Archive for December, 2008

We just came back from a trip last evening. Usually my husband and I would chit chat while we were on the road. Then the subject of divorce surfaced. Not us but other people. My husband’s mother’s side of the family, nearly all are divorced. His parents divorced when he was 6. All of his uncles and aunts are divorced. 2 of them not only once but twice. I knew a friend whose husband’s parents are divorced too. Many of my husband’s friends are divorced.

Usually these people would have children from their previous marriages. The ones who are going to suffer most are the children in this matter. They get scattered and many times even neglected. Most if not all these children would suffer emotionally.

Why people choose to divorce? Didn’t they choose each other in the first place? Weren’t they madly in love with each other?

People divorce because it is an ‘option’. A quick way (not necessarily an easy way) to solve their marriage problems and even perversion (infidelity) which would leave a trail of mess. Not only in their own lives but other innocent lives like their children. If the option of ‘divorce’ is wiped out from the list of options to take, they would have to learn to accept and live together through thick and thin. Since they are going to live with each other till “death do them part”, might as well they try to solve problems in a different way. Try to overlook the faults and and remind themselves of the things they like about each other when they first fell in love, get professional help, improve themselves, etc.

I am not denying that perhaps in certain cases, divorce may be inevitable - incarceration, insanity, disease etc. But if you can see people divorcing left and right and even in your very own family, there must be something that is not right. The marriage institution is breaking up. That can not be good. The problem of a family will lead to a problem of the society.

If a couple would just think a little bit more carefully of the consequence their deeds would lead too, perhaps divorce would not be the first thing that comes in mind when trouble emerged.

I just upgraded my wordpress blogs to the 2.6.5 version. After doing that, I saw that there’s a version 2.7 available. It’s nothing really. I just need to push a button to upgrade and upgrade usually means they are clearing some flaws and bugs etc. But after doing it like every few days or weeks… it is a little annoying.

There is a point in our lives when we just stop talking or listening to someone who cannot seem to understand how the world actually works. I am by no means an expert in life experiences. Far from that in fact. But I can see and I can learn from those people who seem to do well in their lives.

In my 20 over years of life, when it comes to learning curve, I have thus far seen 3 kind of people. There are those who learn from other people’s mistake, there are people who just got to try things themselves and learn from their own mistakes and keep on improving themselves, and finally there are people who doesn’t learn from others, make mistakes and yet do not learn from these mistakes.

The type of person I am talking about is the one who is in the third category. How do you deal with these kind of people? Who keep on talking about how to do things, never listen to reasons, fail over and over yet never learn from it?

At a certain point, the only way to deal with such people is ignore. They may have an eternity to keep on finding the “thing” that they are looking for. People like me do not have that much time in life. Life is too short to listen to problems that these sort of people simply do not want to solve not because they cannot.

It does not necessarily mean letting them go, especially if they so happen to be a loved one. But there simply nothing more you can do or say to help somebody who does not even want to help themselves.

There was a period in my childhood life when we had to travel by car rather frequently.  Those journeys were often long hours of driving. So there were plenty of times that we travelled at night.

I remembered as a child sitting in the backseat of the car for hours and feeling exhausted. We passed small towns, city, and houses by the roadsides. When it was late at night, the road would be empty and in most of the homes, the occupants were already sleeping.

As a child in those times, passing the dark houses, I had imagined the occupants must be sleeping in their soft comfortable beds, tucked in under their warm blankets, and there I was, a night traveller passing through. I wondered how they looked like, and what they do in the day. I saw their homes, I was there. But in their slumber they were oblivious. The next morning they would wake up, their lives would continue the way they were, without knowing that last night there was a little girl passing by and imagining about them sleeping in their warm, comfortable beds.

There were once 2 patients  who stayed in the same hospital room. Both of them were bedridden, but one called James was fortunate enough to have his bed by the window . Since Henry couldn’t see what it was like outside the window so James would describe to him what he saw. He’d describe how beautiful it was outside the window. The green grass, the people, children, birds and so on. Henry always felt happy listening to the descriptions but  he grew envious everyday. Instead of listening about it, he wanted to see it for himself. Often enough he’d asked to switch beds with James so he could see the view outside the window, and was turned down every time.

One night, Henry woke up with a start. He heard that James was breathing heavily, obviously in pain. So much pain that he couldn’t even holler for help. Henry kept quiet and didn’t call for the nurse, thinking perhaps if James dies, he would finally get the bed by the window. Few minutes later, all was silent.

Sure enough,early in the morning, the nurse found poor James dead. Henry finally got the bed by the window. When he looked outside the window for the first time all he could see was a lone dumpster and a grey wall. All this while, James had been lying. Lies that made Henry happy and yet envious and most of all selfish.

James saw the things that he wanted to see in the view outside the window. The beautiful things.

Note: Rewrote from a story I once read…