Thursday, August 05, 2010
[7:04 PM]
Six years ago I blew a balloon. Since then I did not stop blowing balloons. I had so many balloons! They looked so pretty and nice, dancing with the wind, all merry and gay. Until one day a strong wind came and took everything away. One by one the strings snapped and they flew away, high up towards the sky. I tried to save them. I ran after them. But the more I ran the further they went, and soon they were gone, lost among the clouds. Six years I took to blow these balloons. But it only took me a few hours to lose them all.
While taking a break in the staff lounge at the end of rehearsal yesterday, I came across a copy of this month's Reader's Digest. I won't say RD is the best informational magazine around but it is certainly an interesting read and the issues that they focus on tend to draw us in through the use of emotional writing and expression. I flipped through and set upon an article that seemed apt to the way I was feeling at that moment. It was about how this particular guy in deciding his career path 3 months prior to college had an unexpected experience that showed him how fate would eventually show you the path to take. At the end of his article he wrote,
"We spend a lot of our time wondering about what path to take in our lives. This experience taught me that sometimes, you don't really have to worry about the big decisions. At times, these decisions are made for you - and that whatever happens is always for the best."
Earlier today, I came across a photo article called Postcards from Hell on the Foreign Policy. Many commented that to be making a list of "failed states" and ranking them in terms of their "failures" in not having a car and five TVs is rather "sensationalistic". I think media is simply playing the role it's been assigned to and we as consumer just have to take what we read and view with a pinch of salt. But the thing that really got my attention was the way those images and stories portrayed striked a chord in me. Sentimental values aside, linking the RD article I shared earlier to this, I wonder if I'm actually walking alongside my true calling without realising it. Is this the Higher Power telling me that perhaps I should venture into humanitarian and disaster management? I've been getting endless "hints" if you will ever since I realised my role and responsibility in Civil Defence. It's one of the things that had driven me to my current day job in fact, in the hopes of one day being able to put it to good use by reaching out to these less fortunates. I still have with me the job offer to be part of the disaster management team, putting the lady on hold on the premise of securing myself a degree first and foremost.
So perhaps these balloons are flying away for a very good reason. Perhaps it is fate telling me that I should not be wasting my time and energy on blowing anymore balloons even though I had spent most of my youth and adult life doing it. Fate works in very mysterious ways. I am in no position to go against it, therefore I am accepting it.