Why (some) kids don’t like to read.

I have a theory.

I was at MPH bookstore the other day in search of Coelho’s titles when I caught a voice behind me. A dad was telling off his son (son’s age around 5 years old) for browsing a book at the fiction lot.

Daddy I-know-what’s-best-for-my-son:

Why are you holding that book? You know how to read it?? Put it back… wait until you know how to read… only then we’ll come back to it.

Do you think the son would someday return to the book he was holding in his hands once he knows how to read?

Pity, pity.

 

Self-marriage, anyone?

One of these days, I’m going to get myself a pretty white dress and a decent ring to worth a lifelong vow of ‘I do’. Someday when I’m ready, I’m going to get married with myself.

Huh.

Crazy, you think? Who would ever consider this absurd idea? I mean, why would anyone want to get tied on a life time commitment with themselves?

Have yourself asked the same question. Would you, someday maybe?

The other day I came across this article about self-marriage, and it had me enlightened about the idea. When I ask EP if she would, you know, given the option to get married with herself, she goes “… that charm (pity) meh? Get married with yourself??”

I asked LD the same question too, to which she question instead:

LD: So if you want to get married with someone else then, would that mean you have to divorce yourself off the marriage??

me: -_-”

Now, the concept of self-marriage is a little different from the basic principles of marriage we all know. It’s not about signing the papers and promise to devote your entire life to yourself. Not quite.

Far from acknowledging your social standing rooted in bachelorhood with a mere ring on your finger, self-marriage is a meaningful vow of union of your ‘then’ version and ‘now’, a connecting bridge of your being as an individual toward becoming a wholesome, full-fledged adult in terms of emotional maturity, both mentally and spiritually. The finality of soul-searching in you ends here in completion of yourself.

You can be both self-married and attached at the same time, an ideal option before deciding on a marriage with your significant other. You can be thriving in your middle-age, or a person recently divorced from marriage, who choose to renew yourself through self-marriage as well.

Some have unknowingly gone through self-marriage themselves too at some point of their lives. So, self-marriage is not literally about marrying yourself for life sake, and certainly not only meant for stereotyped singles.

I did a bit of reading on the subject elsewhere. Interesting to note how it shifted my perception on the purpose of marriage: One has to seek within themselves to feel whole in order to manage a fulfilling life, and not expecting to find them in their significant other through marriage.

Now I’m thinking, if the former is the case, would it mean that marriage won’t be necessary at all in the first place?

A bit of an unconventional concept yes, but if you think about it, the idea is not something out of this world at all. Didn’t they say, that in order to love someone else, you’ve got to love yourself first? Self-marriage makes a good preparation to condition oneself to the reality of life time commitment and the challenges to come, readying yourself to take on the next phase of life.

It’s a self-explanatory conviction of your ‘I do’s’, for better or worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and in health, and with this ring, I me wed.

Perhaps in time, I will.

 

This feeling.

I was making a 90-degree turn into the corner spot to park my car when I saw him. An uncle, probably in his mid 40s, clad in dark blue uniform, sitting alone on the railing, his back facing me. He didn’t bother to look back to see who had parked. He kept his eyes looking ahead. I looked around. Nobody but him around the parking lot area. I left anyway.

2 hours later when me and LD got back to our car, we (I) saw him again. Sat alone on the railing, his back on us. Shifted a bit in his sitting position I noticed. Then I saw, as I got into the car and caught a sight of him at side view, him took off his glasses and wipe the lens vigorously with his uniform shirt, then put them back on, slide up to the bridge of his nose. And he continued watching. Waiting for his working hour to pass for what seem like eternity.

He must be lonely. A family of 6 to feed maybe. Kids to school, bills to pay. But he must be lonely on the job. But that’s life, people say.

I left the building struggling with this weird feeling. Was it plain apathy or some hypocritical compassion on display?

On a separate occasion, one morning I got out from the car parked near an automobile service shop, was walking on my way to workplace when a boy slightly younger than me approach me out of the blue and mumbled something incoherent. I caught his speech in between the lines of ‘cuci kereta’ and ‘RMsomeamountIcan’tremember untuk satu bulan’. I shooked my head and said ‘tak nak’ (no) and smiled sheepishly upon refusing his offer for car wash service, thinking that he might be from the service shop itself trying to solicit business or something.

He nodded, but looking somewhat disappointed and left. I glanced over at his direction as I continue walking, and saw that he went back to washing someone else’s car, scrubbing down the wheel rim. He was alone, with an old-fashioned rusty bicycle (reminded me of one that rubber tappers used to get around in estates) stood loyally by his side, a white plastic bottle (Clorox type) dangling on a string at the bicycle handle.

He must be lonely. Eldest son in the family, educated none too much, poverty state has driven him to work early at age where he should be chilling out on Timbaland songs, college life, girls.

What was this feeling again?

 

So it’s all about the coffee, no?

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.

While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other’s cups.

“Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn’t change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.”

So folks, don’t let the cups drive you… enjoy the coffee instead.

So, what’s yours? Coffee or the cup?

**
There is a saying in Buddhist teachings, that all things in life are impermanent. Branded names on our wear and a high-profile career to boot, plastic-inspired beauty and an inherited sum of fortune likened to ahem, some Hilton girl on our dream-on! list, every material longings that we foolishly held so dearly to while living in the fast lane, all these will perish themselves once we’re gone. These are sufferings, worthwhile pleasures according to devil in disguise.

I personally believed that there’s nothing wrong with pursuing for whatever looks good, smells good, feels good, as long as we don’t ‘bound’ ourselves to the idea of such self-fulfillment. Ah, the art of non-attachment has never been any more relevant to this coffee cup story. Speaking of which, impermanence is not just about thinking twice to get another pair of Manolo Blahniks, but also what rein our thoughts (read: mule) most of the time. After all, it all begins in the mind, as what The Secret tells us. True.