Just Wanna Say...

You know who you are.

I just thought I’d take the time to thank you for having been my friend through all these messed up years of my life. I guess when I pause to take stock all those who have come into my life and have since moved on, its really such a gift that you’re still around.

Yes, our friendship has also had its seasons, where we drifted in and out of each other’s lives, and times when we hardly had time for each other. But I guess with some people, you never really do move on. It was always easy to get back in touch, and carry on as if we’ve always been around.

Thanks for never labeling who I am by my actions and achievement in life. You alone saw myself as being a lot bigger than the sum total of all my parts. You never let up on a chance to give me stick for my failures, but at the same time you’ve never allowed it to define your understanding of me. Thus, you became my teacher, the one who taught me about loyalty to friends. More importantly, you taught me how to choose my friends wisely. Those who are worth keeping, and those whom I need to learn to let go of. Friendship is an art that requires a lot of discernment and wisdom, and so much of what I had comes from you.

Your optimism and good spirits have always been such an encouragement to me. Given my proneness towards melancholia, your brand of sunshine somehow works for me, without making me feel like it’s all an act. Your optimistic belief in people somehow rubs off on me, and after some time with you, I go away with a little more cheer in my heart, and a little more belief in this world. Honestly, I still don’t know how you can do it. You see a lot of the things I do, about how messed up everything is, yet you continue to maintain your cheerful and optimistic disposition towards the world. I guess it really is a gift. Thanks for sharing it with me, and making this world a little bit brighter for me.

In church and faith, you have been one of the few whom I could be open and honest with. I guess its always so easy for the ego to go into “martyrdom mode” in church, and cry out to God as Elijah did that “I feel like the last man standing”. Yet I found in you not only the reality that I’m not alone, but also someone who could listen and offer perspective. Some people are able to disagree with you, but at the same time genuinely listening and trying to understand what you’re getting at. Others simply wait for you to finish talking before starting to tell you what they think. Thanks for never being the latter to me.

You are someone of very good stature in your church, but was the first to show me that the stature is not to be used for securing your agenda. Growing up in my church, politics and power-play is so rampant amongst those we revere as “spiritual giants”, I was always blind to how wrong that is. You taught me about meekness and humility, and gave me a firsthand demonstration of what Christ expects of us when He gives us greater responsibilities.

It was great fun helping you out at your wedding. I guess its very easy to be happy for you and share your joy, knowing how much joy you’ve brought into mine. I really can’t wait for your first baby to pop, so that I can begin the long-awaited task of spoiling him/her rotten and leaving the mess for you to handle. Ha!

Of course, no friend is flawless, and your biggest fault is your abjectly bad taste in soccer. Who in his right mind supports Liverpool??? Nevertheless, just as you’ve taught me to believe in my friends, I too, have hopes of you coming round to your folly and be a Red Devil.

Grins.

So there you go. My heartfelt thanks and appreciation for being such a friend and brother. I couldn’t have made it this far in life if not for you.

Love,
Me.














YES. I’d love to have such a person as a friend. Anyone who knows someone like that, please intro him to me. My friendship pool is rapidly drying up.

My Strange Existence

Lately, I’ve been coming to a conclusion that I need to reverse my paradigm of the world. People aren’t weird. I am.

Of course, over dinner recently with Paul, he couldn’t help but emphasize how he’s been feeling that way for the longest time. After all, how else can we explain why we find so many people out there who are strange to us? If I find myself belonging to a very very exclusive minority, doesn’t the statistic suggest that I’m actually the one that is weird and abnormal?

Maybe that’ll help me overcome a lot of the hurts that I went through, from being disappointed in some people, to feeling victimized by others. At least, it would help explain why everyone seems to be perfectly fine with people who do things I find unacceptable. (Yes, I must confess that an adulterous couple comes to mind. Grins.)

Right at the TOP of the list would be my fellow church-goers. Yes, I don’t call them Christians. They probably don’t deserve that title.

These church-goers fall into a few main categories:

Firstly, those that have been in church since young, and who have an over-rated impression of themselves as being mature believers who are” simply not as passionate for God as they used to be”. These people will still faithfully sit in at service, and fulfill their obligations to sit-stand-sing-pray as required. However, they’re doing ABSOLUTELY nothing else in church. They live in a world where their pseudo-Christianity allows them to disdain “the sins of the world” (except the few they love to secretly indulge in), thus feeling morally superior, whilst at the same time deceiving themselves that they’re just going through a bad patch with God. They’ll be more active when things between them and God gets better.

Then there’re those who used to be pretty active in church. In fact, if you see them now, they’ll spout the same rhetoric as they did, with sincerity shining through their liquid eyes as they speak of God’s love. … … The only catch being IF you see them… … You see, they’re too busy nowadays with career and also other things to even be in church regularly. Travel, hobbies, various activities such as marathons, church-visiting and even over-sleeping has taken priority over God. Approach them about it and they’ll assure you with such passion about their abiding commitment to God. They’ll thank you profusely for caring and reminding them, promising they’ll stay accountable to you over the issue. After that, you’ll see them once a month in church, strangely always on the opposite end of where you are.

Another breed are the ones whom I can never fathom why they bother being in church at all. They look disinterested, aren’t paying attention, and evidently couldn’t care less whatever is being taught on the pupit. I mean, honestly, WHY WASTE TIME COMING AT ALL??? If I were them, the LAST place I’d want to be in at 0930 on a Sunday morning would be in church (Of course, that being said, quite a few only saunter in at 10am).

And of course, all of us also have the habit picking and choosing what we want to listen to in church. The difference obviously being in the degree to which we do so. With so many weird doctrines and beliefs that people are championing and fixating on, its hard to not sometimes feel that WE’RE the extremists, not Al Qaeda. Success theology, Prosperity Gospel, or the recent attention-grabbing “Verbal Plenary Preservation” that made it to the Singapore High Courts – whichever form it takes, it really leaves me wondering how people could ever let something like that be a source of division. Yet in the name of loving our God, we happily tear down His fellow children and feel justified in doing so.

By merely describing these few types, of people, I’ve already managed to sum up so many of those I know, that I’m really quite convinced now that I’m plain weird.

Sigh.