Three kindred spirits gathered ritual-like, over tea on a Saturday afternoon like time travellers exchanging ancient data of past encounters, feats and conquests, reminiscing their relevance in the present era.
To be able to spend a hot, sweltering lazy afternoon drinking teh tarek and eating nasi lemak, an assortment of Indian tea time delights with two of my oldest ex-colleagues, and teammates, who remain friends of almost 50 years, huddled around a table of the Annapurnam restaurant in Bangsar bitching about the state of sports in our nation, particularly hockey. Mainly because no higher authority exists in our beloved nation on the sport of hockey than in our present company. Yes. It is fundamentally boring.
But the bonds that we cemented yet again, only serves to remind me how blessed we are to still have each other and to be still hale and hearty in our physical and verbal banters. Meister Ekhart called this; The Noble Man or The Edel Mench. Nobly humans are naturally constituted. The divine state can come by one's own grace. Instead of putting down nobles and aristocrats, he makes the peasants into nobles. Instead of putting down anyone, he elevates all.
That is apparently the key to A Good Life - a book published by Harvard University that began human happiness studies from 1938 on what makes a good life.
It reveals that good, warm relationships are the single most powerful predictor of lifelong happiness, health, and longevity.
As noble men, we already know, believe and live in that. That's why we keep making these exquisite encounters happen regularly, even that at best is too infrequent but there is no but.
It is what it is. As we traverse this ephemeral life as one must, invariably alone, it helps make the journey a lot less tedious and a lot more joyful. Because everything is impermanent. Everything changes. Nothing lasts forever.
Life is truly a DIY journey and no matter what, nobody gets out alive so take life a little lighter and live while still alive.
Enjoy yourself then die laughing.
I love you guys.
Footnote: The tea-time treats were so delectable that the youngest one of us bagged more goodies for home. Talk about hale, hearty and hungry.
Dear Universe (replaceable with god, nature, the Sun, the Brahman, the Tao, the Spirit or You)
Image by PineForest
Namaste 🙏🏽. You cruel, heartless, unforgiving, cold, ruthless, capricious vile bitch of an enormous entity, I have never enjoyed this ride more than I am enjoying the ride now. Right now.
The ride that I gladly call my humble life- fully embracing my joys and sorrows and everything else in between.
Looking back, it seems like I have been living several lifetimes in just one lifetime.
Through my own doing or undoing I have cast myself into a multiverse of sorts, meeting several different individuals and groups of people, cementing deep and meaningful relationships over the span of seven years thus far. Though I’d like to think that I was conscious and complicit in my actions leading to the family break up, and my solitary life, I can’t help but to instinctively feel that a larger entity was in play, to have ordered this chaos that has launched me on a wild trajectory of cosmic proportions. And that was when I met you the cosmos aka the universe and began to see myself minus the veil of thought, shrouded in pain and suffering.
What a sight to behold the great nothingness. The formless. Eternal consciousness. You and I are one.
I am a scion of the universe.
I am eternal as the universe is. I am consciousness. I am formless. I am the divine.
As formless as my source, I am made manifest in the form of an earthly being fully equipped with six levels of sense perception to fully explore and experience this world. Of Maya. Karma and Anava. Illusion, action and ignorance.
Ignorance truly is bliss. For in our ignorance in executing our actions, in a world of illusions, we are meant to explore & experience anything, knowing that we will always be taken care of. No matter the outcome, it always works out in our favour.
A thought now pops into my head, relating to the medicinal herbs startup I founded and recently shared it with a guest- “May we never know what evils or ills that could have befallen us had we had our desires fulfilled.” On the back of that thought, I know the outcome in the present moment is always favourable. It is always what it is. No matter how joyful or painful it is, it will pass- It is not I, not me, not myself.
I never fully experienced the joy of being truly happy deep inside, since I chanted this mantra given to me at the start of my spiritual journey towards the end of the last century. …
“ I am healthy, happy and enjoying every moment of my life, may all beings be blessed with good health, prosperity & spirituality. In full faith so be it.”
Now I do.
To put my lifelong quest into words; I now know that I have been seeking spiritual wisdom. Not just wisdom as expounded by the ancient Greeks but spiritual wisdom espoused by the Hindus.
Buddhism, the more scientific methodology of contemplation, of mind and being, has its roots in the deep history of Hinduism. So while my left brain is intellectualised and grounded by the daily practice of Buddhism, my right brain takes flight on the myths, stories and ideologies of Hindu lores called Sanatana dhamma, a way of life aimed at living a civilised life. Which is a way of ‘being’ as opposed to chasing and doing.
Although already aware of the being state, I have never fully immersed myself in being, until now. To be fully centered in ‘being’ most of my waking hours brings clarity to the quality of life.
To be fully conscious and connected to everyone and everything around me yet detached. Mindful of first taking care of oneself in thought, word and deed. To be slow to react, to be impeccable in words and deliberate in actions.
It’s such a liberating feeling to be; immune to criticism, beneath or above no one and to fear nothing.
Yet I still feel a deep yearning for my loved ones to give my life meaning and purpose and share in it.
Right now I know that every one of us will have to sit alone in solitude in silence or in chaos to contemplate life, when the time comes. I pray it be better sooner than later, no matter what condition our lives are in. It is an irrefutable truth. One of life’s guaranteed path to enlightenment aka ending suffering.
We are more in a state of fear than in a neutral state of mind, let alone being in a joyful state most of the time. When we sit in silent contemplation, we learn how to enjoy it coming full circle to be -
- immune to criticism
- beneath or above no one.
- Fearless.
And conduct oneself in a manner; 'to be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves' holding loving compassion in our hearts for all beings.
Every once in a long while, a voice silently creeps up and whispers loud in my heart with the journey that brings great respite to my journey. Walk on.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
Mary Oliver
The Journey
1986
(Edited 15/6/24)
What this poem means to me?
It’s a near perfect description of the journey
I have traveled over the last five years.
From the start to the present.
I was caught in a vortex of cosmic proportions
that wrenched my insides outside.
I have never felt so lost in my life.
I have been lost before but each time only momentarily.
Only because I always had my family to go home to.
I have had an abundance of physical and emotional
comforts all my life.
But not this time. It’s been five years and counting.
I now know the meaning of pain, encompassing regret, longing,
missing, yearning, wishing, desiring and dreaming.
And I also know how to put all of them behind me except dreaming.
That is what I hang on to dearly, long inspired by this short poem;
“ Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”
~ Langston Hughes
My dreams have kept me sane as I descended the abyss.
I have blessed every pain and suffering I endured.
I am truly grateful to have walked this path.
I realised that the person I need to love and forgive is myself.
Only then can I love and forgive others. Unconditionally.
I am finally free.
I do not ask for or expect love in return.
I am in no need for external love or validation.
I am whole. I have loved. I am loved. I am in love.
I had planned a reunion of sorts on your birthday because I was stumped about what to post for your 33rd. So an event or a meaningful meeting would definitely give me something to write about.
On Monday I texted a certain someone whom I've not seen in a long time asking her to join me for a cup of coffee on Wednesday. It didn't happen.
I also scheduled a much needed, long awaited dentist appointment late in the afternoon on Wednesday.
That didn't happen either. My dentist had an emergency.
So there I was at two minutes past two wondering what to do, seeing the futility in plans 'of mice & men.' My phone rang almost immediately. It was my dear techie friend AL asking if I wanted coffee. The universe works in mysterious ways I mused. Yes! I replied almost immediately.
AL swung by in less than 20 minutes whisking me away to the deep recesses of Old Klang Road to a hipster coffee joint serving bagels with cream cheese and spicy potato wedges washed down with gula melaka latte. We sat in the small converted link house enjoying the fare while young local Chinese baristas hustle about the cafe in their oversized t-shirts tucked into tight high-waisted jeans. They seem to be doing fine especially the resident cat. After a healthy dose of single origin African coffee and conversation we left for another new coffee joint in Sect. 14 PJ but it was closed.
Cafe' Cat by PineForest
So we went to a nearby cafe restaurant owned and run by a friend named Jonathan. Having visited him several times before I could see he wasn't his usual self. He looked depressed, and troubled by business woes. Ever since the post-covid recovery phase, Jon has been struggling to make a living to support his young family and in the past few months business has gotten worse at his cafe at Jaya Shopping Center. I tried the standard blanket statement of 'all of us are also suffering bro' but I didn't think he bought it.
In fact he confessed that in the mornings before he opens his restaurant, he'd sit in the dark pondering the fate of his business, and that of his family, driving him to the brink of a breakdown.
Here is a man who has had the courage to strike out to practice his craft of creative cooking but circumstances seem too overwhelming to endure. It seems that he was beginning to entertain all thoughts of abandonment and resignation in search of employment.
I have often wondered how people in business are coping with the post-pandemic fallout. Now I am getting the answers as if in search of stories to mirror my own. The only difference is that I don't have the yoke of a young family to weigh me down or spur me on. Either way, suffer we must.
Ponder, reflect, contemplate day and night in solitude we must, until we come face to face with our predicament. And maybe if we are patient enough, we will find the answers we seek in ourselves.
We sat with Jon a long while, listening to his plans pre and post-covid and as he talked us through, it seemed he had a couple of viable options available for him to decide his next steps. We left him feeling and looking much more cheerful than we found him even though he refused to join us for dinner at the newly opened Chinese Muslim Mee Tarek and Mee Hiris Restaurant downstairs.
So looking at what has unfolded today, if I were to have a man to man talk with Jon the cafe owner, I wouldn't know how to tell him what I think he needed to know in a way he'd understand because it would tantamount to preaching and enter the realm of meta physics.
Hence I just sat there listening and holding space for that young man to vent.
However, if it was you Jonathan, my son in a similar situation, I would probably say these to you;
1. Survival is not a problem. Live.
As long as we are willing to adapt, we can survive under any condition.
If we are used to eating five meals a day, cut it down to two. This will reveal our eating habits are just that - habits we have gotten used to unnecessarily over feed our bodies even though we are not hungry. Our body will thank us for not over burdening the system.
2. The mind is and always will be our enemy. Be mindful.
Most problems only exist in our minds. We just have to remind ourselves that every problem has a solution as long as we are willing to face them. When we do that we begin to see that things aren't as bad as we imagined. But the mind's primary job is to think and even overthink incessantly. Our job is to control the mind and use it to serve us and not the other way around. To do that, we have to be mindful. To focus on our breath that will bring us to the present moment. To stay in the present is to focus on everyone and everything around us because this is the only reality that exist, right now. So by constantly being here now, will silence the mind and lessen the endless chatter.
3. Fear does not exist. Live exuberantly.
When we're fully present, we begin to realise that fear has no place to dwell in our being. Fear is what we encounter when we lose unity with the present moment. Our mind then dwells in the past or gets anxious about the future.
4. Everything is temporary, ephemeral, transitional.
All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing. the Buddha said. That is a universal, scientific truth.
No matter what we are going through, whether it be a joyous situation or a negative one, it will pass.
After the winter, comes spring. It's only natural hence irrefutable.
And sure enough the sun will come shining through.
If it's not shining yet, keep going, singing in the rain, soon there will be laughter in the rain or sunshine.
Well Jon, this is your post. The message is that I see you, us in every young man especially the ones named Jonathan. Just like you he's talented and hardworking. And I know just like you, he'll be fine.
Happy 33rd Dude.
P/s. I've chosen a song by my childhood crush for your birthday soire'. She's a Hawaiian hottie.
Being an asshole is like being stupid. People can see you but you can’t.
Believe me I know, I've been there.
Truth hurts. The more it hurts the better you’ll become.
Here’s my 10.
1. When was the last time you smiled? Genuinely? Now Smile please.
2. Look people in the eye. And smile.
3. Say 'please' and 'thank you' always. And smile.
4. Don’t be late for anything.
5. Especially if you’re meeting your Mother/Granny or your Grab ride. These people are important. One gave you life, the other support life for his family. For all of them time is short.
6. Be nice to the waiter and everyone in the service industry. Give genuine tips when appropriate. *compliments are also tips.
7. Say Yes to everything. For once. See how it feels.
8. Listen to music. Really listen. Feel it.
9. Stop joking. Really. Stop yourself and pay attention to everyone and everything around you. See how it feels. Really feel. Nice isn’t it?
10. Tell your mother, your wife, your daughter, your son, your father, your husband “I love you” at least once a day.
Words descend into our conscious space everyday. Some descend like the gentle breeze, some descend like a hammer. This word landed like a crown of thorns.
She descended like a sunset over the Tuscan horizon catching me holding a glass of red wine in one hand enjoying the vista alone.
Intoxicating, refreshing, exuberantly liberating in every sense. The wine glass is full.
The word was uttered in total abandon by signora Olivia under the Tuscan evening sky over a hill on top of an olive grove overlooking the valley below.
The truth never sounded so good. Because it is immediately felt.
Once you understand what those beautiful letters spell- S P R E Z Z A T U R A you will never ever be able to describe the feeling. You just understand and that is enough.
Like all other words depicting ETERNAL TRUTHS, this word sits right up there with LOVE, NOW, MEDITATE, EARTH, WATER, AIR, FIRE, SPACE, NATURE, CONSCIOUSNESS.
They all ring true to my very core. Undeniably. Irrefutably.
Words are vibrations and they come in waves. This one comes, cocoons and envelops me like a light woollen blanket with its unique prickliness. There is a certain chill in the air.
Perhaps because it comes with the truth that to live life one has to let go of life. It brings with it an exuberance that almost chokes. At the same time it uplifts one’s spirit freeing oneself from all the fetters of guilt and despair. And the need for control.
Once understood, we begin to see that life is to be lived with a certain carelessness.
Caring less for desired outcomes but accepting whatever comes as a result. No matter how industrious, well prepared, well planned or painful diligence poured into any pursuit, the outcome is yet uncertain. The result of one’s ventures seldom, if never, turn out exactly as planned.
Sometimes, in fact most times, they turn out better than planned but one is too blinded with expectations that one misses the better result staring at one’s face. Perhaps it is because one only has one yardstick for the measurement of success. A dogged determination of gain, conquest, ownership and possession. Self-service as an end to all pursuits. Forgetting the bigger picture of who and what was gained, what was experienced and who we have become as a result of the strife.
Only when one can adopt an attitude of 'careless grace' can one begin to fully appreciate life, enjoy the journey, choose whatever shows up and one will never be disappointed.
The life that we live is truly 'organised chaos' because nothing is certain.
Sounds really deep doesn't it? Sounds like you'd have to shave your head, retreat into a cave deep in the mountains, sit and contemplate your life, doesn't it?
Well not quite.
Thanks to Preethaji & Krishnaji, founders of O&O Academy, it simply means deciding which inner state to operate from. But before we decide which inner state to be constantly in, the question of WHY arises. Why do we have to decide on a spiritual vision?
Because, in our brain, there are 100 billion neurons, a trillion support cells called neuroglia and at least 100 trillion neural connections. Our thoughts and emotions are like electrical impulses moving at incredible speeds between neurons.
According to Jennifer Hawthorne, bestselling co-author of Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul, human beings have 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day, and the majority of them are repetitive.
And a shocking 80 percent of our ordinary mental chatter are negative. Which means most people on average live 80 percent of their time in a suffering state unconsciously, and 20 percent of the time in a beautiful state.
To truly come alive, we must reverse the ratio. Gradually the 20 percent must become 40 percent, 60 percent, 80 percent or more living in a beautiful state. Imagine how beautiful life would be.
So A Spiritual Vision is not a goal to reach. It is simply this;
It refers to the very state you choose to live in as you go about reaching your goals. It is, in fact, the mother of all visions.
Let's say you have a vision of being a leader, a partner, parent, or a CEO. Those are roles.
They're all about doing. What about your inner state every day?
Would you be ok with fulfilling the role of a leader, partner, parent, CEO in a state of confusion, frustration or guilt?
Or would you like to fulfill these roles while living in a beautiful state of connection and clarity?
Imagine a happy parent? A fulfilled partner, or A grateful CEO?
So I think the most important decision we can ever hold on to is this;
From which state do we want to live every day of our lives? From which state do we want to create our destiny?
There are only two states of being- A beautiful state or A suffering state. You get to choose.
Fifteen years have flown by, since your departure from this world. Still not a day goes by that you are not with us. What joy you bring in your presence and in your absence.
For it is in knowing and having you in our lives that make this life a lot more worthwhile and more worth living. So; Here's to living and dying and dying and living.
After all; Departures are Arrivals as Endings are Beginnings. See you there. Son.
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing."
Chapter two details the heart's longing. The crux of love has always been about deep longings.
For it is the longing that transcend the physical, the mental into the spiritual realm.
It is Love Longing for Itself.
"And if we are to be lovers for the first time or again, after many times, let the lovemaking be filled with shyness and discovery the way it was, or could have been, when we were sixteen: today a kiss that lingers, a touch on the back of my neck that I can feel for hours: tomorrow a light caress across my breast that makes my breath catch. I want to savour each discovery of touch as the infinite unfolding of the other. I want to slow it all down, to wander around wet, aching for what is to come next, so I will know when I have been fully entered, whether by your body, your story, or just simply the moment that passes between us."
A privilege to start the book, perhaps I shall document excerpts to further internalise my understanding and learning.
The first chapter has many gems and anecdotes. This one paragraph deserves keeping;
"There are a thousand ways to love other people and the world- with our touch, our words, our silences, our work, our presence. I want to love well. This is my hunger. I want to make love to the world by the way I live in it, by the way I am with myself and others every day. So I seek to increase my ability to be with the truth in each moment, to be with what I know, the sweet and the bitter. I want to stay aware of the vastness of what I do not know. This is what brings me to the journey, I do not want to live any other way..."
~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer
There is much truth, humility and hunger packed into one single paragraph.
I remember now. the story I often tell when I was younger to gauge the core of the people I'm with.
This is a love story about a boy and a girl who lives on the other side of the mountain.
There's always a love story about a boy and a girl. Isn't there?
Well here it goes;
Once upon a time... a boy and a girl fell in love but they each live on the other side of the mountain separated by a raging river.
One day the boy sends the girl a message pleading for her to come see him as quickly as she can.
She rushes out the minute she receives his message.
It's morning but alas the raging storm the night before has rendered all forms of travel to the other side of the mountain impossible. Save for a boat that could ford the raging waters driven by this boatman.
She rush to him and offers to double his fare. But all he asks of her to take her across is to ride in his boat without her clothes.
She refuses at first but reluctantly obliges desiring to be with her lover, the boatman ferries her across unharmed.
Upon reaching the other side naked, she makes her way to his house a distance away. On the way she runs into a priest. Thank god, please father give me a cloth, a blanket or a shawl to cover myself so that I may run to see my lover.
The priest hiss vileness and casts her as the devil in temptation refusing to help her. She with no choice runs into the forest to hide her shame while looking for his house.
She runs into a woodcutter instead. The strong virile woodcutter thinking god has answered his prayers promptly has his way with her. And boy did he have his way with her.
She all bloodied, muddied and naked managed to run the last lap all the way to his house.
Her boyfriend looks at her with displeasure, disdain and disbelief to the extent that he disowns and discards her.
Heart broken the girl runs the final lap back to the river and jumps to her death.
Sad ain't it?
Question: Now rank in the order of blame, in order of appearance;
the boatman,
the priest,
the woodcutter,
the boyfriend.
Who is the one most to blame? Who is second? Third?
I will deal with each one of you if you care to participate in the ranking of blame, in the order of your response.
Every activity with any intensity will exhaust you.
Stillness is building a bridge between the physical and non physical.
With super dynamic activity by being absolutely still.
Yoga is a form of meditation and meditation is a form of yoga.
Yoga simply means union.
It is the union of all of our sense perceptions with the inner being or the cosmos.
It is intense and relaxed at the same time.
Access stillness through Meditation.
Maintain a certain tension in body. Stare at a space then breathe slowly relaxing your breath, eyes, moving from the top of the head down to the toes for 11-21 minutes.
Life is about enhancing perceptions. When you build a bridge from the physical with the non physical - core of who you are, you are not prejudiced with life.
That must be true because no other medium can evoke so many similar emotions with so many different
compositions and instrumentation.
What I am referring to is the ability of music & musicians to evoke the feeling of love in so many different & endless ways.
When we pay attention & listen to them we are transformed into the ether in tune with the cosmos.
Yet we don’t listen to music near enough.
Like we don’t spend time with nature near enough.
Zane seems to have a set of earphones permanently plugged into his ears.
He has arguably the best music sense in the family.
He has diverted my love for commercial jazz deep into mainstream jazz.
I am thankful our music filled family home was instilled early in his childhood.
He taught me how to listen to the emotions in music.
It started with Mulgrew Miller’s classic;
“it never entered my mind” I will never forget it; he told me to listen to the emotions Miller was trying to make us feel. I did. And ever since I was hooked. Who could imagine? It never entered my mind...!
I now have the ability to appreciate true Jazz music & history through Zane.
As a result I am in bliss every night.
Thank you son. Happy Birthday.
I am so proud of how you’ve turned out and who you have become.
Courtesy of www.PaulCezanne.org
You are a true artist. A person who wants to excel in the arts.
I named you after Paul Cezanne, whose father was against him being an artist. I love his art
and I wanted you to be an artist. His artistic style has been described to as having "spectacular depth of feelings."
Picasso said this of him; "Paul Cezanne was my one and only master." To other artists, "his compositions were akin to god's."
You are living testimony. You appreciate art to the depths and you are also an artist to the depths.
You have and will continue to live the promise you made to the family- That if you want
to be a cobbler then be the best dang cobbler there is!
I commune with my self in the Silent Stillness of Inner Space in Consciousness.
It's perhaps that I have been so far gone that I find this experience to be so painfully difficult.
In all honesty, I have tried, maybe too hard, to be still and silent. I must say I have succeeded physically. But mentally, I am still flitting in and out of mind and the very few moments that I manage to control my mind, I am rewarded by the few glimpses of nothingness. Pure stillness. Bliss.
I am about to attempt what science has failed to do; describe feelings.
All I can say is, just today when meditating, I got to be alone with myself. Really alone to be beside myself and simply observe. Me.
It's a very intimate feeling that we owe ourselves, to be acquainted with the self.
To be silent. To be still and connect with your inner space, fully conscious being with the self. Am I making any sense?
Of course not! Feelings are not supposed to make sense. They're supposed to be felt.
So feel it with no thought. No judgement. Feel silence, stillness. Nothingness.
This is the space of endless possibilities. The source of creation. Consciousness.
If you have come as far as this, then maybe you're woke.
The month when god gifted us the first of many precious gifts.
And to think I wasn't going to be present for your birthing. How Preposterous!
I remember when Mum was close to labour and I was, as usual impatient, wanting to know when? Exactly! Because I had a very important meeting to attend. The Agency's most important Client.
Yes. I was that committed to work. Or totally unconscious to life!
Thank heavens I didn't go for any meeting.
I was there at your emergence into this world. Scared shitless!
Cos I did not dare to stand at your emerging end. I merely stood by mum and held her hands.
My hands were twisted and pulverised as she held onto me for dear life and pushed and pushed.
She refused any form of assisted birth.
She wanted a purely natural birth for her first child, she later tells me.
After a long while, you emerged. It's a boy! Exclaimed Dr. McCoy very relieved I might add.
I managed to take a glance at you before the nurse took you away to be cleaned and weighed.
You were a mess!
I stayed by mum's side while she released the afterbirth with a lot of fart noises. After that, the good Doctor proceeded to stitch her up. I remember asking him to stitch back a virgin. He said no problem.
Later in the recovery suite, I got to hold you with mum resting in her bed and then I carried you, lost in ecstasy admiring every part of you. What a miracle I felt. What a beautiful baby. My baby. My son.
Today is my birthday. As a gift to myself I am relaunching my blog and formally launching my foray into writing my Memoirs, much like Marcus Aurelius when he penned his thoughts and feelings of his life and as Emperor of Rome (161-180 BCE) which was published as The Meditations after his death. My blog is now renamed I love you. Live.
I shall continue to document moments in my life that are significantly memorable about the people I meet, places I've been and things I've done. What better way to restart than with my family.
My recently separated wife of thirty plus years is everything I wanted in a woman to bear my children. Strong, disciplined, talented and resourceful, the type that gets things done. Super quick.
Mission accomplished.Three wonderful children in a span of five years.
We were happy productive parents. She even a greater mother, teacher, housekeeper, friend, gourmet chef and protector of her children. Look at them now.
Neither one of us knew how to go on in our relationship having accomplished a beautiful family, our children now live separate from us pursuing their careers. Leaving us an empty nest to face each other once again.
We then realised we hardly knew each other as individuals. I still wonder why she married me.
We tried to be decent to each other. She was patient, faithful and silent, seething an anger within. I was serenely content but seeking intensely, silently searching for life's answers.
I asked for a reset for us to start anew. Neither of us knew how.
So we split. It was my fault. I strayed. I was lost and lonely. I was searching for meaning.
I found a guru. Several gurus in a spiritual sense and I made a pilgrimage. They say that in India, when a man goes on his pilgrimage, it's a journey of no return.
In India back in the days everyone walked so it'll take forever to walk back. It's been over a year now on the journey into my pilgrimage. I aim to make it back.
I now know what it's like to be free, conscious and alive.
I would not trade this feeling & freedom for anything in the world except to find my way back to my family to be together once again.
I met my one and only wife in 1989 when I joined my first international agency. She was the queen of the roost and the boss's blue-eyed girl. She was all about work and I was all about building my career. She was a top performer and as much as I tried I could only manage to emulate half of her capabilities. But I had keen selling abilities and good diction & presentation skills. She was fiercely ambitious, impatient, fast and single.
I was climbing the career ladder equally ambitious with a girlfriend in-tow from my previous agency. My new colleague and I spent many hours and weekends working together at the agency, mostly clearing paperwork. We started an affair and I broke the heart of my girlfriend of five years soon after. She became my new girlfriend and moved in with me.
She proved to be as good a housekeeper as she is an advertising executive. From my traditional baba/nyonya upbringing, I was used to very high standards of housekeeping and F&B. Plus my father came with the package deal. She kept papa happy, in his place and the household in ship shape.
We had Jon out of wedlock. She was happiest. She had always wanted a son of her own. She didn't expect me to hang around after Jon was born, she later tells me.
But when Zane was born two years later, she agreed to legalise our marriage at the registrar.
From then on we were a happy growing family.
We went into full flight with the arrival of our third and last child, a precious daughter.
All of our children are such great blessings of joy and happiness. Growing up with our three children made it so easy to weather the burdens of work, life and even ignore the husband/wife relationship.
We were happy together. As long as we all had each other.
We quickly outgrew our extensively renovated double storey link-house in Bangsar. We moved to a large landed property in Damansara Heights with lots of space for the children to play and grow. We played all the games that I grew up playing. Football, hockey, cricket, badminton, ping pong and basketball. Except for football I'd beat the crap out of the boys at all the sports. They would beat each other up over squabbles about games. Sore losers et al. But we all laughed it off as good fun and part of growing up. We even had our ears pierced together.
Life was good, it rewarded us with most privileges of travel and leisure. Mine more. I was chasing the dream of acquiring wealth and business but I was travelling more for leisure than business. I spent time away from the family. Strangely, the thing that I love doing most I avoided. I was basically compulsive and unconscious. Mum stepped up wonderfully raising the children. I did virtually nothing but to just love and adore them. And communicate with them as adults. Still I was largely absent. Not present.
Until Jon got sick.
My life came crumbling down for a while. I quickly snapped into business mode after his diagnosis and prognosis. I went into command mode. Shut down my emotions and rallied the family together to set the context. We searched everywhere for all sorts of remedies. The more I looked outwards for the answers the more confused and frustrated I got. I have never felt more helpless in my life. Desolate. I was losing my son. My Jon.
There was nothing I or anyone could do. He too took the brutal lashings of his cancer therapies for over a year with dignity and courage.
Jonathan Byron Gan Ye Zhan sprouted wings and left us early in August 2005, exactly two weeks after his sixteenth birthday. The day Singapore got her independence so did Jon.
Gone too soon but that young man had a life well lived.
A scholar, sportsman and gentleman. He represented his primary school at debating competitions, tennis, school band, prefect, ran cross-country. Attended Man United soccer school. At VI he was an active boy scout, patrol leader of 1st KL Troop, a member of a rock band and a ladies man. He lived his life in a real hurry. Maybe he knew something we didn't.
He is survived by his brother and sister and not supposed to be us his parents. I guess what they say is true; " it is most tragic for a parent to bury their child." But not unusual as we come to meet many more such families during our journey with Jon. We found common bonds to urge each other on.
The family felt lost and empty in the void left by Jon.
We were each mourning him in our own way privately. The loss we felt was just beyond words. None of us knew how to express how we felt about losing Jon that we just kept it in. And I suppose each of us are still mourning Jon. Most of all mum.
To a certain extent, Zane and I had spent a good amount of time discussing our feelings about Jon while chilling, drinking and smoking in his beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn.
I felt it was healthy & invigorating to express long pent up feelings and emotions. If not to make peace with a past event albeit significant. And move on consciously to enhance this life.
Zane I'm hoping is loving and living his life exuberantly. I know he is.
Because he was the brightest, happiest little spark growing up. Being number two and totally different from Jon who is more like me, as a child he was my exact opposite. And I adore him. He got along beautifully with Summer but not Jon. Quick to speak and act.
He has great bursts of energy and a pleasant gentle personality. Very likeable. Ruled the school's badminton champion roost for a few years.
He had to brave the big bad world at 17. We literally kicked him out to San Francisco to study Fine Art. After two years of living the good life, getting stoned and hopefully laid in the most expensive city in the US, I made him a proposition after visiting him in his luxury loft in the Tenderloin district- Spend the remainder money set aside for education in SF or be anywhere he desires for work apprenticeship. At the end of his second year, he graduated with an associate degree from University in SF and he moved to New York because that's where Summer is. He landed a job assisting famous analogue photographer Eric Johnson in Manhattan.
Wise move that was because NY has opened his mind to being a jazz historian while he shoots and dates models on the side.
The kind of life I'd be proud to live. Enhancing his life by enhancing how people look. In photos and in person. His keen choice of jazz music is just about the only thing that surpasses his choice of clothes. His dress sense is legendary in the Gan family. He is certainly putting on the Ritz at least in dress style in New York City which makes him confident, suave and savvy.
Music and fashion aside, his first love and talent I believe is still the craft he loves and was trained for. Photography.
He has a certain presence that when in his presence the model is forced to be present. Allowing him to capture their essence. Each of his model shots bring out the person from the being. Perhaps he's an artist waiting to be born or already in action. Already dabbling into large canvasses with acrylic, the first few pieces I chanced upon were dark. But these are his desires. Who am I to judge. I'm just here to appreciate my son.
Just as I have appreciated and still appreciate Jon. If he hasn't been stricken with the disease we wouldn't have been such a dysfunctional family that glides in and out of each others lives without fully loving and being with each other. Jon brought us closer together.
*From my vantage right now, his message for us was to slow down, wake up, and live life.
That's when I know that we don't ever really die. The great consciousness lives on in another form and it's closer to us than we think. It's just one step inside.
Everyone we love, everyone is inside us. They live on inside us. Which is how they appear even when they are here with us. They live inside us in our experience of them. We only ever perceive anyone or anything inside our head through our sense perceptions. Except physically we get to touch, smell, hear, even lick them, if we want but that's just his physical self. What about his intellectual, emotional and spiritual self? That makes three parts of the being. These are all experienced in the being. And that you cannot take away from me. Then isn't it true that Jon still lives in me?
As long as I am alive Jon lives in my consciousness. Beyond the physical.
As does he in Zane and Summer's hearts and consciousness. Only if they knew how to still the mind and go within. Be still and just observe.
These are qualities which I believe our youngest and most precious child possesses.
She has great stillness and observation skills. A sense of presence when she's around people. She's sensitive and great with kids. She just doesn't like adults except mum while growing up. Dunno if she's still the same. But I think she's matured into a confident, intelligent yet bubbly and exuberant young lady. Always ready to help. And bring joy into people's lives.
Just like the day she was born she has brought rays of sunshine into our lives everyday ever since. What a beautifully appropriate name for my daughter- Summer.
No school, primary or secondary, could contain her for long. For her place is not in the classroom but in the open spaces of the dance stages.
A free spirited being of joy who loves dance. She delivered and over delivered in ballet school with 7 Consecutive Awards for Distinction from the Royal Academy of Ballet in as many years. A record unbroken I dare venture. I still miss ferrying her to and back from dance classes, auditions, practice, shows, and the occasional gala.
She still is the apple of everyone's eyes. Everywhere she goes she lights up the place.
She teaches me presence with her poise and grace.
Perseverance from her patience and practice. She inherited the trait of strict discipline and steely determination from her mother and led a full dance-oriented life going for practice, performances, auditions and shoots back home.
So busy she missed the deadline for NY dance school submission for Fall of 2014 but made up for it by winning herself a scholarship to AMDA-NY in the same year. She did it by coming out tops in a dance workshop in Barcelona. She's awesome, she gets what she wants. If only she knew.
She missed the front entrance but got invited back in through the side door on a red carpet.
Since her admission to AMDA I have yet to see her dance.
I also missed both her shows- performance and choreography in Malaysia’s first off-Broadway theatre; Thicker Than Water staged in Joe’s Pub twice.
New York is lovely, I enjoyed it most when I spent one afternoon in autumn with Summer in the East Village & Greenwich just strolling down the narrow streets, having lunch, exploring new street corners, book stores, charming old stores, even a Taiwanese tea house. Just spending precious time together.
I remember that afternoon we walked into a quaint little book store, I enquired if they had any Murakami in stock. The elderly Italian proprietor looked at me with obvious disdain and made a snide remark alluding to my daughter. I deduced that he thought I was a dirty old man dating a pretty young girl and he didn't approve of the liaison. We promptly left with me bemused in the thought that there are still decent men left in New York. And he's Italian.
Well, I am Malaysian of Chinese descent and I am only half decent. Which was why I deserve to be kicked out of my happy home after I strayed from my one and only wife and ended up alone. Clearly I have failed as a husband but I am still a father who is proud of his family. Extremely.
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