The Wall In Me

Plain and simple, it’s a defense mechanism. I used to feel for the longest time that after each quarrel we had that was really hurting, where the words used were stinging, the names called were wounding, and the spiteful retaliations were childish, a piece of my heart dies along with each and every fight.

The first cut is the deepest.

Soon I appreciate that the wounds seldom heal. Then come the second, the third, and more, inflicting fresh wounds, and aggravating old ones. How many cuts before my heart bleeds to death?

The human construct is really amazing, whenever survival is being threatened; the natural defense mechanism kicks in (watching the discovery channel finally pays off) to protect. That is the case for me as well, a piece of my heart didn’t die with each quarrel, instead a brick went up, and soon I realized I walled my heart in an impenetrable fortress. This is not what I had wanted, this is not what I had in mind, yet oddly, this is exactly what I had become… unfeeling, cold, hard, callous, and heartless.

The mockery of me that had become, a hopeless idealist in love who is unable to love… poetic irony… that when depression creeps in, causing you fall into a big web of contradiction that you can’t pull yourself out of.

The remedy, well, there are in fact, two.
One, is to learn to never put yourself out there, preventing yourself to feel hurt and in the vicious process, feel love. Where you no longer struggle to untangle yourself and, instead, embrace that life is just one big let down. Constantly reinforcing the wall, till there are no leaks, no cracks, no point of return.
Two, is to believe. To have faith that your one true love is out there, one who can rescue you from the grasp of misery. And bring down the wall surrounding your heart, filling the wounds of hurt with care, concern, and love. Where two hearts learn to beat in unison, inextricably linked. That’s when you know that you both were meant to be.
I have made my choice. Have you?

Amor est vitae essentia

Nobody wakes up saying; “Boy, I sure hope I don’t fall in love today” or “I sure hope nobody sweeps me off my feet today”, thus the saying:
Amor est vitae essentia = Love is the essence of life… and if you were wondering, its latin.

Call me naïve, call me dumb, hell you can even call me an idealist… but if there is no love in your life - or if you have yet to experience heart wrenching love - then you have not truly lived…
And yes, I have experienced heaven and suffered hell all because of LOVE. Ask me now or 50 years later, if I ever regretted falling in love only to feel as though my heart had been ripped out when things didn’t work out, my answer will always be a resounding ‘NO’!

Love is what KEEPS us alive! Love is why we FEEL alive! Love is the ESSENCE of our lives! (ok, I am starting to sound kinda scary… and no, I am not intoxicated while writing this)

Now for the caveat… as much as I am a believer in love (alright, I am, in fact, a sucker for love), I refute all forms of wooing. Notice I used the word, wooing, and not dating, courtship, or etc…

Falling in love to me is something magical, where some unexplainable chemical reaction in you causes you to look at and feel toward a person totally differently without having that person do anything to impress you… Wham! and it just happens… and the best part of falling in love, the same chemical reaction is happening to that person as well.

Take away the flowers, chocolates, expensive gifts, expensive restaurants, and etc (I can so keep on going about what a man can do to impress a lady and vice versa), and if love still blossoms, congratulations, you have got something special going on for you. I envy you, and more importantly, I am happy for you.

Now don’t get me wrong, a man MUST still shower a lady with all of the above and more, but what I am saying is that those are not THE PREREQUISITES in order for feelings to develop (if you feel otherwise, shame on you and get your ass out of this blog), and how often have we been guilty of using such as a benchmark to measure how much you are being loved, how deep the affection, how well are you being cared for… little wonder, divorce cases are on the rise…

So what do I use to measure how deeply in love I am? I use laughter and quarrel. The heartier the laughter, the harsher the quarrels = the deeper the love. When I laugh the hardest without restrain, quarrel to the best of my abilities, as peculiar as it sounds, that is when I am in love the deepest. Well, what I just said ain’t rocket science, its simply because love has the delightful effect of amplifying all your emotions!

Love causes:
Food to taste better
Jokes to be funnier
Arguments to be more unforgiving
Time together to pass much faster
Time apart to pass much slower
Love stories to be more touching
Affection to be more passionate
And most of all, YOU TO BE HAPPIER

So I say to you now, take the risk and leap, open your heart and allow that special person in deepest making you totally vulnerable causing you to fly, cos without love, we are all just falling…

Just How Close Are We In A Connected World?

Like every almost every other person living in a city, I am connected – Internet, emails (Shame on me for having 1 office, 1 campus, and 4 personal email addresses making it 6 altogether), phone calls, letters, and SMSs come hard and fast daily (no pun intended) – too well-connected for my comfort.

They say we are living in a global village… you can fly from Singapore to New York in less than 20 hours, talk to another person in Timbuktu with a simple dial of the phone (it is a real place, where on earth that may be I don’t know), send proposals to your business partner in an instant with emails, watch Maria Sharapova live in the Australian Open while having lunch in Singapore, so why do we feel more alone in this world than ever?

With the help of technology, we can reach a person on the far corners of the world in an instant, bringing the proximity closer, but in fact we as people are drifting farther apart. Gone are the good’ol days where people flirt (I meant to say ‘talk’) in person and build genuine relationships, it is now left to flirting over the phone, via a SMS, and thru an email. Communication is 70% non-verbal, it is little wonder why miscommunication is on the rise and relationships on the slide with every advancement in technology.

It has become too easy, too easy to hide behind technology and avoid the discomfort of communicating.
Let me give you an example:
Recently, I have come into a lot of time (would have been swell if I had come into a lot of money instead), hence, I decided to revisit all my friends whom I have been neglecting because of juggling work commitments, part-time studies, and a girlfriend (who is now an ex-girlfriend). Being a guy, I of course contacted my lady friends first, inviting them for dinner, coffee, drinks, movies, and etc.
What struck me was that I had chosen to SMS them instead of calling them direct. Truth be told, I chose to SMS out of a fear of rejection even though my intentions are honourable. Hell, if I was to be rejected I wouldn’t be as disappointed over a SMS than over the phone. It has become increasingly difficult to generate and build genuine relationships, for technology has widened our comfort zone far too big for us to consider stepping out for just one moment.

The question now is “Are you guilty of something similar?” So why not let us all take a chance and break down the barriers of communication, ask that person you have been meaning to out for dinner over the phone instead of SMS, flirt in person, smile a little, and take pleasure in the joy of each other’s company.

In the meantime, reply my SMS alright?

Losing My Virginity

Well, don’t let the title fool you. There is nothing sexual on this post I promise (but if you come back next time, you might get lucky *grin*), in fact, I am referring to my first post as a blogger. Yes, mock me if you must, I have not been keeping abreast with times.

Blogger… Hmm… is that even a real word? But that is not important, for now I too, have joined the ranks of being a blogger.

I have been inspired to create one of my own recently, and credit goes to Sash (I don’t know her personally but she is my one and only web indulgence, visit http://singleserves.blogspot.com/ and you will know what I mean) and Carrie Bradshaw (a.k.a leading character in Sex and the City), plus, being on a sabbatical which gives me way too much time on my hands to muse, contemplate, and ponder.

So my promise to you readers, in the essence of Sash and Carrie, is that I will write a no holds barred confession of my thoughts, encounters, and plots (as devilish as they may be). Feel free to comment, and I will be sure to post them (if I like them of course!).

P.S. writing this post WAS like losing my virginity literally… it felt awkward and unnatural at first, took a long time, and after doing it, you are afraid people will know thus only telling your closest friends cos they don’t judge you (maybe they do it secretly behind your back). But like sex, I’ll get better with more practice and experience…