The Way of the Wild Heart

1. Don't let God ride shotgun, let Him drive.
2. Don't avoid confrontation.
3. Don't be passive.
4. There are four stages in a man's life: Cowboy, Warrior, Lover, King.
5. Don't make any woman the center of your universe.

Just lessons and thoughts written in John Eldrege's The Way of the Wild Heart as I see it. I'll keep adding to the list as I go on with the book, but I thought I really needed to write it down somewhere in lieu of my missing journal.
as

Limbo

You know how it is, when you wake from a deep slumber, only to fall back into a state of semi-sleep? A state of limbo in between two worlds, where words are breathed and lights are ephemeral.

Everything is unreal, you hear it all, but it is as if sounds come from across an ocean, and you see it all, but everything is non-distinct, shapes that are blurry at the edges. Colours are dispersed, nothing makes sense.

You ever wonder if there are some of us who go through life like that? Walking, breathing, talking, laughing. But to all intents and purposes, half asleep. Or half awake, stuck in the in-between state. A light with a switch that was not flipped on.

Could you tell if he was looking but never seeing? Listening but never hearing? Nodding but never understanding? Reacting but never acting? Could you?

All lost. Lost, the bread-crumbs that lead to their cottage all eaten by birds. Lost, floundering in a dark sea without realising, caged in the confines of their minds, trapped in a prison that they never intentionally made.

Could you help them? Would you? Of course you would.

But should you? What if the only way that they could deal with life is by disassociating? What if existing in a waking sleep is the only way, the only way out. Paradoxically, it is also the only way in.

I wonder if I do sometimes, if my systems shut down and I go into limbo. There are two years of my life, that however hard I try, I cannot recall anything significant.

What was I doing? Where was I?

And, for that matter, where were you?
as

Dismantle, Repair

Because repairing something always requires dismantling what is broken.

Take it apart, piece by piece. Part by part.

Find what went wrong, sift through the screws and gears for an answer.

And then, maybe, salvaging it. Piece it together and stitch it up.

Make it new again.

Make it yours again.

Lessons LDR Taught Me

This is part two of a post with the same title. I think the title may not be so apt now; it should have been lessons LDR highlighted, but to digress...


Lesson 6: Change
What I always, always need to remember is that people will change. No it is not a bad thing, I personally think that one of the ways an individual can take a step forward in life is by changing. If the individual changes for the better, well, so much the better (no pun intended), if for the bad, he or she would realise that somewhere, something has gone wrong and rectify the problem, which is again, a good thing.
So, change. From experience, one of the things that I could not deal with in the past was that they changed. My immaturity couldn't see past the fact that they were not the same person.
Even now, 7000 miles away, a part of me finds it hard to deal with that change. I know that she has changed, but so have I. But then again, a huge part of me wishes that I could be there to see her develop her potential and come into all that she can be.

Lesson 7: I Am Not Enough
I have come to understand that I can't be everything for her, not especially from so far away. I don't know about most guys, but some of us (myself included) have a martyr syndrome, a serious psychological defect where we'd jump in front of a bus for you, take a bullet etcetc, it even affects the friendships that we have. But then again, if we (sorry for generalising, but to write 'some of us guys' all the time is very taxing) thought this way, to a certain extent it implies that they (friends, girlfriends, wives etc) can't stand up for themselves and that they are weak. I just want to say that this can't be further from the truth. Most of us are hardwired that way, and I think it will be very difficult to separate a man from his protective instinct.
as
Part three is currently being written, stay tuned.
as

Past, Present, Future

I've often gotten remarks from acquaintances about being a guy who blogs and writes. Usually, remarks from the male species goes something like, "You write (insert slightly disgusted facial expression)? About what? Your day? Your feelings?" while the girls usually are more ambivalent.

Regardless, my reply to their 'about what?' question would usually be "Oh, you know, anything that inspires me, absolutely anything." To which their reply would be a slightly perplexed silence.

But as I ponder slightly more about it, I realised so much has changed over the past few years, and to understand, I need to bring you back to who I was before, circa 2006-2008.

Without boring you, I was a mess back then. After high school - which I scraped through - I entered into a wilderness, unsure of myself, no clear direction in life. I was so lost. I skipped most of classes in A-Levels, which resulted in, again, barely passing. It was in this time of wandering and confusion I met a girl, who, now that I actually think about it, I really wronged. To a certain extent, I am partly to blame for her fall. At that time, I was searching for direction, and I thought I could find my identity in a girl, while at the same time, she was trying to find her identity in me. Needless to say, we both ended up disappointed and hurt. Again, with her, I was barely myself, I became the person she wanted me to be, and I don't have to tell you that that's not going to work.

After her, I was really lost, hell, she was the focus of my life for a year and a half. I drifted through a few jobs, and I wish I could tell you that in that period I really looked at my life, but I didn't. By nature, I hate confrontation, and to acknowledge that that was the lowest point in my life took a core of steel I just did not have. I closed my eyes and just sleep-walked through endless days of twilight.

There was no big catastrophe that made me change, but by random happen-chance, I read this quote by Paulo Coelho, in an introduction he wrote in his book, Like a Flowing River, his first book I ever read which remains a favourite of mine to this day. He said

I want to be a writer, not an engineer who writes.

So, a writer I am trying to be now.

Which brings us all the way to last year, where I entered Mass Comm hoping to major in Journalism. So your question, why do I write, and what inspires me, is basically this: I've kept silent for twenty years of my life. Now I realise that I have something to offer the world, and that is why I write. I am inspired by conversations that I have with people, random happen-chances that occur in my life that I know are caused by a Divine Hand.

A friend said yesterday, that "I feel like, most of my life I've been living in a dream." And I can really understand that. I can't tell you how sweet it is, that I am actually living, not surviving. I am really breathing, for the first time in my life. I just want to say that, God has been good, and while I never actively sought my direction, He just gave me a nudge and a wink into the right direction, making sure to unlock doors and all I had to do was step through it.

As to my future, there's this lesson that I just learned yesterday. All this while, I've been hankering for an adventure, and I read The Way of the Wild Heart by John Eldrege without truly knowing what I really wanted. He wrote that the Holy Spirit is fiercely adventurous, and that He will bring you on the adventure. I realised that all this while, He has been riding shotgun in my life, and it is now the time to exchange seats with Him and let Him drive. It reminded me of a post I wrote, so long ago.

I hope some of this speaks to you, wherever you are. Not all of us find our way through random occurrences,  and, coming from one who's been lost and actually sometimes still find himself in a desert, I hope that you find your way. If you need a shoulder, an ear, or a drinking companion, my door is always open.
as

Emotionless

"You know what your problem is? You're too fucking nice too much of the time!" She spat the words in his face as she stabbed him in the chest with her manicured nails.

He had kept silent as she threw a bag onto the bed.

"Why won't you say something?" she screamed as she stuffed her clothes into the brown bag. "Why do you have to be in control all the time? Why can't you just loose it?"

He had kept silent as she flew around the room like a hurricane, alternating between crying and screaming.

She choked and gave him one last glance, her anger all spent, leaving nothing but a cold, empty void. "Why can't you be more human?"

He had kept silent as she cried, he had kept silent as she walked away.

He kept silent and sat on their - now his own - bed, staring blankly at the broken pieces of their life together, emotionless, just staring, just..staring.

Why can't you just be more. fucking. human?

Stuff I Wished Someone Would Have Told Me #2

It takes a whole lot more than just love to make a relationship work

Stuff I Wished Someone Would Have Told Me #1

People are what's important in your life.

The Male Ego

All of us guys will have it, some more than the others. Whenever the subject of a man's ego is brought up, a negative connotation is usually attached to it. There'd be slight sneers of derision, maybe a joke or two about the size of his package and so on and so forth.

I mean, who likes a man with a head so big it won't fit into doorways? Ego, in other words, means conceited, pigheaded and obnoxious, maybe even a mixture of all three, right?

But, I am here to say that our ego in itself is not a bad thing.

Think about it for a second. A man must believe in himself. He must. He must know and believe that he is the king in his own little world, that by his own hands will his fate be decided. To divert a little, I know some people argue against this, that we rely too much on our strength, but don't you think God would want us to actually USE the facilities that He gave us to mold our world? Maybe I'll think out loud about this in another post.

So, to continue, yes, the man must believe in himself, and believe that he is more skilled than others in certain aspects. If you think that's conceited, then how about this: you want to change the world in a way only you can. How can you affect a change if you don't first believe in yourself and be pigheaded enough to shut out the disbelievers?

So, I believe that in itself, it is not a bad thing, but balance is important. Without it, failure is more or less guaranteed and if there's too much of it, well, there's so many examples in our world today.

I am not trying to make excuses for myself. Yes, I am slightly narcissistic, and yes, I believe that I my footprints will stay on long after I am gone, I believe yours will too. But don't you see? If I did not believe that my words carry weight, you won't be reading this post. America wouldn't have been discovered. Man wouldn't have walked on the moon. But then again, WWII wouldn't have broken out as well if not for the egotistical malice of a failed artist.

But I digress. Maybe, the next time you think of a friend, a boyfriend or a husband as being egoistic, know that his success in life hinges on the fact that he is.

There's this all time best-selling book throughout the ages. In it, it says that 'the meek shall inherit the earth'. I believe they will too. This is where the balance part comes in. I wrote that the man must believe in himself and know that in certain aspects, he is their better. He should not, however, shove that fact into the faces of others.

Now, that, I believe, crosses some kind of line.

10 Reasons Why KLChick Is Awesome

Reason #1: She's so pretty in her videos

Reason #2: She's got a beautiful voice

Reason #3: She writes with her heart on her sleeve

Reason #4: She's not afraid to confront 'controversial' issues

Reason #5: She's always honest, whether writing or vlogging

Reason #6: She doesn't take herself to seriously

Reason #7: She's true to her roots

Reason #8: She's unashamedly feminine

Reason #9: while being unashamedly strong and independent

Reason #10: She's hilarious in her videos!

But why should you believe me? Go check her out for yourself!