thoughts on a monday night

i wonder if humans will ever be satisfied. i feel like i look back on memories and tint them with nostalgia - making everything better than they were. i forget easily. i forget bad things easily, things that make me sad or uncomfortable, or feel any less than i should about myself. it is a defense mechanism, but i suppose it serves me well. i suddenly miss chicago, and am looking through photographs from the two years that i have been away, and those moments that have been captured are beautiful and wonderful. and it made my heart feel a little more full. and i wonder why can't i be satisfied wherever i am. in chicago, i miss singapore, and in singapore, i miss chicago. i wonder if our hearts will just always long for the things we don't have. and attempt to fill it. i picked up my journal from a year ago and read the entries inside - about being seasonally depressed, about fights with friends, about insecurities, about how i wasn't happy and this point or that. and the filter of nostalgia seemed to fade a little, and i began to remember a little better the reality of them. still great moments, just a little less idealistic. but perhaps it's even more so beautiful this way. and also a reminder of pulling through difficulties and trials and knowing that things do turn up eventually. there are moments that people disappoint, but also those that they surprise me beyond anything i can imagine, and are there for me when i didn't even know i needed them. 

taking time to slow down, and indulging myself in memories, and nostalgia, and having that little bit of courage to open an old journal and cringe as i read entries with such brutal honesty about things i felt, struggles, the same struggles again and again that keep resurfacing, i think i've grown. not a lot. but i have - in loving others a little better, in embracing life with greater courage and zest, in rushing a little less and breathing and taking in the view a little more, in loving and forgiving myself better too. i haven't been journalling much for fear of not wanting to actually pen down the things that run through my mind - how selfish i sometimes am, how some things are better forgotten, how i want to keep things clean and crisp and perfect. but i don't think that's how life works - it's the ugly, the difficult, the long and arduous moments that make the beautiful, the smooth, the joyous and momentous ones all the more significant. 

May we never lose our wonder
May we never lose our wonder
Wide eyed and mystified
May we be just like a child
Staring at the beauty of our King 

You are beautiful in all your ways

i wish you a wonderful week ahead. :) 

sam

thirteen years :o

i sat with my childhood best friend in her bedroom today, and she pulled out notes from almost a decade ago, and we sat and talked. a sense of nostalgia washed over me as i walked in, a space so familiar, yet so distant in the past couple of years. i remember building forts with blankets, having sleepovers, birthday parties.. we got coffee, and caught up, and went to the playground, and had to give way to the kids who dominated the playground. we didn't belong there anymore. 

i think we have each found our place in seattle and chicago, learnt more about ourselves a little more, realised that we don't know everything, realised that we do know some things. we are different. but also the same.