longlong day today! just came back from my grandparents' place for reunion dinner. was still feeling full from the steamboat i'd had for lunch earlier on, so couldn't stomach very much of the very delicious food on the table.
i know New Year's supposed to be really that - a new year. new year on the 1st of Jan. Chinese New Year. all supposed to be new beginnings and fresh starts. throw away the old life, start anew. because it's a new year. but then again, look at it this way. whenever you go to bed at night and close your eyes and lose consciousness for that few hours, it's the end of a day, innit? then when you open your eyes again the next morning and roll out of bed, it's a new day, innit? supposed to be a brand new start. then when you think even more, you can stretch this to practically every second of your life. when one second of your life's over, it's over. the next second IS a brand new start. you get to live that new second in a new way, the only thing that stopping you from doing that is your own self.
you cling on to how you've lived in the past hour or past minutes or whatever, you cling on to the emotions that surge through you those past minutes, cling on to the thoughts that formulate themselves in your brain in the time that's past.
i think that's what makes us human, actually. when you can't live every second of your life as though they're all disjointed and unconnected to each other. imagine if you were able to just discard EVERYTHING that happens to you a mere second ago and live the next as though everything that happened before that never happened. it'll make us nothing more than robots or machines. cold, unfeeling, and completely desensitised and efficient.
i'd be completely lying if i said that you don't get hurt when you love someone. whoever claims that as truth ought to have his brains examined. people are naturally guarded creatures. they put up walls and barriers around themselves for protection. sometimes the worst kind of hurt you can inflict on someone ain't the physical kind. sometimes it's the emotional hurt that really gets to you. and i suppose people are born with the instinct to protect themselves that way, sometimes crafting different personas to put up in front of different scenarios to hide the real 'me' away. when you interact with a persona in place, it's a lot like putting up a performance. acting, if you want to look at it that way. the real 'me' is tucked away somewhere, safe and inaccessible to the rest of the world for scrutiny or criticism.
but when you start to love someone, you don't want the person to see the constructed persona. you want the person to see you for who you really are, not the bimbo with the megawatt smile or the dumb cute chick with nothing between her eyes and ears. and so, you gradually start to take down the barriers, take down the walls that had so often protected the real you from the harsh realities of the world. in short, you start to let the other person into your life. into the world where your real thoughts and feelings are expressed, into the world where the real you resides and all your vulnerabilities are scarily open to be picked on.
then what happens when that person walks out of your life? you get so unimaginably hurt and the walls come right back up again. that's why, love hurts. always. it's not a maybe kind of thing when you're talking about this. when you love, you're BOUND to get hurt, no question about it. then, why do people still keep letting themselves fall in and out of love, only to get hurt over and over again? because. i think people keep doing that cos just as humans instinctively put up walls and barriers to protect themselves, people also instinctively look for opportunities to tear down those awful walls and barriers, opportunities where they can just be themselves and not have to put on fronts to anyone.
give love a fighting chance,
to all those people who're weary and terrified of getting hurt again.
what about all those people who've loved and lost and loved again? it's not just a one way thing, where you love and lose and that's it, period. you love, you lose, then you love again, and perhaps you lose again, or perhaps not, perhaps this time it's for keeps.
but if you don't even want to entertain the notion, then there won't be a possibility that it could be for keeps this time or anytime, for that matter. don't deprive yourself of love just because you're tired of getting hurt. it's not fair, it's really not.
there's this line from a Pocahontas song i've held very dear to my heart in recent days.
if i never knew you, i'd be safe but half as real.i only realised why tonight though, after sitting for an hour in front of my laptop putting my thoughts into words. it's exactly like what i said. if you never let yourself love anyone, you'd be completely safe in that carefully constructed world where you reside. perhaps it's not as extreme as how i'd painted it out to be, where you're completely fake. but there's always some element of guardedness and some degree to which you employ different personas for different situations. but you see, if i never knew you, i'd never haved loved, and i'd be safe in my world. but the crux of this line lies in that, if i never met and fell in love with you, i'd be safe from the possibility of being hurt - but i'd be half as real. because the walls would never have come down completely otherwise, the vulnerabilities would've always stayed hidden behind cardboard walls painted beautifully and glossed over to seem completely stable. half as real, because i'm learning so much about myself even as everything's going on. half as real because the masks would not have been dropped so completely, otherwise. it's not that you complete me, no you don't. it's the opportunity you've given me to drop my act that makes me more real, more vulnerable, more human, ultimately. and when i feel so small, so helpless, so unable to control things in my life, that's when my pride evaporates away and i realise i'm not God's greatest gift to men after all, that humbles me, makes me realise how tiny i am and how vain i can be about things. that actually, i am nothing, and it's only when i seek God and his will for me in my short, short life, then only will all the other things be added onto it.
