a moment that changed everything

will update later....

giving up or moving on?

am I giving up? or am I moving on? if I gave up, what did I gave up to? and if I'm moving on, where? .. At the moment I have no clue.. I just know I had to do something, and I did, and as far as I can see, I'm made the RIGHT decision.

ground

You’re right. You’ve been right all along. I’m just no one, at least not grounded in anything. I was not and still not until this moment. And maybe its late for me to realize this (well I’m always late in my life) but late is better than never, right? At the moment I really need some time to look and see the future ahead of me. Doing what I’m doing at the moment is nice, but at some point I think I’m gonna be stuck if don’t make any changes soon. I realized that I wanna do more important things than what I’m doing now, something that made a better impact in peoples lives. It doesn’t mean that what I’m doing at the moment is not important, but lets just say that this is not what I wanna do for the rest of my life. And yea, I wanna be grounded, something which unfortunately will not make me jump from one place to another as I have been so far. But its time to put myself to the ground. 

teacher

One of my passions is teaching. I like to talk. and I plan to use my gifts in ways that it can be blessings for others. But I never had any formal pedagogical education before. I just use these natural gifts backed by experience. Interestingly enough, I've been teaching for 7 years in total, in trainings through sessions, in class as a teacher, and in many other ways possible. Now I know that I can’t live it without it. I guess it’s in my blood and it runs in the family too. My dad, my mom and my only brother, we all know how to talk :p I guess it’s more towards sharing this life of mine, my perspectives and my experiences which really matters most. The question is now, should I pursue a formal pedagogical education in order to be able to share with more people? Will I ever be a formal teacher? 

Blessing in disguise

His Name is Sabar, or patience in English.

He owns a small repair shop, and I met him because I had a flat tire, no cash in my wallet, and almost no gasoline in my bike. perfect isn't it? just as the usual me. But somehow I still felt calm. I looked around a bit at his place, so clean and tidy. Not even a single trash around that place.This is weird, never saw this before in such an area. More weird when we started to talk. He mentioned about Pascal and Boyle when we're talking about my flat tire. really cool and awesome!! never met a guy like this before.

As he finishes his job, I noticed that he was limping. Then my eyes stumbled to a crutch next to a tire inside his small repair shop. I started another conversation about his life where he started sharing about his, a bit.. about what had happened to him five years ago that he barely can walk anymore because of a nerve constringency on his thigh. It has been operated sometimes this year, but he had a swollen knee then, huge one, even bigger than his thigh he said, until 5 weeks ago it has became smaller and smaller till now. "Its because of the sun", he told me. "It help to reduce the swollen" I can still see his knee a bit big though..

Then I asked him about his family and kids.. their school and stuff. He has 2 children, 7 and 12 years old. I gave him my name card before I left, and just before that, he asked me, are you a Christian? and I answered him, "yes.. how do you know?" He replied " by the pendant that you're wearing" It is the Taize pendant... I smiled.. I told him it looks more like a bird, but he insisted "Its still a cross to me"...

I left that small tiny place with a big smile on my face..
he's my blessing in disguise today.

  

Today

today is really weird.. having so many things to do, i don't know where to start. Received a letter from Sarah, (finally it arrived) and a postcard from this awesome Polish people... but nonetheless somethings bothers me... or as it always been, at least this year.... I just hope I can channel my mind into something more focused idea and thoughts. I need this.. I really need this... but at least I'm writing again...  

What’s the secret behind such a huge success?

The only honest response is: I don’t know.

All I know is that we all need to be aware of our personal calling.  What is personal calling? It’s God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on earth.  Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend.  However, we don’t all have the courage to comfort our own dream.

Why?

There are four obstacles. 

First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible.

We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt.  There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible.  But it’s still there.

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love.  We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream.  We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path.  We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling id no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey.  Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary?

Well, necessary or not, they happen.  When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times. 

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?

Because, once we have overcome the defeats – and we always do – we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence.  In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life.  Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight.  We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure.  Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said: “Each man kills the thing he loves.” And it’s true. 

The more possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt.  We look around at all those who have failed to get what we want and feel what we do not deserve to get what we want either.  We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far.  I have knows a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal – when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it; renouncing joy and conquest.  But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.

Paulo Coelho

introduction to The Alchemist

Rio de Janeiro

November 2002

Dream, again...

Nothing is as real as a dream.
The world can change around you, but your dream will not.
Responsibilities need not erase it.
Duties need not obscure it.

Because the dream is within you, no one can take it away.
You need to live up to your dream.

Over and Over again

Three

Three is my favorite number. To me it reflected balance. One is definitely not a balance for what can be balanced when its only one? some people said that Two is balance, just like Yin and Yang according to Chinese tradition, the good and the bad, or the black and the white for some others. But no, to me two can just pointed to one side. There should be something in between, something that made peace for both ends.... it's the grey in life, and its Three!

And it's me. its the adidas brand, its the Trinity. There are even Three stars in the sky which form a short straight line, which I claimed as my star =), and that's how everything comes about. That is why, if I do get married and have children, I want to have Three children. Whatever happens I wish that I will have Three dogs too (since I had Three dogs before in my life, which sadly all died when I was not with them)..

Three is also my mobile phone provider, somehow :p. Three is my number and three is me. it is how I live my life, and it is how i long to have that balance in my life. Its the balance between aspiration and pragmatism...

Birthday

My Birthday this year was different. This year I had my birthday during one of a camp that we held and like usual, I was leading it. Honestly I was not at my best, but nonetheless I had a great team with me, and they congratulated me on our way to Lembang. From then onwards, greetings never stopped, be it phone calls, sms and messages, and through Facebook. But my mind was just too busy thinking about the camp. I want the best out of it because its really important for the participants and it was also the first time for the team that we arranged this camp this way. And all day my concentration was on the camp. I didn't feel like I was having a birthday at all.... and that day was really really tiring. I had no rest at all, even the night before I couldn't sleep. 


Only at the end of the day that I managed to breathe. I thank God that the day went well if not almost perfect :-D, and my heart was cool but warm again, filled with life after having a phone call from far away :). Afterwards I managed to check on some greetings, and then I realized how wonderful my life is, having greeted and wishful thoughts from all parts of the world with different languages as well!. I felt so blessed, for who am I, just a small person in a small secluded place, yet being part of this HUGE world? greetings flocked in endlessly and it didn't stop even until last week, even some brothers of Taize wished me for my birthday! =D. I received surprises from Poland, France and Germany which I never even guessed before. It was such a wonderful birthday, no doubt about it! Only a simple smile, a bit of tear and a give thanks to God was what happened. 

The LIFE you always wanted

"Distubance in the Force, there is..." says Yoda. This Jedi master can sense when the balance of the universe was disturbed. But for us we don't need to be a Jedi master like Yoda in order to know that there's something wrong in this world because It has gone wrong... The world does not offer any balance anymore. Greed, capitalism, ambitions and self-recognition rules the world now. Where is the balance then?

If we look at our lives, ask again "do I have a balanced life?" In this time where the world flies so fast, filled with rapid changes in technology, societies, communications and other parts, where do we fit in? Do we know who we are, what we should do, let alone what God has called us to do in this world, or are we just plunged into all routines (I called it Business As Usual -being busy, as usual- :p) without even having the time to stop, to look back and to see who and where we are now?

This thing called routine, made people lost themselves. No longer they know what they need (they only know what they want, and call it their needs) and no longer they know who they are. This made life becomes more individualistic and egocentric, (as what people called personal), skeptic (a.k.a freedom), and stressful (as something unavoidable)... This breaks relationships, torn families apart, and diminishing the values of life. We forget that we are communal creatures, that we need each other not just for the sake of a personal benefit, that we need God and that we need ourselves. We are just sucked into all this without being able to control our life anymore; it is life and all these routines that control us! What a life! We forget that it is us, who should controls life and not the other way around! We can do that when we bring our life into balance.

By balance I mean a discipline to set our lives and priorities according to what we are in this world for (have you know why on earth are you here for btw?). To gain this balance we need to stop from the routines for a while and give time to God, ourselves and others daily. When we have this balance, we become humans. We don't become robots being controlled by time, money, society and the world itself. We began to see the beauty of life and embrace them as what it should be. We start to understand what is the most important and essential in life. No, its not material and money although it is also important. It is not power and ambition as well. Having this balance does not necessarily means that we can get all that we want. No, Life does not work that way. It should be seen more as to get what we NEED. 

I know a small village in central France who practice this kind of life, just like the life of the first believers (Acts 2: 42-47), where most people agreed that they find true quality of life there, to know themselves better, to know God better, and to know others better. This is a place where a balance life can be achieved through prayers, work, and living in communities. But does that mean that we can only have a balance life there? No, certainly not, because as I have said before, it is us who should controls our lives. We can create a balance life where ever we are. It is a choice that we can make to start living as human beings the way God created us. So choose Life! (Deuteronomy 30:19) Benjamin Disraeli said something so true "‎We are not creatures of circumstance, We are CREATORS of circumstance". When we believe that we can do all things in Christ, it really means that He gave us the power to choose and to live that choice! 

So how do we choose to have a balanced life? It is to choose something that we are lacking of. TIME. In this modern day, life is always in a fast pace lane, and we are absorb in it, being distracted by things and we forget what is really important. We think that we do not have time to stop in the midst of our routines, to give time for ourselves (not literary, but time to look at where and who we are), and the most important thing, time for God. As what Jesus said to Martha, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:37-42).

We are just too busy with what we think is the real life!

But Mary has chosen to give her TIME for God, for herself (and then for others as a result), and that is the best. One thing needed is the heart, to stay still, to pause, to listen and to focus on God (be it only 15 minutes a day), and Mary gave it all. Within our hearts, there lies our true selves; it is where God, who is the true love, stays. And that is what God values more than what we do. This is the answer to our problems in life. This is where we can learn and experience real love. Aren’t we always interested in being loved and sharing this love with others, especially to whom we love? When we are there we felt the abundance of God's love flowing endlessly to us, and our life is filled with peace, joy and love. 

Having this life filled with peace, joy and love is something that we can't contain. No matter how much we want to keep it for ourselves, people will see it, and receive some of it as a result. And of course, what’s the use of keeping those without sharing them to others?

So choose a balanced life! Live simple through our lifestyle, our hearts and our minds, and believe me, you'll find the life you've always wanted!