what the soul chooses to love

Whatever the soul chooses to love, it will resemble;
therefore, what we choose to love is important.
Love is the force behind every level of existence.
There is some good in every attraction,
but there is a process of refining attraction,
of choosing what to love,
so that we are energized by a wider, purer love.

...

If the suffering and drama of this world were not real,
unconditional Love would have no place.
The imperfection of the world is what gives birth
to the reality of Love -- an unconditional Love
that loves even this imperfection.
Love is a quality of the unconditioned and infinite
that penetrates the imperfect and conditioned world,
bringing with it a taste of beauty and mercy.
If Love were reserved only for the lovable
it would not be cosmic. The mystery and mercy of Love is
that we are its recipients despite our faults and weaknesses.
Knowing this allows us to love even our enemies
and to love more of this imperfect world.

~ Living Presence: The Sufi Path to Mindfulness and the Essential Self, Kabir Helminski

ghina an-nafs

After the horror of the past year++,
and finally feeling like I crossed a huge internal hurdle,
(circa July 2018 -- a moment now carved in my memory)
I did tell myself that I wanted to have a reflective end-year post this year
like the ones I used to have before.

The end of last year felt like a nightmare.
And the end of this year,
Alhamdulillah!
A spring is growing in my heart again,
and I've found my footing, insya Allah. (:



At the start of the year, I blogged briefly about a dream I had where I'd discovered I had eyes behind my normal eyes, and how I was so freaked out in my dream, I shut them again and hid them away, and pretended they weren't there. In retrospect, it was a prophecy of sorts, perhaps.

I think I've received new eyes this year, a terrifying new thing,
but Subhanallah, I am so deeply grateful now.
(A million purple hearts won't suffice. 💜 )
I literally corrected my eyes and now am utterly
spectacles-free and contact-lens-free.
At the same time, I feel like I'm understanding and seeing things
so much more differently now, and hope to sustain it well into my future,
so that I may hold myself in stead,
at all times as much as possible.
And be the best person that I can be.


a list for 2018 (excuse the lack of coherence):

* a sudden (and very recent) epiphany on that famous hadith about richness being not that of material things but richness of the soul, after reading a book about Sufi mindfulness and building an essential Self. The concept of always returning to your essential Self being the richness of your soul -- ghina an-nafs (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I realise taking the arabic words literally led me to this mind-blowing conclusion.)

*MINDFULNESS -- perhaps theme of the year, after LOVING YOURSELF. And um, isn't mindfulness basically the concept of taqwa in Islam, wow. Mindfulness is basically key to a lot of successes because of the self-awareness and strength of will it cultivates.

*Loving yourself being the start of the integration of the self, insya Allah. Jin's song, Epiphany, wins my Song of the Year.

*WORK must be within and without. I must attend not just to the internal landscape of my mind, but also my body, and my space/environment. I am developing my S function, yay! hopefully slowly but surely.

*Work albeit minute steps to improving health and fitness. Although I occasionally still fail like tonight when I should already be sleeping, ahhhhhh.

*Developing a schedule (conscientiousness being a way to balance the chaos of creativity, especially as harped on by Jordan Peterson) -- slowly but I hope to grow and be consistent

*Jordan Peterson! who makes so apparent real religious truths by his uncompromising manner with logic and rationality, conscious or not on his part. Jordan Peterson's clean up your room! and KonMari corroborates. Jordan Peterson's treat yourself as if you are valuable and BTS's Loving Yourself corroborates. Jordan Peterson's contentions about male-female issues -- I don't know if he realises that the rules and norms he talks about are already stipulated in Islam :P

*JAPAN -- I thought I couldn't love you any more, but I do. And now I have a beautiful spot (i.e. Kamikochi) in the world I have locked away in memory as a promise to return again.

*BTS being increasingly awesome every year. At this point, they're at least Beatles-level. People are just not acknowledging it very well yet. *shhhh I will see them next year, yayyyyy*

*Expanding book clubs!! yayyy Alhamdulillah. And loving the fact that my personal book club is going on to serious classics, and how we're more ready now for such big, heavy works as part of a natural progression.


Thank You.

Humility, gratitude, and love are key, S.

may 2019 bring even more beautiful rain
to water the spring in my heart.

what we can know depends on our state of consciousness

What does it mean to care for your soul? Care of the soul is the constant practice of bringing loving attention to the problems, conflicts,  and longings of our lives. Emotional suffering is something to be attended to, not split off from. We can learn to read our life as a story, rather than as a clinical case. Moreover, if the story we have been telling ourselves is a melodrama or tragedy, we need to rewrite the story. Every human life, when seen from the perspective of the unrelenting Divine Mercy, is the story of grace unfolding. Love is revealing itself in the precise details of each human life, if only we do not impose the script of self-pity, bitterness, and fearfulness. The soul is where the divine attributes of God may be awakened from their latent state to be integrated into our character. These qualities are the soul's natural inheritance from the Divine. It is through communion with the Divine that the soul takes on the spiritual attributes of kindness, generosity, courage, forgiveness, patience, and freedom.

What are the signs that someone has begun to acquire a soul? More constancy in presence, more intentionality, and more remembrance in outer life.  The spiritual teacher is very familiar with the ploys of the ego self, how it interferes with people's spiritual intentions, distracts them, subverts them. That's why, especially in the beginning, it is so important to be intentional in relation to one's spiritual commitments. Without giving priority to such commitments there is little chance of transforming the false self and developing soul.

Eventually, as the soul develops it will show this constancy even in our dreams - that is, even to the depths of our subconscious mind.

The soul is a knowing substance that knows the Reality beyond time and space. To acquire this kind of knowing is to become illuminated, to be connected to a greater intelligence that will guide every step of your life. Instead of living in fear and uncertainty, you will more and more be able to trust the unfolding of Life.

...

Beyond the facts of sensory existence, or concurrent with this existence, is the dimension of qualities that are perceived by even subtler faculties than our senses. If we read great poetry with only our sensory mind and intellect, we may know the literal, concrete meanings of the words - we may know whether or not it makes sense on a concrete or intellectual level - but we will not necessarily know the meaning, feel the nuances, or catch the emotional taste of it. We may in one moment be reading poetry as mere words, but with a change of consciousness, with the heart open and engaged, the same lines might inexplicably bring tears to our eyes. What is it that controls this flow of tears? Why does this experience arise from our depths? What we experience is dependent on our state of consciousness.

~ Living Presence: The Sufi Path to Mindfulness and the Essential Self, by Kabir Helminski

the hidden Sea

The final type of conversation, akin to listening, is a form of mutual exploration. It requires true reciprocity on the part of those listening and speaking. It allows all participants to express and organize their thoughts. A conversation of mutual exploration has a topic, generally complex, of genuine interest to the participants. Everyone participating is trying to solve a problem, instead of insisting on the a priori validity of their own positions. All are acting on the premise that they have something to learn. This kind of conversation constitutes active philosophy, the highest form of thought, and the best preparation for proper living.

...

It's as if you are listening to yourself during such a conversation, just as you are listening to the other person. You are describing how you are responding to the new information imparted by the speaker. You are reporting what that information has done to you - what new things it made appear within you, how it has changed your presuppositions, how it has made you think of new questions. You tell the speaker these things, directly. Then they have the same effect on him. In this manner, you both move towards somewhere newer and broader and better. You both change, as you let your old presuppositions die - as you shed your skins and emerge renewed.

A conversation such as this one where it is the desire for the truth itself - on the part of both participants - that is truly listening and speaking. That's why it's engaging, vital, interesting and meaningful. That sense of meaning is a signal from the deep ancient parts of your Being. You're where you should be, with one foot in order, and the other tentatively extended into chaos and the unknown. You're immersed in the Tao, following the great Way of Life. There, you're stable enough to be secure, but flexible enough to transform.

~ Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't, from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan Peterson


Alhamdulillah! for the times I've had such wonderful conversations.




God has made nonexistence appear solid and respectable;
and He has made existence appear in the guise of nonexistence.
He has hidden the Sea and made the foam visible,
He has concealed the Wind and shown you the dust.
~ Rumi: Mathnawi V: 1026-27

sayonara sotto sotto

I've been revisiting Monkey Majik's songs,

and really love this one too, called Sakura.

This gives me the right tone and emotion,

for the end of another year of learning,

and growing.

We never stop growing!

as long as we live.

The petals softly, softly flutter like they're dancing.
A new season, surely, surely, is beginning.
Because we won't ever, ever forget these tears.
This moment is dazzling.

Goodbye, softly, softly, to the feelings in my heart.
Until the day we surely, surely meet again.
We pursue our dreams, forever and ever,
under the same sky.
This moment is dazzling,
beneath the row of cherry trees.

It feels like I've lost quite a bit of momentum with writing since my trip, and my thoughts haven't begged to be channeled out yet, which I find... unsettling. I'm used to having that need and urge, to... be verbose, and rant on. But maybe it's the maturity and perspective slowly asserting their restraint on my overall person. I have been feeling... fairly contained. Perhaps it's a wonderful reflection of the amount of healing that I've done for my person, and the amount of equanimity and peace I have won, insya Allah.

My thoughts still swirl around, and typically, I still have the habitual I-should-blog-about-that moments; or ideas and reflections that I think should be penned down. But... I don't know. I feel a little different these days.



I did have a dream this week though, that stayed with me. In this dream, over repeated scenarios, I was arguing and desperately trying to bring my point across and convince people of something. I was using words, and debate -- it might have been a courtroom, or a lecture hall at one point. And there were several ladies that were quite mean and condescending, and I felt so angry and oppressed, and feeling very much the futility of my efforts in trying to win the case (whatever it was). At one point, I had got so upset, I was about to cry in front of them, and resort to saying how horrible they were -- but the scene had moved on to my picking up pieces of glass off the floor. The glass pieces seemed to symbolise whatever it was that I was trying to fight for. My dream self had decided that the arguing was pointless and maybe I could do something with those pieces instead. And I remember a couple of friends helping me to pick up the pieces. One friend was someone thoroughly familiar, but the other person who was just diligently picking up the pieces (despite my protesting her help) was someone fairly unexpected and I was surprised when I looked back on the dream, that she had appeared there.

But after a while, it did make sense that she was there. She was one of those people who I'd always thought was more doer than talker; someone I admired who was quietly observant, and would make her point, by being, instead of proposing or talking. And that's what I think my psyche has been trying to move towards. I feel like, it's the natural conclusion for me now, to stop fighting and being somewhat resentful of perceived stupidity or injustice or overall block-headedness in my environment. Instead, just do. Be the change you want to see. A cliche by Gandhi, but it's true isn't it.

The lamenting and the incessant complaining and the theorizing and abstractly figuring things out I've been doing for years (throughout my twenties and perhaps earlier) and being just appalled with the way the world is in many spaces (rightly or not) -- I'm moving on from that now. One can go blue in the face trying to convince people to change their minds about things. I'm done being angry, I think. I hope. Things don't change when you try to convince people of them. You just do them instead. Or you live it.

I'm taking on this motto for my life now:
see something that needs to be worked on? Work on it.
Don't be angry with people; be kind.




If we're going to make true belonging a daily practice in our lives, we're going to need a strong back and a soft front. We'll need both courage and vulnerability as we abandon the certainty and safety of our ideological bunkers and head off into the wilderness.

True belonging is, however, more than strong back and soft front. Once we've found the courage to stand alone, to say what we believe and do what we feel is right despite the criticism and fear, we may leave the wilderness, but the wild has marked our heart. That doesn't mean the wilderness is no longer difficult, it means that once we've braved it on our own, we will be painfully aware of our choices moving forward. We can spend our entire life betraying ourself and choose fitting in over standing alone. But once we've stood up for ourself and our beliefs, the bar is higher. A wild heart fights fitting in and grieves betrayal.

...

A wild heart is awake to the pain in the world, but does not diminish its own pain.
A wild heart can beat with gratitude and lean in to pure joy without denying the struggle in the world.
We hold that tension with the spirit of the wilderness.
It's not always easy or comfortable - sometimes we struggle with the weight of the pull -
but what makes it possible is a front made of love and a back built of courage.

~ Braving The Wilderness, by Brene Brown

i'm back!

It's probably strange to open this post about my trip to Japan

with a picture of this cup, but I feel it is very much apt.

This cup was purchased on the day we were in Matsumoto, on the journey back to Tokyo,

after the wonderful few days we had in the Hida Mountains.

Matsumoto (Central Japan), turns out to be quite a city of the arts; for one, it was the birthplace of the famous artist Yayoi Kusama. The museum housed much of her history and works. One of their famous shopping streets too had countless crafts on sale; pottery was one of them. After browsing a cute shop full of handmade pottery, I felt like I needed to get something (partly cause we felt bad browsing endlessly and not buying anything) -- and in retrospect, I'm so glad I got the above cup. It's simple, but beautiful, and one of a kind. And there's something about it that reminds me of that essence of Japanese culture that I so admire -- an appreciation and a cherishing of objects and nature. It's not like I hadn't known it before, but it struck me more this time: how much respect these people have for things, and how that translates to respect for human beings and for the environment. Like this cup, most things are so well-made, well-thought out, and gently and quietly cherished; and it inspires one to respect the object and the maker. I absolutely love this cup now, and I'll always remember the quiet shop E and I tiptoed around in, for fear we might crash and break things; and the cute old lady, who quietly smiling, wrapped up my cup in paper and bubble wrap.

I love that about Japan; their quiet politeness and gentleness, and respect for things. All things. E and I talked much about how wonderful their recycling culture is -- when you finish at Starbucks (which of course we did more than once! gorgeous Starbucks too; this one here was a wooden warehouse building all on its own, in Hakodate, Hokkaido), you need to sort out all your trash into the correct bins: liquid and food waste separate, plastics down another chute, paper in yet another space. The spaces designated for all things, make you aware of how you treat your own space, and other people, and things -- I love how shoes are always neatly arranged for instance, no matter where. At one point, someone anonymous (likely a random guide), had arranged our shoes while we were blithely exploring a no-footwear museum space, and we were fairly horrified, and subsequently attempted to always arrange our shoes when we took them off. I've taken to arranging all footwear in my house in this manner, haha.

Ganbatte, S! to striving to continue to grow in respect and gratitude, toward all things, places, and peoples in this world. I came home even more psyched to continue to konmari and clean up my space.

I had said that I wanted to replenish my self by resting with beautiful things;

and I certainly got that.

I really, really, really loved the Hida mountains;

there was nothing short of splendour there:

loved the autumn trees,

the quiet majestic mountains,

the clear rivers.

The water was so spectacularly clean and sometimes an amazing blue,

I can't even -- (I want to burst with awe)

and the fact that we stayed a few nights in isolated ryokans in the mountains,

accorded us some of that quiet isolation we wanted with nature.

 The day we were in Kamikochi was amazing (and freezing cold, hahaha).

We were walking by this river, and when we had walked a fair bit, it became quiet,

because most people didn't seem to venture that far;

the place was a camping ground (we spotted a few tents).

The view was spectacular.

I couldn't believe we were just there on our own, trekking around;

it was so beautiful. And peaceful. I've decided I will be back some day.

And the yellow autumn trees! were everywhere.

I could indulge in my love for yellow; 

people have said I looked good in yellow, hehe.

not sure how to end this post,

but maybe with a series of ridiculously pretty and beautiful things.

even our food is so prettily laid out:

Shirakawa-go was basically like a fairytale place.

You can easily imagine Little Red Riding Hood walking by,

picking flowers.

and more of the beautiful trees and mountains:

(zero filters for all my pictures here;

they needed none.)

Thank You God for such beauty.

I like this Jeremy Bearimy timeline hahaha.

I feel like The Good Place has reached that point, the way it did with Supernatural,
where they grapple with the whole heaven-hell-afterlife backstory and making it plausible;
it gets a bit what, eh at times, but mostly this is still fun and I have no idea where it will go,
hehe. Let's hope this show figures it out.


On other matters,

my long-awaited holiday escape is impending!

And I think it's a good time to take a rest from all of cyber-life for a while,
from the stresses and pressures of societal demands, and everyday expectations.
This year has been a long, taxing lesson (Alhamdulillah! in a lot of ways).
I haven't blogged this prolifically in years:
I have had inner openings; mind-blowing revelations; painful slaps of self-awareness;
made painstaking efforts at establishing inner harmony, which as I go on, I realise
is like sitting on the point of a knife. So difficult to sustain,
and maintained with acute awareness and vigilance. So easy to lapse.

but I'd like to take some time off for now,
switch off, replenish, and be quiet with nature,
with beautiful things.



Ja!

Hypersimplified morality stops you from tapping into deeper recesses of your psyche. It's partly because they're primal forces; it's not surprising that you don't want to have anything to do with them, that you stay away from situations where they might make themselves manifest. But the problem is, by denying the worst in yourself in that manner, suppressing it, you preclude the possibility of the best. Because no one can be a good person without integrating their capacity for aggression. Because without that capacity for aggression you cannot say 'no'. Because 'no' means there is nothing you can do to me that will make me change my mind. Or conversely, I will play for higher stakes than you will. And unless you've got your aggression integrated, there isn't a chance you can say that, and if you said it, no one will take you seriously. They'd know it was just a show.

-- Jordan Peterson talking about Jung's idea of integrating one's shadow




You should be able to do things that you wouldn't do; 
that's the definition of a genuinely moral person.

I actually had to pause so I can post it here,

because it's just so damn good.

Everybody is a strange mixture of victim and victimizer. Lots of terrible things happen to people that aren't justifiable in some sense; illness strikes people randomly; where you're thrown into existence as a consequence of your birth; there's going to be times in your life where things twist in a manner that's unfair to you. But that goes along with the unequally distributed privileges as well. That's the arbitrary nature of existence. But you can't allow those sorts of things to define you, because it's not that useful strategically.

When you're playing a card game, you're dealt a hand of cards; 
well, what do you do? You play the hand the best you can.

Why? Because all the hands are equal? No! Because you don't have a better strategy than playing the hand that you're dealt the best you can. And that doesn't even mean it'll be a winning strategy. Because people don't always win; sometimes we lose, sometimes we lose painfully, sometimes we lose painfully and unjustly. That's not the point. The point is you don't have a better strategy. And neither does anyone else.

If you start to regard yourself as a hapless victim, or even worse, an unfairly victimised victim, well then things go very badly sideways for you, it's not a good strategy. You end up resentful, you end up angry, you end up vengeful, you end up hostile, and that's just the beginning. Things can get far more out of hand than that.

It's better to take responsibility for the hand that you've been dealt.


Everything Dr Peterson says in this resonates with me, especially with respect to new ideas and thoughts that I've pondered over the past year; he basically summed up for me, all of East of Eden, and why it struck me so deeply. That whole thing up there; that's Cal's story! (and each of our stories too) Facing your own capacity for evil and struggling with the hurt and injustice one suffers in life, as a necessity toward real good. He mentions Harry Potter too, haha. I cried at multiple points of this talk.

This man is here to stay on my list of admirable people.
I am floored by how intelligent he is,
and how real and honest he is about the search for truth and meaning.

basic laws of emotional physics

simple but powerful truths that help us understand why courage is both transformational and rare.

1. If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall; this is the physics of vulnerability.

2. Once we fall in the service of being brave, we can never go back.

During the process of rising, we sometimes find ourselves homesick for a place that no longer exists. We want to go back to that moment before we walked into the arena, but there's nowhere to go back to. What makes this more difficult is that now we have a new level of awareness about what it means to be brave. We can't fake it anymore. We now know when we're showing up and when we're hiding out, when we are living our values and when we are not. Our new awareness can also be invigorating -- it can reignite our sense of purpose and remind us of our commitment to wholeheartedness. Straddling the tension that lies between wanting to go back to the moment before we risked and fell and being pulled forward to even greater courage is an in escapable part of rising strong.

3. This journey belongs to no one but you; however, no one successfully goes it alone.

4. We're wired for story.

5. Creativity embeds knowledge so that it can become practice. We move what we're learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands.

6. Rising strong is the same process whether you're navigating personal or professional struggles.

7. Comparative suffering is a function of fear and scarcity.

8. You can't engineer an emotional, vulnerable, and courageous process into an easy, one-size-fits-all formula.

9. Courage is contagious.

10. Rising strong is a spiritual practice.

-- Rising Strong, by Brene Brown.

That night I am sitting at the kitchen table, just lost in my thoughts, when Edison brings me a cup of tea. "What's this for baby?" I say, smiling.

"I thought you could use it," he tells me. "You look tired."

"I am," I confess. "I am so damn tired."

We both know I'm not talking about the first two days of testimony, either.

Edison sits down beside me, and I squeeze his hand. "It's exhausting, isn't it? Trying so hard to prove that you're better than they expect you to be?"

-- Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult


Exhausting.

the truth untold, but it's raining

just revisiting some beautiful things.


There's a difference between absence and death
and you are needed.
-- Checkmate, Dorothy Dunnett

and this song is really so heartbreakingly lovely.

💔

need to keep up my discipline
--> to keep up my health
--> to do what needs to be done

Every now and then the universe tells you what book you need to read;
it does this by placing the name of that book and author in front of you in various contexts,
until you can't help but take note.

You ignore book recommendations from the universe at your peril.

-- Books For Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life, by Will Schwalbe



Amusingly, I feel this is true. It's written tongue-in-cheek, but anybody who's ever felt a connection to reading probably knows this. In fact, I do think, it's not just reading; it can be a talk, a lecture, an encounter, a person you bumped into -- it's a being attuned to the world around you, that nudges you in the direction you need to go.

At the highest level of psychological integration,
there is no difference between you and your experience.
-- Carl Jung

This is seemingly the umpteenth time I'm raving about book club,
but I can't help it.

Book club is one of the best things that has happened in my adult life.

💜

Today, we had book club while midway through Anna Karenina.
And we discussed with fervour as we usually do;
but in addition, today, we found ourselves crying together.
Seriously, we cried together, haha, while sitting at Fish and Co;
because we had ventured down the path of discussing love once again,
and we shared painful, and profound things.
I marveled at it, and laughed at it. "Guys, what is this! Crying club? Haha!"

Alhamdulillah, how wonderful it is to have such a beautiful thing;
a place and a space to learn and share and connect deeply.

Learning to love someone on their terms
is a difficult but life-changing thing.
Your heart has to grow to be big enough for it;
to not feel like you will lose out if your love is not returned in kind
or when it will inconvenience you.
To keep learning to love yourself so you increase your capacity to do this;
recognising that the long-term sustenance of such endeavours
requires you being careful of how full or empty your cup is.

Fill your cup, so love can spill out of you.

💗

This is a proud moment for me, ahah;
Jordan Peterson was somebody that put me off at first,
with the anti-feminist clickbait titles of videos his fans made on YouTube.
(At one point, I even flagged his videos as NOT INTERESTED,
so that he doesn't pop up on my YouTube feed.)

But fast-forward certain irresistible videos later,
I have learnt to really respect this dude as an academic,
and in fact, I don't disagree with most of what he says, at all.

Jordan Peterson is a straight-talking, ruthless, thinker and clinical psychologist.

I see him as someone who is unwilling to compromise on his principles;

a trait I thoroughly respect in a person.

But because he had very clear objections against some things the liberals were proposing

within the structural framework of feminism and trans-gender politics, he became both the radical right's icon (sexist men simply latch on him as a saviour of sorts, *roll eyes, everyone*), and a demon against the radical left. And his real academic arguments are lost.

I'm proud, because I feel like I have successfully remained open-minded and now understood more because of it. I agree with his general stance for equal opportunity for all, but not necessarily equality of outcome for all (because he says that's something that approaches communism) -- which he claims today's feminism strives for, and he doesn't believe in that. I respect that -- and it's actually what Islam says about women, I think, more or less (we could delve deeper into this, but let's not right now). Where I feel Jordan Peterson fails with respect to his public persona is that he fails to appear empathic enough with women so that he comes across as anti-women, which as I've learnt, he isn't. And this is where I feel valid opponents of radical feminism fail in public discourse. If you wish to produce real valid arguments against certain elements in the pursuit of equality for women, do show empathy to the plight of women and don't ever make it seem that you'd rather women not have equality at all (and then let real sexists use you as a tool). Empathy and kindness are so important in the achievement of real-life gains. I suppose Peterson's aim isn't to influence the public per se, I don't know; I feel he'd say that he's basically an academic. But man, if you do want to make an effect and change in the world, isn't it always via the approach of love and not antagonism?

as if we needed more reason to love

Kim Nam Joon and all of BTS:

💜

Synchronicity or causality, I'm not sure which it is, 

but I've read and watched so much in relation to the theme of Loving Yourself now:

one of which is Jung (whose quotes have been littering my posts).

Jung knew and recognized the element of rascality in himself, and he knew it so strongly, so clearly, and in a way, so lovingly, that he would not condemn the thing in others, and therefore would not be led into those thoughts, feelings, or acts of violence towards others, which are always characteristic of the people who project the devil in themselves upon the outside, upon somebody else, upon the scapegoat. This made Jung a very integrated character. In other words, he was a man who was thoroughly with himself. Having seen and accepted his own nature profoundly, he had a kind of unity and absence of conflict in his own nature. He was the sort of man who could feel anxious and afraid and guilty, without being ashamed of feeling this way. He understood that an integrated person is not simply the person who eliminates the sense of guilt or anxiety from his life, who is fearless or wooden or a sage of stone; he is a person who feels all these things but have not recrimination against himself for feeling them.

It's hard to explain, but all these pieces I've learnt over the past year, about loving yourself, about integration (another buzzword this year Datin S and I concurred over!), about empathy, about gratitude, about true love, finally unlocked for me the whole thing about forgiveness and anger that I was so agonized about a year ago. I was so angry about a lot of things; and at umrah earlier this year, I was sobbing because I just couldn't find a way out from the anger and injustices that appeared so evident in my life and in the world. Then I remember writing about Nabi s.a.w., and how he had that quality of forgiving people huge and unimaginable wrongs, and how I marveled at that ability to be so magnanimous and loving, despite people not seemingly deserving of such love. How do you become such a font of love, such an entity that requires not love be poured into first for love to come pouring out? The kind of person who is kind without needing kindness in return; the kind of person who is calm and compassionate in the face of hurts and pomposity and all manner of degradation and devaluation.

It is this: it is a loving of oneself. That comes most easily with the realisation that at the very least God loves you (if no one else does). But however it is, as long as you love yourself, all of yourself in truth, even the horrid and ugly sides of you, and you truly accept the whole of you -- that you will then learn to be kind to others, love others, and be increasingly magnanimous to humanity, having realised that you, just like everyone else on earth, are both half-good, and half-bad. You will not then condemn anyone else, recognising that there's some possible element of that within you too; we are all the same, humans.

Who looks outside, dreams;
Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

Was feeling sad and disappointed earlier cause
I had to cancel on a trip I really wanted to go on. 😞

but insya Allah, some day. 💔

and then this wrapped up tonight for me;

yay Alhamdulillah! the only way to negate anger and unhappiness is love.

💚💜

I am counting on love.

I must really really remember this;
love for the sake of God,
love for the sake of God,
love for the sake of God.

Amin.

'the alarming possibility of being able'

-- Soren Kierkegaard

I've got a new favourite youtube channel now!

these videos are such bite-sized awesomeness:

Self-actualizers are very much defined by a life mission

We cannot change anything unless we can accept it. 
-- Carl Jung

I'm doing a lot of info-consumption (in other words, crazily reading multiple things concurrently, and being haphazard -- but hey! I defend this with my belief that there's a secret order to the chaos); then I'm doing bite-sized actions cause I can't manage too many things at once, I think. I've sort of decided to treat my self, my nafs, you know, like my pediatric clients -- have achievable goals, and then gradual scaffolding and positive reinforcement is the way! Then pray for divine guidance and long-term (more like life-long) project sustainability.


"... it is generally considered that emotions and feelings, in all of their diversity, are a natural expression of our relationship to life and that healthy or appropriate emotion is a desirable condition. This is not to say that all emotion are beneficial but that they are often a natural response to aspects of our life. In this respect, if I did not experience fear when in danger or grief at a time of loss or anger if I am being abused, this would probably be unhealthy. Many emotions are part of a natural play of our experience that are a necessary presence for health. With this view we might consider that unless we genuinely embrace our emotions fully, we cannot experience the richness and happiness life can bring. Equally, if we are unable to relate to the nuances of our feeling and emotional life, life will become arid and without real engagement and meaning. Our relationships will become mechanical and uncaring. What makes the emotions problematic is the excessive or overwhelming and unconscious dominance of emotions such as anger, aggression, jealousy, pride, desire, fear, and so on that then become potentially destructive and need to be brought into balance.

Within both the world of therapy and healing and Buddhist thinking, therefore, it could be said that it is not the emotions per se that are unhealthy but the way we respond or relate to them. When we do not relate to them openly and allow them to be as they are to move through us, we become bound up with them in an unhealthy way, and they become what we might call an affliction. When we go unconscious, become overwhelmed, or block and suppress an emotion, it becomes unhealthy. It can then dominate us and become destructive to both us and others. This means that we can begin to distinguish between emotion itself as a natural expression of our feeling life and the secondary contraction into an unhealthy relationship we may have with our emotions."

-- Feeling Wisdom, by Rob Preece

Alhamdulillah, I'm suddenly finding myself able to understand a lot of these stuff properly and deeply; I know that that whole excerpt would likely mean nothing to most people who read it (as it would have had to me, not very long ago as well), especially because the bigger idea is better understood from the book as a whole rather than just those bits. I'm finally understanding properly, I think, the concept of emptying your self -- something discussed in most ancient traditions, including Sufi Islam; concepts about ego and the nafs and the personality. About emotions and what they mean to the self, and what their purpose is, perhaps. I'm still learning though, and feel ravenous for this stuff.

I was not twenty when I bought Carl Jung's text, The Boundaries of the Soul, and now I think I'm actually finally ready to read what's in it. I don't think I could put two and two together at all when I first read it as a teenager. Now it's sitting on the ledge of my bed.


Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah!

And Astaghfirllah for all my past sins.
Blessings from God are always unfathomable.
Faith is trust when we cannot guarantee the outcome for ourselves.
(in fact, we actually never can guarantee anything for ourselves, can we?
we can't even guarantee tomorrow.
it's all self-illusion, thinking that we can.)
Choose faith to overcome the anxiety of living,
and not let the fear of life drive you to this self-illusion
i.e. doing things because it's safe rather than right, or true.

omg I love this kid!

I used to say that if I had a girl,

I wanted her to be like Nina the adorable and brilliant little Japanese girl

(whose videos are gone from the internet ever since she entered primary school);

but if I had a boy,

I want him like William!

This boy is so adorable, my goodness.

I was talking to the principal at one of my preschool centers earlier this evening, and we were discussing one of the boys on my caseload: how adorable, sociable, and cheerful a child he is in school, how I'm discharging him from therapy because he does not need it, and then... we have his parent complaining about how he's basically a terror to have at home; throwing tantrums apparently, slamming doors, and fighting his mum who attempts to cane him. The principal and I looked at each other, and before we said it, we knew we were on the same page: it's not the child, is it.

I'm quite sure of this: if you were to ask any experienced or perceptive educator, they will tell you that many of the supposed emotional, behavioural, learning, or academic problems that children encounter are not about them, but the repercussions of living with parents and families who are emotionally volatile at the very least, or completely damaging at the worst. Seriously. The longer I work in this field, the more I see not just the developmental trajectory of children, but the nature of humanity.

So many things happen below the apparent physical surface of our realities, but we don't consider them, strangely enough. People don't seem to consider them, much less think deeply about them. But their effects manifest eventually into our physical realities -- then we wonder, why? why is he like this? why does my child behave this way? Even for myself, as I've harped on in recent posts, I'm realising how much I've been very much shaped by my early childhood experiences, and how hard it is to reverse deeply-wired patterns put in place by the environment I grew up in, that I know I need to shed. Lucky for us, neuroscience has proven our brains remain plastic all the way to our deaths. It's like God's promise eh, that we still have a chance till our last breaths, to change our habits, our thoughts and opinions, and our emotional responses, to achieve some higher destiny maybe. We can totally rewire the way we think, if we put in the effort, if we choose it. But until each individual does that, takes control of his own life trajectory, most of us are products of our environment. As children, we have no capacity to fight this, and we are inevitably moulded by our milieu; and as a professional working with children, it is so painful to watch this happen and have no power to change it beyond what little nudges we can give to parents, in whose hands new lives appear so precariously held.




I see things so starkly now, ever since my recent epiphany about love (thank you Jin, for singing what is likely to remain my theme song of the year, Epiphany). Every single individual is born with a need to love and be loved in return, and if you just keep that in mind while you interact with all humans, you simply cannot go wrong. When I step into the classroom to see my kids and their friends, this human need for love is so clear; I love children for this purity that they have before life layers them with the masks they live behind--

Children will fight for your affection and get upset about not being attended to. When I call one child by name, the next child will immediately pipe up, "Do you know my name?" and the next one after that asks the same, and the next one after that. In the end I can have eleven children asking me if I know their names, haha, adorbs. You look at one boy and not the other, and you immediately get an upset response, "What about me!". These children make it clear on their faces, by their words, and by their actions, how much they want to be loved, how much they want to be seen.

Adults pretend they don't. When I do believe, we grown-ups very, very much, still do. Instead, adults have internally and privately learnt (we don't share this taboo information with each other) that we get love from people by being beautiful, or being successful, or being obedient and good, or being of service, or many other ways (dysfunctional or not), depending on the main message we get from our parents or caregivers (should they fail to convey to us we are loved just as we are). And when people fail to be any of the things they each think make them lovable to people, they believe they become unlovable -- and all sorts of problems ensue, the least of which I feel is depression. People who keep having to need this assurance that they are loved by others, can never truly love in return -- because you very easily mistake validation for love. How can you love well when you think you need to be rich or beautiful, say? Does it make sense: I'm sorry, I can't love you because I'm ugly. or I'm sorry, I can't love you, cause I have no money. or the other extreme, I'm so smart, beautiful, and rich, how can you not love me? And some other people stop fighting for love all together, and think they don't need it.

Use the mother-child relationship as an analogy; if there's an easy reference for true love, it's between a mother and child. Would a mother only feed and nurture her child if the child was beautiful? Would a mother only choose to call her child her own if he was healthy, perfect, and good? No, a mother loves the child no matter who or how he or she is. The fact that the child has been granted life makes him worthy of love. But see, most of us did not grow up knowing that fact; and from childhood onwards, we each try and figure out how to get this love we so crave.

I feel like all of this might be the point of life; to learn that the love that we're all searching here on the human plane will never be enough, because we're out to find the Real Love. And when we finally do learn to love God and love ourselves for having been granted life from God, do we learn to truly love others.

All of that made a very, very painful lesson for me to learn;
and now I'm trying to learn to love properly, insya Allah.

Rasulullah s.a.w. told us, 

"You will not enter paradise until you have faith, 

and you will not have faith until you love one another."

---

Epiphany totally merits multiple postings on my blog.

I am in love with this song,

and in relation to the above:

This part!

I want to love them in this world...

Shining me, the precious soul of mine,

I finally realised so I love me.

On many occasions during the early part of the monsoon in the Himalayas, I watched with fascination the emergence of clouds in the clear sky. From the clarity of blue sky a small wisp of white cloud would suddenly appear. In a short while it would grow into a small, fluffy white cloud. If the conditions were right, over time it would gradually swell into a massive, billowing gray cloud full of power and energy that flashed and rumbled. Eventually the dark center of this mass would deposit its contents upon the land below, and following that, I could see its heart collapse. Once the power of the cloud had been dissipated, it would slowly evaporate away until once again all that remained was a small wisp drifting in the vast blue space.

This fascinates me as a metaphor because the emergence of a storm cloud in the early days of the monsoon is so reminiscent of the emergence of strong emotions. What may begin as the wisp of a subtle feeling not yet noticed as anything significant grows into a stronger feeling that starts to draw our attention. Eventually, if the conditions are right, this can become a powerful emotional surge that has the capacity to overwhelm and dominate us as we lose control, driven by its need to express something to dissipate its energy. This may lead us to shower someone with abuse or to burst into tears. Once the core of the emotion has dissipated, the release can enable us to gradually calm down. The remaining feelings can still reverberate around our energy for some time, until eventually they settle back into the ground of our everyday feeling life.

-- Feeling Wisdom, by Rob Preece

I still haven't found a good time frame to blog proper,

but I keep coming across interesting nuggets that need to be recorded here anyway.

This video tried to dismiss all ancient religious thoughts on love though,

when come on, we've always had those mystical aphorisms by Rumi, say.

The ancients and true sages always knew this stuff.

Love said to me,
there is nothing that is not me.
- Rumi

For one human being to love another:
that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,
the ultimate, the last test and proof,
the work for which all other work
is but preparation.

-- Rilke

He describes the flow state as an 

"unbelievable lucidity, instant recall, 

the capacity to explain what you're feeling and thinking effortlessly".

I felt like I needed to blog tonight, but I feel like for the moment, this little post suffices; because I haven't built up that flow state Jason Silva describes, and that's the thing that keeps me writing on my blog, honestly. The years and years of repeated reflective flow states are what makes me put words on this page; and as I've said before, and here corroborated by Mr Silva, it's not about planning what to put into a words. It's the timing; a build-up of thoughts and feelings over a time period, and then culminating in a ready, serendipitous moment, to be unleashed via my fingers tapping on the keyboard. I feel like for me, this is a necessary creative release.

Tonight I'm feeling tired -- from a highly productive day though, I must say.
(I always hit more than a 10, 000 steps a day when I have 4 cases to run)
My blogging moments will hopefully surface another time.


But before I go off to sleep, perhaps earlier than I have in months (or years), because suddenly YJ telling us on groupchat that she's going to bed at 10.30 is creating a positive influence --

can I be a fangirl and declare my favouritest songs from BTS's latest and final installment of their Love Yourself? Right now, it's Epiphany, Serendipity, Answer: Love Myself, and Euphoria.

They are beautiful to listen to, and to ponder on.

But did I fall so that I could be hit by those countless stars?

I'm the only target to the thousand of those radiant arrows.

Why do you keep wanting to hide inside your mask

Even the scars that were formed from my mistakes

are my very own constellations

Oh, and this vid has been on my mind for a while too,

hm.....

Friends huddle together to keep from being buffeted by the wind,

Spiritual partners want to know where the winds come from.

Friends don't want to rock the boat,

Spiritual partners love to swim.

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

oh this is so good

and I love BTS-ARMY so much.

name me a more awesome fandom at the moment

(and omg, David is wearing a Love Yourself sweatshirt; I want one!)

on other matters,

work is crazy busy now, 

and I've been trying to be more organized 

with all the happenings and errands in my life;

and discovering calendar-blocking as an organization and planning technique --

it's kinda making me freak out cause I can really see how little time there is, always.

at the same time,

still discovering and learning these interesting, life-changing stuff.

I don't know if I maybe live my life by themes, but this love yourself business

is really pervading a lot of my daily experiences.

At times, I used to wonder if loving yourself meant arrogance and pride,

but as someone mentioned in this video, that's really not it.

Arrogance has its root in dysfunctional self-esteem, really.

But recognizing one's self-worth is the basis for true generosity and kindness,

I am learning.

I'm still reading up a lot on pride, arrogance, and gratitude in Islam,
to see where the connections are in all of this...
hmmmmmm.

ja!

ohmygod this is too cute!

William, Bentley, and Sam came to Singapore

and had our standard kaya toast and egg set!

I love how this family eats.

I was having therapy this morning with my LSEd V (i.e. Learning Support Educator) and little boy A, and then I noticed I was getting blood onto the picture cards as I passed him the animals he named. It took me a stunned moment to realise that I was bleeding from my nose! I quietly swiped it up with my fingers and what little tissue I had, until my little boy A cried, "Why, why your hand got blood!" Haha, busted.

I went to bed last night nursing a sore throat and trudged out to work this morning anyways; been feeling woozier by the hour though. And I've just been wondering if my poor emotional state is really starting to impact my physical health once again. I've had a good stretch since early this year, but now I feel like I need to hold on tight against any relapse. Is this a teething process perhaps? I've said how these recent years and months have brought on a huge psychological change for me; and I do feel there has been a lot of internal struggle and effort expended. Many times I've wished I could be more emotionally flat because it's so hard to live like a sensitive wire; trying to embrace this for the super-skill that it may be instead of just burying it and then having to fight fires when it inevitably surfaces at intermittent times, is the teething process I'm referring to. To reign it in, manage it, and control it, for when it's only needed, takes so much internal muscle, I just feel really, really tired and raw. I cannot wait for my getaway in October; just imagining soaking in the hot onsen and letting go of that reign for the moment, to sink into quiet bliss.

My head and heart also keep going back to East of Eden; I love it so much. I've been telling my friends how it's possibly the best novel I've read in my life thus far. Perhaps it's me always finding meaning in the vaguest of events, but this book, more than any other before, spoke so serendipitously and so directly to my heart and my present need in this time of life.

I keep thinking of Lee, Cal, and Sam Hamilton. And then Cathy. How unfair it appears at times, that some people are expected to be good despite horrid circumstances, and others are admired for being good but not having to put in an ounce of effort. But I suppose it's like every other thing in life we have been bestowed or alternately deprived of. They're just our test papers in life, aren't they? Whatever the combination of cards we've been given in life, that's the one you've got to play with, and still play it well. A bad deal doesn't give you license to cheat or foul, does it? But damn, if it doesn't piss people off, when those dealt with better cards feel a smugness, as though their good fortune was anything of their own doing. (For reference of how real this is, watch this TED talk about an experiment proving just how smug people get about what was arbitrarily given to them.) That's basically what privilege is. I feel that recognising the good hand you've been given is the start of virtue for those with good hands. And those given a bad hand -- what's their start to virtue? Perhaps it is to recognize that the bad hand doesn't give one license to lash out, and to slowly learn the wisdom of the hand you've been given: you have a choice, a hard one though it may be. And what a bigger triumph it is to succeed with a bad hand.

When I think of Lee, and his personal history, I think how valid his anger would be against a society so prejudiced against him as an individual. And yet, he showed such equanimity and goodwill. He then becomes a force of good. I keep wishing I had my own Lee. What's especially hard is trying so hard against your bad hand, hoping desperately for scraps of reward, and not have any support or quarter -- would Cal have made a turn for the better without Lee? Lee, who saw Cal grow up and struggle against his bad hand and the endless comparison with his shiny, beautiful brother. If I work so hard at this, this life, and project all my energy towards goodness and selflessness, would anyone recognize how hard I've worked against the bad hand I've felt I've been given -- this is the basis of good, isn't it? And don't we all battle this at least a little bit? If one believes in an afterlife, God is the way we validate this struggle, and reward is in the concept of heaven. But to sustain this battle with the self without human support seems torturous, if not impossible, to me. It makes me feel sad, because Lees and Sam Hamiltons and perhaps a future-grown-up-Cal are so rare.

I want my Lee. (I'd say I have one friend who may be my Lee, since I feel we're so open with each other about our deepest struggles and we are on the same page about a lot of things -- that's you, E, sorry if such fuzzy feelings make you feel weird, haha.) But I'd love to live among Lees. Have a partner who's my closest Lee (see why I'm so obsessed about the concept of true love?).

May we all be given our versions of Lee. May God give us friends and partners who love us not despite our faults, but because of them, and help us tread evermore the uphill climb.

Amin!


Also a related poem I've posted before on this blog years back,
but now deserves a re-post (I pasted this on my clinic desk back at KK):

The Fear of God by Robert Frost

If you should rise from Nowhere up to Somewhere,
From being No one up to being Someone,
Be sure to keep repeating to yourself
You owe it to an arbitrary god
Whose mercy to you rather than to others
Won't bear to critical examination.
Stay unassuming. If for lack of license
To wear the uniform of who you are,
You should be tempted to make up for it
In a subordinating look or tone,
Beware of coming too much to the surface
And using for apparel what was meant
To be the curtain of the inmost soul.

timshel-- thou mayest

The past week, book club finished and discussed East of Eden, by John Steinbeck.

I feel an overwhelming awe and appreciation for this book; it is so good.

(spoilerssss!)

I struggle to say what about it is so good; the careful nuance depicting good and evil? What is goodness? What is evil? When do we decide someone is evil and when do we empathise and understand there was a hurt? How do we fight against the evil within ourselves when we are hurt? At the end of the day, the message appears to be, no matter how hard your challenge in life, no matter how so very very hard it is, and how much you've been hurt, you have a choice. timshel-- thou mayest.

One of my strongest images from the book is Lee, 

discreetly telling a quietly-seething Caleb, "Don't do it."

There are people in this world who crash and burn against you,

and then think nothing of it, and you seethe and seethe,

and that's the kind of thing that generates the hate that generates evil.

And the worse if you're a generally clever person, for then

you can become a sharp tool of wickedness, if you don't make the harder choice.

After a time his breathing steadied and he watched his brain go to work slyly, quietly. He fought the quiet hateful brain down and it slipped aside and went about its work. He fought it more weakly, for hate was seeping all through his body, poisoning every nerve. He could feel himself losing control.

Then there came a point where the control and the fear were gone and his brain cried out in an aching triumph. His hand went to a pencil and he drew tight little spirals one after another on his blotting pad. When Lee came in an hour later there were hundreds of spirals, and they had become smaller and smaller. He did not look up.

Lee closed the door gently. "I brought you some coffee," he said.

"I don't want it-- yes, I do. Why, thank you, Lee. It's kind of you to think of it."

Lee said, "Stop it! Stop it, I tell you!"

"Stop what? What do you want me to stop?"

Lee said uneasily, "I told you once when you asked me that it was all in yourself. I told you you could control it -- if you wanted."

"Control what? I don't know what you're talking about."

Lee said, "Can't you hear me? Can't I get through to you? Cal, don't you know what I'm saying?"

"I hear you, Lee. What are you saying?"

"He couldn't help it, Cal. That's his nature. It was the only way he knew. He didn't have any choice. But you have. Don't you hear me? You have a choice."

---

And this simple yet beautiful exchange almost choked me up; it's the understated honest moments in life that grabs at your heart, and changes you.

"Wait-- let me get it all out. Aron didn't grow up. Maybe he never will. He wanted the story and he wanted it to come out his way. He couldn't stand to have it come out any other way."

"How about you?"

"I don't want to know how it comes out. I only want to be there while it's going on. And Cal-- we were kind of strangers. We kept it going because we were used to it. But I didn't believe the story any more."

"How about Aron?"

"He was going to have it come out his way if he had to tear the world up by the roots."

Cal stood looking at the ground.

Abra said, "Do you believe me?"

"I'm trying to study it out."

"When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to. But when you grow up you take your place and you're your own size and shape. Things go out of you to others and come in from other people. It's worse, but it's much better too. I'm glad you told me about Aron."

"Why?"

"Because now I know I didn't make it all up. He couldn't stand to know about his mother because that's not how he wanted the story to go-- and he wouldn't have any other story. So he tore up the world. It's the same way he tore me up -- Abra -- when he wanted to be a priest."

Cal said, "I'll have to think."

"Give me my books," she said. "Tell Lee I'll come. I feel free now. I want to think too. I think I love you, Cal."

"I'm not good."

"Because you're not good."

💚💔😭

The real value is someone, having faced his own darkness and all his flaws and faults, struggles to live and make the right choices. That's life; that's life, deshou. That's being human, and being worthy of love.

I really like Cal. He was so real.

And ganbatte, S! You have a choice.

it's a week to BTS comeback;

and I'm marveling at how amazing this ARMY-BTS dynamic is.

here's someone Korean explaining Ddaeng in detail

so we non-Koreans can also appreciate the stunning wordplay in this.

is it a surprise the appreciation and love for BTS keeps growing.

This past few weeks have messed with my fragile routine;
while my psyche has a complete overhaul,
real life schedules take a backseat.
This is a pattern I've noticed.
I maybe need to schedule in regular and good proper downtime for psyche revamps
to buffer for such situations.

Cause when I return to physical and external life,
suddenly I'm overwhelmed,
and my deadlines are about to bowl me over.

Not usually my thing but I've had to back out from planned friend-meets

and just sit with my deadlines.

 

 

 

come on, S, fight the negativity,

forgive yourself,

and ganbatte.

(look at this cute bird trying to karate or something)

everyone's at least a little familiar with this, yes? haha.

one just hopes one doesn't keep floating in the blue there.

Chatting with some friends, not about my problems per se,

but theirs, actually sheds light on my own problems --

and I realise we're all the same to some extent.

We're all struggling about the same stuff.

I wonder if it's my knack of constantly seeing patterns,

or whether it's synchronicity or if that's one and the same thing --

but when I talk with my friends, it really seems like all the same stuff:

are we loved for who we are?

are we then able to love others?

who breaks the cycle of hurt first?

I will try my very, very best-est not to think negatively of anyone, ever.

Not to ever let it dash across my mind how I may fare better compared to others.

Someone who's a work-in-progress, is at least progressing,

and will best you in every way, anyway.

also, I think I'm finally understanding the difference between

perfectionism and excellence.

Excellence allows and in fact builds on failure and vulnerability.

Perfectionism is a failed state to begin with.

To think that you'll break apart by exposing your weaknesses and faults 

only hinders your path to excellence.

ganbatte, S!