A Hit below the Belt

This is hilarious … no should not be hilarious. Should make me cry, make me get angry and make me sit up but at the end of the day, I settled for hilarious!! My best friend gave me one hit below the belt two days ago. When I attend an event, a church service, a seminar or truly even just when I meet people and have a conversation, I debrief the conversation or what I heard on my way back or hours later if my return from such encounters was another event on its own. Sometimes, it takes me days to finally reach some conclusions on what I learnt, heard or made out of a conversation. I somehow take in everything… gestures, expressions, dressing and words spoken. I piece all these information together in my mental debriefing… they all help me to make sense of the event, the encounter and conversation. Sometimes the expressions stay with me for life (depending on who, what and how), sometimes, I shudder at the thought of it and sometimes, I wish I can relive some events. Recently, I attended a remembrance… I could not remember much that was said about whom we were remembering but I remembered a lot about the shoes that came to the remembrance. I like shoes. I have three main passions in life… God, books and shoes (in that order) so I see shoes, I notice shoes and I smile at shoes. For some strange reasons, only shoes made an impression on me at this remembrance. I came home and hours later, I sent a bbm to my best friend and I told her about the remembrance and how strange it all seemed and then I told her about the shoes and the designers that came. Of course she knows me and shoes so she said that she is happy with her comfort shoes of naturalizer, aerosole and one other brand that I cannot remember. She said she would rather spend the $500 (clearance price in outlet shops) or $1k plus toward vacation. I told her that those are on the cheap side and she said for this brand that I went on and on… she can get one for me for $500 in Neiman Marcus outlet shop during sales… then I said…Oh… I would like to own lots of those when my book has made the New York Bestsellers list… Now this is when it happened. I could hear her laughter across the space and time… I live in a hemisphere that is six long hours ahead of her, across many oceans… ( I think it is across Atlantic and I am almost so sure, some part of pacific ocean too). My sense of geography is totally warped but that goes for a whole lot of people (Phew! What a comfort!). She responded and said, “that sounds like the man in the glass house”… I could barely remember the story but I remember the book. So I said, I thought that book was about a woman who loved frugality and somehow crossed the line into scavenging and she said... “yes it is, only her husband was going to build her a glass house”… which never was and has not been yet… I laughed… thought it was hilarious. Then thought… no I should cry because that was really below the belt delivered succinctly and with painful humor… then I resolved that the book will be written this year… at least one will be written and submitted to the publisher… fingers and toes crossed!!

Confront Your Fears (part 1)

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do things which you think you cannot do” (Eleanor Roosevelt) The above pretty much captures where I am in life right now. I know the path I want to take but fear seems to cripple me. I am in transition. That point on the road where there is something. It is a vulnerable state and fear can eat you up… because the path seems so uncertain. I do not know quite how to navigate out of it. There are things I must do and they may not be “convenient” but as I look back in the courses of my life “convenience” has stolen most of dreams from me and convenience had stolen time from me. What I see today is fear in a new cloak…did I say new? No, in the usual cloak of convenience rearing up again. I will jump anyway!!! I will get off the ship… off the known I will get off the ship of waiting for convenient time because I may never remember when I lived my life I may just be waiting for convenient time and my life will be over… What a tragedy that will be! “You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, So you have to make choice. And hopefully, your choices can come from a deep sense of who are” (Fred Rogers)