The Bucket List

Spooky as it seems but I felt I was being "summoned" to watch this movie on my way back from Shanghai. Morgan + Jack, can't disappoint, so I watched on.

As I did, I began thinking about my own mortality and also my best friend's, pondering wistfully about her then imminent doom and what things she might want to do before she died.

The climax of the movie has to be the moment when both terminally ill men stood at the top of Egypt’s pyramid and Morgan told the story of how the Egyptian myth goes about gaining entry into heaven. The custodians of the gate would ask two questions to decide who qualified for heaven:

“Did you find joy in your life?” and,
“Did your life bring joy to others?”

I will never regret spending any length of time with her, tried my best to bring joy to her last demise days in the ward. Indeed her last few months were my best. She changed my life and I didn’t know it then, but she knew.

She is now trying hard to show me again the river to happiness or what Morgan referred to as "Joy in life". Perhaps, I should really let faith decide, not my brain.

Life After Death

This area of doubt lingers on my mind since the death of my closest friend.

Is there life after death and can anyone that is alive verifies that?

I know exactly how the typical answer would sound coming from a Christian, so save that if you are one of them, thank you.

Perhaps I should rephrase the question to:

whether we are still relevant to the dead in their fresh existence/incarnation.

1. Can the dead see and hear what we do and say in the life that they left behind and from where they exist now?
2. If we're doing something that they did not agree with when they were alive, do you think we're somehow letting them down if we do it when they are dead now?

Anyhow, I probably am thinking too much as to why would the opinion of someone dead matters more than someone who is still alive (speaking conventionally).

Perhaps the thinking is all part of the healing process for the "closest-friend-departure" package that I am being thrown at.

The Problem of Pain

If the God Jesus Christ we believe in, is loving and all powerful, why does he let us suffer so damn much?

We all know that while Jesus was a man, Crucifixion is among the nastiest torture and execution methods that humanity has ever come up with and he suffered and died in the most painful and humiliating way possible. I really don't get why God will not take the pain from us, but he had taken the pain upon himself in its entirety.


I have received a weak signal lately that tries to bring an analogy to my myth. It reads something along the line...a good mother lets her children move out when they are old enough. She does this not because they will be safer. She does this because she knows that if she does not let them grow up they will be a shadow of what they should be. They must know freedom and difficulty in order to truly become mature.

Perhaps without the pain and struggle of life, there is no cause for us to improve ourselves?! Seems logical, but I still have my doubts.

In Faith Go Forward

"In Faith Go Forward", is our school's motto. I had absolutely no idea what it meant when I was in school, but now I do. This is exactly what I want to remind a friend of mine, who probably won't be reading this for the time being, but just in case she does.

Every now and then along our journey, we encounter failures, bankruptcy, rejections, and people mock and ridicule you. However, everyone of those experiences along our journey is meant to teach us something, and help us propel forward.

Each time we feel depressed, it's a sign to remind ourselves of why we're doing what we're doing, to further reinforce the drive in us that keeps us going.

Each time we encounter an obstacle, it's a test to see how bad we want it and how smart we are in figuring out what to learn from it.

Each time we are ridiculed from friends and family for following our dream, it's a test to see how firm our foundation is and presenting an opportunity to reinforce our belief.

I realised if one focuses too much on getting to the end goal, one will misinterpret all the things that happen along one's journey. We'll become frustrated because the end goal we so desperately want to achieve is not coming as quickly as we would like it to.

I know I kinda of sounded like your grandma talking, but I've learnt so much lately that I really want to share with all my dear friends and in particular, my dearest sister.

I want to yell at them, and keep reminding myself to step back, breathe and realize that everything is part of our journey. It may not be to our likings, but we've got to appreciate and be thankful for it. The mistakes, the setbacks, the lessons learned, are all meant to fortify us and it is meant to be since inception. Meaningless trying to avoid them, cuz we can't.

What Religion Are You?

I haven't yet identified myself with any particular belief system, whether it is philosophy or religion. So far in life, I strive to install and understand lots of different beliefs. What I ended up, is the fact that I’m neither a sincere Christian nor a spiritual Buddhist, but I am not an agnostic too either!

At this point, to me - a spiritual belief is - simply a perspective with which I can choose to view reality. To turn any particular belief into my identity, could it mean, fixing my perspective and thereby - cripple my freedom of thought?

What would you say if your computer decided that it was a word processor and only a word processor and can't handle spreadsheets? The machine would be fulfilling only a fraction of its potential. Can you really be only one or the other? Why not both?

Just as our computers wouldn’t represent themselves as the software it runs, I just can't identify myself as the beliefs I hold in my consciousness. Well not yet, but who knows.