Eyes flutter open
Sunlight streaming in
Birds singing melodies outside
A thought, a feeling surfaces
A longing, yearning for completeness
Filling and bursting my heart
A thought, a feeling same as last night
Before sleep took away my consciousness
I knew it then and I still know it now
First and last conscious thought everyday is
You
Last Wednesday, I was annoyed by a situation that I was rushing to go up to rectify the situation. I did not go up via lift but decided to go up the stairs instead. I had enough annoyance in me that I would have been faster than the lift. In my annoyance and rush, I miscalculated the height of one step that I fell forward. I only stopped myself from being another statistic in A&E by grabbing on the rails. My face was just a few inches from another step. Without missing a beat I carried on going up, ignoring the pain on my forearm and the inquiries by the OTs who were going down the stairs at that time. Whilst it was only a split second incident, it helped calm me down. I carried on to my destination and objective but now less fueled by annoyance.
Yesterday, I noticed the bruise on my forearm and remembered the incident. If my reflexes were not quick enough, I could be sporting more bruises now or a new nose! This made me think about the 90/10 principle. This was explained to me by a friend years ago. I wrote a blog about it too. The incident made me realised that the 90/10 principle is indeed true.
What does the 90/10 principle mean? In quick and easy terms, it explains that 90% of what happened in our lives are within our control (e.g. How we react to things) and only 10% are out of our sphere of influence.
There are some people who love playing the ‘victim card’ and claim that the whole world had it in for them. The things is, though, we can only become ‘victims’ in life if we allow it. Sink or swim. Deal or be dealt with. Fight or flight. Stand up or crumble. It is all up to us.
I am not disallowing that life can be unfair at times. Yes, it might seem that work is piling up or that your texts are getting ignored or a loved one snapped at you unprovoked. These are the 10% that you will have no control over however it is how you react to these that will determine how things will flow in your life. In the first situation, you can go to your boss and complain at the amount of workload and throw a tantrum or you can take stock of the situation then think of the best way of dealing with it. The second one, you can decide to take offense, think that person doesn’t like you anymore and start ignoring the other person without asking for a reason or you let it go because in the grand scheme of things, the slight is miniscule compared to the love in your heart. I think we create the drama or the absence of it in our lives. I am not saying that this is easy especially when feelings are involved, when rejection and unreturned love or betrayal breaks your heart into pieces and all you want to do is lash out or ran away.
It is always a good idea to step away from the situation and weigh all the other options. As they say, ‘do not make a permanent decision based on a temporary feeling.’ True, we may dislike some aspects of our jobs on some days or we may be hurt by a carlessly spoken word but if you step back you realise that there are more good days than bad moments at work; that you love your beloved more often than being angry. Decisions will differ when done in the heat of the moment or with a cool head. That decision could easily influence how 90% of our lives will unfold.
My bruises have disappeared now and I cannot even recall what caused me to be so angry at that time. It only goes to show that situation wasn’t life altering otherwise I would have remembered it.
I will do my best to be mindful of my reactions to things. I need to be more aware of the 90% that I can influence. I aim to choose love, kindness and fairness when faced with an emotion eliciting situations. I have to remember that a harshly spoken word is capable of burning bridges that I may want to cross over and over again in the future. It will be difficult to erase the hurt these words may have caused as once spoken, words and the emotions they have provoke are difficult to take back.
90/10… Most things in our own lives are within our control. We are not mere victims of circumstances. Our lives are the product of our own decisions and actions. We are the captains if our destinies so choose to make it a good one.
Love. Laugh. Live.
Today a conversation of a lost love made me think about love and fate. Whilst a friend was reminiscing about a lost love, I tried to give reassurance ( rightly or wrongly so) by saying ,” I am of firm belief that we are where we are supposed to be and that we are with the people whom we are meant to be with”. Whilst this is my puny attempt in trying to cheer up a friend, I now ponder if I really believe what I have just said. Is this a ‘defeatist’ attitude that just accepts Fate handed out to us or is it yet my Pollyana personality showing up again thinking everything will work all right.
I have read somewhere that “Fate determines who comes into our lives but we decide who stays.” The fact that I remembered it, means that I agree with it. We have no control on who we meet along this journey called life but we can decide if we walk some distance, if not all the way, with some people or we take a separate path from them. But there are times when circumstances out of our control pull us apart. Do we just watch Fate separate us from people we love or do we fight tooth and nail to keep them in our lives? Are we but passive receivers of the dictates of Fate or do we take the wheel and steer our own ships?
I do meet a lot of people and I always make a point of knowing people’s names and a little about them. Like most people, I choose the ones that will see the real me. Once I have decided to make a person a friend, there’s not much I wouldn’t do for that person. I am worse when it comes to the. person I love. I do not know how to play coy or the game. I always wear my heart on my sleeves that it will be hard to miss that somebody is the object of my affection. My patience and resilience will be almost infinite. My friends attribute my being single to the fact that I love too much, that I do not hold back with my affections and that I give too much leeway to the point of being taken for granted. It is not because I do not have self-esteem; It is because I do not know how to love any other way. Besides, if I play the game then I would no longer be true to myself. I believe that the right person will love my quirkiness. I am like a yoyo that will always return no matter how hard it gets thrown. I will love so I will have no regrets and will not be asking ‘what if’ 20 years down the line. I fight my damnest to keep the people I love in my life but I also know that the other person will also have to be willing to stay and fight for me. Love and friendship cannot be forced for them to last. It needs both parties to acknowledge and work on the relationship. The latest song that won in Eurovision said, ‘My heart can love for both of us’ but sadly this is only a brilliant song lyric meant to pull on the heart strings. It cannot be done in real life without breaking down the spirit of the one who loves without receiving it back and overwhelm the beloved. Love can never hold another captive against its will.
So… is it Fate or Will? Both, I would say. Fate is what brings us together and it’s our Will that makes us stay. It will not always be smooth sailing. There will be spats and misunderstanding that makes you want to leave the path. There will be times that you may want some time alone but Just don’t throw the yoyo too far and too often for the string might break and the yoyo will no longer come back to your hand.
Fate… Destiny…. Will… Call what you the force that bring two souls together but there should always be one constant..,Love to the point of no regrets.
Got home last night to news of horrific incident in London perpetuated by terrorists. Emotions of sadness, concern, anger, and (I am ashamed to say in my weak moment) hopelessness plagued me at the same time. Like many people, I asked ‘why?!’
When I came to this country 17 years ago, I noticed a big difference in the TV news compared to that of the Philippines. News of violence is very rare. I thought, at the start, that perhapsthe news agency in this country just do not like to sensationalise violent crime unlike back home. But as the years passed by, I have accepted this to be the norm.
In the recent years, violence seem to be popping up every now and then. Most of these shocking violent crime are terrorists related. Last night, I was asking the question, ‘What is going on, London?’ I know that there will be no straight answer to this so I felt despair and anger. I feel despair for my beloved home of 17 years and I feel anger at the assailants. I despair for the world as what happened here in London is but a symptom of what is ailing humankind. Lives were lost due to extremism and refusal to be tolerant of others but sadly this is not just a truth that only the British people know. These kind of incidents are happening everywhere and moreso in other countries.
This morning, I woke up and the world was as it was last night. The tragedy did happen. Lives were lost and forever changed. Yet the answer to this societal problem is not immediately forthcoming. I was second guessing my plans to go out this morning but I thought, those men would achieve their goal if people, like me, stopped living our lives. So I decided to carry on.
As I walking towards the bus stop, a thought hit me… If only we had Superman, Wonder Woman, etc or at the very least, Jack Bauer on our side, perhaps they could have stopped last night’s atrocities, flush out these crazy people and their cohorts before harm was done. But this is rea life. This is no Hollywood movie where a director can yell cut or a writer can make sure that there is resolution at the end. Those who lost their lives will not get up when the cameras are turned off. This is a real life problem needing real life solutions and not just fantastical musings of despairing person.
I have always been a pacifist. I will always advocate for peaceful resolution rather than a violent one. Only Light can drive away the darkness as Marti Luther King said. But what if the adversaries are in a blackhole that no matter how high powered the light beam is, it will just be swallowed by the darkness? Will sending a photon torpedo into the black hole solve the problem or will it just feed the blackhole and make it bigger? In this hypotherical question, I have no brilliant answer.
Advocacy for love, understanding, equality and acceptance should always be the primary approach. We need to stop people from being enticed to enter the darkness. These are the ones we can save. But those who spread the darkness need to stopped and held accountable for the hate they are spewing.
So what can we, the normal people without super powers, do? We can carry on living our lives and make sure that we treat people in all encounters with love, kindness, and fairness. We have to make sure that we do not become a reason for them to enter the darkness. We cannot accept… No…We must refuse to let what happened last night to be our new norm.
We are British and we stand united. We are unbowed. We carry on and live our lives.
So off I go to carry on living.
missingleton 