Turtle Channel!!!

Reflections on the past always reveal who we are. When we reflect, we somehow have a tendency of looking back on the bad stuff in our lives and highlighting them. I have heard so many complaints from friends throughout my life. They tell me about their families, the lack of love they were receiving, the lack of understanding and bond, as well as comments on how their siblings were better loved and cared for. The eldest child always felt as if they were picked upon, they had more responsibilities and their younger siblisngs are spoilt and more loved. The middle child always felt neglected. And the youngest child always felt judged, or that they had to measure up or was looked down upon.



All the above are very trivial when you look back on it. We always swear that we would never inflict what had happened to us on our children. We always think we would be better parents. Yet I feel a sense of deep compassion and sympathy for such thoughts, for if we have such a reflection, we had not grown from our experiences.



We reflect and feel sad and lonely for all the pain we went through. But we have reflected on the wrong things. We only perceived how others made us feel. If we look deeper, there is something in us that causes the pain, anger, sadness and utter loneliness. It is our inabilities, our fallicies as selfish humans. Yes, it is selfishness. It is the need to put ourselves the centre of our universe whether or not we realise it. We feel neglected because we expect to get loving attention. We hurt because we expect to have equal or better treatment than our siblings. We are angry because our expectations are not met, or exceeded.



Nothing is free. A wise man once said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. When you get more attention and coddling, chances are you also get less freedom because you always have attention on you. You want to break free of your siblings' shadows but it is never easy. When you are given more responsibilties and forced to grow up faster, you may get less attention and coddling. But what you get in return is trust, freedom to make decisions and freedom to find yourselves. Yet we want it all. We want freedom and we want attention. We want love and trust, but we also want to push our parents and families away when it suits us to do so.



Sound familiar? Not true, we argue. We had it worse, no one understands what we went through. Perhaps no one understands. Perhaps it is because we were not starving to death, a victim of abuse or dying of a disease that no one is paying any attention, or sympathy or coming up with a cure for the void we feel in our lives. But there IS a cure.



Prayer. My strongest prayer, I feel, is when I run out of words. I just sit there and feel. I feel the world around me, I hear the world around me and with my eyes shut, I know the world around me also. If i concentrate hard enough, I begin to feel the emotions of the world around me. So much eagerness. So many people searching for something. So much sadness. Yet I feel the thoroughness of God and His compassion. When I pray with peace in my heart, I am closer to Him than all the times I pray with a sense of urgency in my heart. It is those times I let go of myself.



Those times, I understand why we need to praise God. It isn't about asking God for kindness and blessings. It isn't even about telling God about pain or happiness, greatness and smallness. It is about remembering how small, how little, and how humble we are. It is about realising how mighty, large and absolute God is. As I am overwhelmed by the "Bigness" of God, and I realise that all this pain and sadness means nothing. It is not about me. When I let go of Self, I let go of the pain. When I let go of my importance to myself, I let go of the anger inside of me. I am unimportant. I am humbled.



There is no more need to prove myself. No more need to compare with others. There is no more need to be loved "more". There is no more need for career success, branded shoes or bags, designer clothes and expensive cars to show one's self-worth. There is no more pain.



All that exists in the path of happiness and fulfillment is to be. To simply just be. That is all. I do hope you can understand the meaning of these words