T.Notes#35: Anti-Social

I never really liked social media
Because tbh i don't like most people.
I really only like a certain type of people.

But i'm told that i have to say and do things,
So that a lot of people like me and follow me.
Follow me to where exactly?

I do find it a bit absurd,
But i need to figure that one out.
I just wanted to blog again really.

Jazz recently said that,
The degree to which my identity is located within my ministry is the degree to which i may have missed the plot and my life is off course.

I like Jazz. And i think i like you!
Because if you liked and followed me,
then we chances are we are a perfect match!
So thank you.

This post briefly muses about a culture and it's expectation of platform and profile.

T.Notes#34: Fall

I don't talk about this often.

The last time i laid on a surgeon's table,
The nurse suggested i stay awake this time.
I remember feeling cold and lifeless as my mind drifted.

I thought about how life is similar to playing a cruel game of Russian Roulette.
And about how Bambi had probably ruinned my chances of heaven or eternal paradises.

To each his own Archille's heel,
For some, it is in indulging the forbidden.
Just as the night before, we'd stood face-to-face, stark naked - body, spirit and soul.

"What is your weakness?", She had whispered.
Her brazenness reminded me of Bible stories,
Of strong men - conquered and reduced to play things.
Yet i was foolishly honest in my response.

I want everything - all that i cannot have and then some.
Bambi had become the pursuit which I had placed above everything else.
My satisfaction, is my god - i know.

The Igbo people say desire is the first child of Satan.
So as she smiled, leaned in close and asked me to kneel,
I concluded that i was going to hell.

Daddy used to say that some life mistakes are too costly to make -
That it is better to learn from the folly of the simple.
But i was always the curious kid who stared out the window at midnight....

I guess what i'm trying to say is,
The last time i laid on a surgeon's table,
I thought about the brevity of life, about second chances and about an old prayer:
Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.

This note is about self awareness.
Who, or What, makes you fall to pieces?

These are my T.Notes.

Picture: Flavio Gasperini

T.Notes#33: You don't (even) know my name

Monday
The thing is...
I'm not sure how to say this,
Without coming off like i'm trying to chat you up....

Photo by Charles Koh

T.Notes#31: About Sunday Contradictions

Whilst i embrace the Christian faith,
There are two areas where i intensely struggle.
One is the expectation of a deeply flawed man to live out a worthy cause.
The second is the age old dilemma - how does a good God permit such evil.

I have grappled and studied wide these two contradictations,
And also lived inside their deep trenches -
So i know that it really is not that simple.
I am aware of most well intended responses
And how none of them have yet to quiet my restless angst.

This note acknowledges a walk of faith, or to be precise - a slow limp, for those of us who dared to tell the truth.
And whilst i look forward to a different conclusion, these three things still honestly remain:
A broken halleluyah, a fragile amen and a different type of faith.....

Faith nonetheless.

T.Notes#30: Damsel Fly

Then there are those days when she longed to be lost - to wander away into a long night. An unrecognizable curious beauty, stirring a glass of red at the back of the bar, and listening intently to Loyle Carner's Damselfly and Ottolenghi. Then there are those days when i desperately wished to be her. This one is about flight.

T.Notes#29: Game for three

Heaven and I know both that my life is like a game of three dice:
Each of us gently stroking one,
a curious orchestra playing in the background,
and the devil, waiting with a third and for the music to pause.

T.Notes#28: Lauryn

I went away to a self discovery retreat because my 'good' friends convinced me that i was hurtling into a serous case of early mid-life crisis. To be honest, i was not really bothered about the prognosis until i started seeing real implications to my account balances - i.e maintaining a mid life crisis is expensive and certainly not sustainable!

So there i was in a lovely country side along with other misfits - literally being force-fed a lot of new-age, self-help propaganda. As you can imagine, i was not very coperative. The facilitators had one particular underpinning theory. They insisted that the key to life fulfilment is by rediscovering the person you were towards the end of your teenage years - because the person you were at ages nineteen to twenty holds the key to the real "you" and therein lies our personal contentment.

The logic is that most of us have already figured out who we are and what we want to become by age twenty. Therefore, every experience or decision after that age is either consciously helping us towards that goal, or we are intentionally adjusting our aspirations to accomodate life, pressure or society.  I told the psycologist that it all made no sense and that she was talking rubbish. My defence was that it is not practical to build one's life on the naivety of teenage-hood.

She asked me if i was happy. I told her my current salary, recent bonus and asked her if she'd be happy if she were earning that much. She said maybe, and asked me again if i was truly happy. In response, I reeled out the long list of people that rely on and benefit from my adulting routines. Their happiness gives me contentment, albeit in a depressing twisted way - i argued, whilst mulling if my life wasn't disimilar to how Paul refered to being poured out like a drink offering.

Before giving up, she asked me to reflect on the things i was doing at age twenty that brought me joy and give myself a break from adulthood to indulge fully in those activities and afterwards take time to reflect. I reluctantly agreed to take up her challenge. So when i got home, i borrowed a bicycle and rode to the local music store - with the wind and fond memories in my sails. I bought a reel of old 90s music and dedicated the weekend to allowing myself space to breathe.

Then for the first time in six years i turned off Bloomberg and welcomed instead Miseducation of Lauryn Hill strumming in the background whilst i read through all 200 of my old posts here - in search of a consistent trend of "who i am". I cringed at  some, prudently archived some, but for the most part, I loved, laughed and ultimately accepted every facet of experience that has brought me to who i am today - with a better clarity of the sum of all those colorful parts.

What does this all mean for monday morning when i resume back to work and the deadlines and stress-lines kick back in? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it all out. But i do know that this weekend i feel lighter with a lesser burden from the weight of the person i am trying hard to become. And i know that it's a feeling i'm not keen to give up too quickly.

How do you deal with life on your journeys to becoming?

This is a T.Notes