knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. Or you can choose to find knowledge, wisdom, and understanding in all cultures, literatures, and philosophies. You can choose to be locked into a particular world, or you can set forth into a world of human experience"

The Midnight Library

 

Nora is having a truly horrible day. life's never been easy as her wedding's off, her cat died, she's fired (twice), soaked through, & ghosted by family. her life's going nowhere. overwhelmed by regret & loneliness, with nothing to give, no one to love, & nobody loves her in return, Nora decides life's no longer worth living & she's done. but instead of her life ending, she lands in the Midnight Library, a place between life & death where she's able to live all the lives that would have been if she had made different choices. as she's experiencing a variety of potential lives, she gets to see her 'root' life with a newfound perspective. she's then torn between staying the course and plotting a new path.

i googled Matt Haig and he's apparently extremely popular with this kind of story. he writes about the idiosyncrasies of being human & what makes us tick. what's normal, what are other people’s lives like, what are we here for, what’s the point. this novel isn't as light as it looks. there's a lot of philosophy here, well pitched for non-philosophers. and i love it. so creative, thought-provoking, lyrical, & emotionally cathartic.

it teaches perspective, regrets, & how we should approach life. it's impossible to read this book without thinking about my own regrets & what i'd do differently. eventually, Nora has some fairly profound epiphanies about life which i've tucked away for those moments in life when i feel weighed down by similar regrets. my favorite part is about our limitless potential, the importance of moving forward rather than wallowing in "should haves" & how each life is valuable, even if we might not see it. every life is a mix of happiness & sadness, success & failure. the presence of downfalls doesn't always make life worth living.

Uncertainty

recently i learned about John Keats' idea of negative capability.

in its simplest form, Keats' theory describes the ability to accept uncertainty - the capacity to have two opposing ideas in your mind without trying to choose one over the other. it's the ability to believe that two contrasting things are true, both of them, and that they can exist side by side.

or, in other words, being satisfied with things that are unresolved.

and, well, wow. It struck a chord with me, this theory. how often i find myself trying to sort between black and white, yes and no, this way or that, when really, at the end of the day, what i'd actually like to settle on is both. yes and yes. true and true.

because it's possible, it is, to both love and loathe. to both admire and pity. to both appreciate and, just as truly, just as ardently, regret. it's possible that what's right is not just a matter of either/or, that it's not somewhere in-between, that it's simply both.

for whatever reason, it's difficult to accept ambiguity; it can be a struggle to embrace that sort of doubt. and yet it happens. to all of us.  at some point or another, we know in our hearts that it's not A or B.

it's C: all of the above.

so am i

"hello" seems too formal, and "remember me?" seems ridiculous. i know you remember me, because i remember you. that was never going to be in question. the bigger challenge was whether we’d ever be able to forget.

i haven’t thought of you every day. but i haven’t never thought of you, either. when i do, it isn’t the kind of recollection that feels wispy or comforting. it's visceral, the clean cut of a sword. one moment you are not in my mind and the next, you are so sharp and intense that all my attention is focused there.

so you see, even after all this time, you take my breath away.

time is a construct. our brains take 80 milliseconds to process information, did you know that? anyone who tells you to live in the here and now is a liar. by the time you pin the present down, it’s already the past.

if you had asked me back then where we would be 10 years later, i would've laughed and asked why, when we had today? i wouldn't have admitted to you, to anyone, that every now and then when i lifted my head from your shoulder and peered into the future, i could imagine you, and me, but not us.

i guess that’s the part no one ever tells you. you can love someone so much your teeth ache, so much that it feels like he is carrying your heart in his own rib cage, but none of it matters if you can’t find a practical way to be together. it’s like learning that you would be immortal if you could breathe nitrogen, but knowing you are bound to the oxygen of earth.

i was the meteor that crashed into your life when you were already living it. i didn’t have any more control over my landing than you did when you froze, looking up at the inevitable sky. you had a past and a plan and responsibilities. you had someone who already loved you. we were gasoline poured onto fire. with you i burned twice as high and hot.

for a while i was angry at you, because i had almost missed this.. someone i didn’t just want to be with, but someone i wanted to be more like. you were the bright shiny thing at the corner of my consciousness. i made myself look away.

well, none of this matter anymore now. but because you're reading this, i know that as long as you’re here, so am i. 

Live by Desire

 it can be difficult to separate what you truly desire from what you've been taught to want, particularly when it comes to love. do you wanna get married because you see it as a chance to create a meaningful commitment, or because you feel a peer pressure to? do you wanna have a baby because you long to be a mother, or because you assume it’s a box that has to be ticked in order to be happy? 

sometimes, even when we think we're making these decisions from a true place, there are cultural expectations & assumptions & family histories pressed up against our thoughts, which can make it tricky to figure out what we really desire for ourselves.

what i learned is that it's all about living by your desire. and it's important to figure out what your desire is, whether that's to marry & have kids or to create a new circle, & to stop making decisions based on the boxes that are already there.

Moving Past Heartbreak

how do you get over heartbreak?

my short answer? you don't. you never do.

here's the long answer:

every heartbreak is different, of course. one of my closest friends got over a lost love by simply ignoring the hurt until it went away. another wrote about it, talked about it, and ached over it until the pain finally dulled. the next time her heart broke, it felt easier. muscle memory, i told her.

heartbreak can strike in the span of a second, or it can scratch at you slowly, over months or years, a gradual etching away at your insides until you feel completely carved out. i've felt it both ways, and i'm not sure which is worse. how could heartbreak ever be better or worse?

honestly, the "getting over it" phase has never really been my strong suit (understatement of the century). i'm not exactly a feel-and-let-go kind of person, not in any aspect of my life. i hold onto people and places and memories as if they'll float away without my desperate, determined grip. sometimes it's a great strength, and sometimes it's an awful, miserable flaw. either way, it has helped me learn.

you can't dodge the heartbreak. you can't try to outsmart it or duck behind it because you have to trudge through it, through the heavy, dirty muck of it until that one strange day when you're driving down a hill, the sun's setting, the air tastes like salt, and you suddenly realize that you're in the clear. you realize that you've made it to the other side, but the heartbreak isn't in your wake. you didn't leave it behind. no, you're carrying it with you, you're wearing it, breathing it, feeling it in small doses at random moments, on random days. it has become part of you.

the point is, then, that you don't get over heartbreak. you embrace it. right?