“It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back. You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing.”

from the essay Once More to the Lake

by E.B. White

This essay is about a man, now a dad himself, taking his son to a place where his father took him and his family one summer. When he went back, all the things that he remembered and seen as a child flooded his mind. He was happy.

Is there one thing that stands out in our memories; one thing that we hold on to that brings smiles to our faces? A place that we used to go to as a child. A particular event that we enjoyed but that we don’t have the time to do now?

Every morning, rain or shine, there are birds that sing their lungs out. I hear them. I listen; and it’s beautiful. While being a bird is not like being a human, there is a lesson there. Rain or shine, they sing. Rain or shine in our lives, we should want to live, shouldn’t we?

There is nothing glamorous about suicide, but some find it attractive, in a sense that it is the only way out of life’s problems. It is a selfish way out of what you think is no hope for you, no help, no support, no anything. Am I being tough, insensitive?

Living isn’t about being strong, or having all the answers. It is not about a fairy tale happy life where we expect everything to go our way, and when it doesn’t, hands thrown up in surrendiing fashion. It’s not about not experiencing pain, or heartache. It’s mush more than that. But you have to be alive to fiind it.

“Ambition is the path to success. Pesrsitence is the vehicle you arrive in.”

Bill Eardley

One of my favorite movies Maundy Thursday, also known as Our Happy Time, is about a relationship between an innocent man sentenced to die for murders he did not commit, and a suicidal woman, hating life and her mother, not necessarily in that order.

At first she did not want to talk to him, but due to her aunt’s influence, who is a nun that visits the prison, she  begrudgingly goes. She ends up liking their Thursday conversations.

This movie stars Kang Dong Won, one of my favorite Korean actors. Its depiction of how innocence can be stolen and how a life not wanting to be live can be rescued is so powerful. But the scene that stands out to me more than anything was the scene at the end, him behind the curtain being prepared to die. His fear, his tears, it felt like you were him, you were there. Powerful.

When you see the flag of your country or hear its name mention, do you become proud? Are you proud to say, “Yeah I’m from there?” or “Yeah, I’m proud to be  . . . ” Or are you ashamed, sometimes?

Would we change where we were born? I wouldn’t. My country flag is in the picture. The Bahamas.

Have you ever had a breaking point where you felt that your back was against the wall, or that there was too much pressure, bad things going on, and you felt that they were too much? Is there a line that we draw, a wall that we come against and say we can’t go beyond that?

But then we find oursleves moving the line because we’re not ready to give up, to throw in the towel? When we might feel overburden, overwhelmed, too much pressure, like we just want to scream–Scream! And move the line back. Never give in.

Happiness

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool the

And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered along the Desplaines River

And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Poem by Carl Sandburg

Maybe that’s just it. Sometimes people tend to look to the rich, famous and powerful to define happiness for them. Professors, teachers, philosophers to help them find out what that really is. When all the while, they don’t know the answer; they don’t have it.

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life.”

John Homer Miller

“Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit inside the other, each year inside the next one.”

from the short story Eleven by Sandra Cisneros

This story is about a bad experience that happened to the narrator of the story on her birthday.  No matter how old she got, she still remembered that unpleasant event that occurred to her on what suppose to be a pleasant happy day.

Are there events, things, whether good or bad that stands out in our heads, in our lives that we don’t want to, or can’t let go?

I watched this Hong Kong film last year called Drink, Drank, Drunk, starring Daniel Wu and Miriam Yeung. It is a romantic-comedy. Follow your dreams or follow your heart is just a part of what this movie is about. But that’s not why I’m writing. Daniel’s character, Michael, gets drunk from time to time and says what he really feels and thinks.

There’s a line in the movie where he mentions that a person has to get drunk to speak the truth. I wonder, do we and should we? No. Why can’t we say how we really feel and what we think sometimes?