NOTHING TO FEAR AT ALL

I NEVER knew I could feel so at peace sitting in a gryke, with my face to the wind and my back to a dolmen. A gryke is a crevice in a limestone floor and a dolmen is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone (table). Most date from the early Neolithic period (4000 to 3000 BCE).
This was not my first time visiting the Burren, an area of limestone rock covering awesome mountains and gentle valleys with meandering streams. Only this time around, I could hear the echoes of silence as it was a bank holiday and there were hardly any tourists.

I found myself humbled by the visual delights of this unspoilt corner of Ireland and intrigued by the ancient mysteries. I wondered about the civilisations that lived there aeons ago. I could imagine men of yore hunting wolves and bears and could hear the sounds and feel the atmosphere of past civilisations.

I wondered about their daily lives, and their thoughts, feelings, joys and fears. From what I had read, they were afraid of the unknown, afraid of the Greater Being, afraid of living and afraid of dying. Most of them hardly lived beyond 40 because of the harsh landscape.
Like most people, I was brought up on a diet of ghosts, spirits and superstitions which were fodder to a child's fertile mind. Horror movies and playing hide and seek in dark places exacerbated the fear. But at the Burren I was amazed that I could be so close to the Poulnabrone Dolmen which once housed the bones of a newborn baby, six juveniles and 16 to 22 adults, and not feel afraid. Poulnabrone literally means "the hole of the sorrows".

Most people are afraid of something or the other. We are afraid of what others will think of us or what we do. We are afraid of losing friends if we dare to be different and losing face, especially if someone has tarred our reputation.

If we think about the things we have done, we will realise that there will always be two opinions for all our actions. The same act will be condemned by some, while others will applaud.

We are afraid of change. If you watch children at play, you can see them switching roles and taking on challenges. As we grow older we become more comfortable with certain surroundings. We sit on the same bench, drink from the same cup and we hobble along instead of walking with a sprint.

We have become great friends with familiarity and predictability has become our security blanket. It takes the strength of many horses combined to drag us out of the arena we call routine.

We are afraid of failure. Sometimes, we think that something will not work out even before it has begun. The haunting reality of failure is very real and no respecter of men. Children who have been put down by significant adults and told that they will not measure up to anything, struggle with this.

The perfectionist who craves for an orderly world struggles with this. The achiever who is not pacified by his last success also struggles with this.

We are afraid of losing the people that we love. We are afraid that if we set boundaries and standards for our teenage children, they will leave home, never to return. We are afraid if our children are not filial, they will abandon us when we are old. We are afraid that the person whom we love will leave us to be alone again.

Fear can also be the result of worrying. We worry when we do not know what will happen next. Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address that "there is nothing to fear but fear itself". This famous quote referred to the fact that uninformed fears and irrational panic can turn a manageable situation into a dangerous crisis.

If we analyse the times when we were worried or fearful, we can safely say that some of the most dreaded things never really came to past.

MAKING CHOICES

Listening to Elton John’s Goodbye, yellow brick road on the radio brings back pleasant memories. It was the song to sing during the 70s when my sister and I cycled to school, when I met up with my classmates and when I needed a break from doing homework. We were living in a shop house at that time and there were two shops selling music cassettes and records in the vicinity so the song blared through the loudspeakers in its heyday. I knew the words by heart but I now wonder whether I really understood what they meant. At that time, it sufficed that the tune was catchy enough.

The yellow brick road appears in the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. It is the road for Dorothy to follow if she wishes to reach the Emerald City which is built of green glass, emeralds and other jewels. The Emerald City symbolises a fraudulent world and does not have true value.

At some point or other we work towards reaching this Emerald City.

For some, purchasing only branded items would signify that they have reached the Emerald City.

Whether it was a decade ago or now, branded goods still play a very big role when we want to be associated with the uptown lifestyle. Most of us love beautiful and expensive things. This is absolutely alright until we become obsessed with wearing designer labels and nothing else and judge others who are not like us. We were visiting the Spanish Steps in Rome when my son told me his boss had asked him to buy a Prada bag. So we went to the most famous fashion streets in Rome: Via Condotti, Via Borgognona and Via Frattina. In our sensible clothes and shoes, we did not exactly look like potential haute couture customers, so needless to say no stylishly coiffured sales assistant in black stilettos rushed over to serve us.

For others, accumulating accolades and awards would mean that success is in their hands.

There is nothing wrong with advancing oneself or getting into prestigious universities but it is very annoying to have to put up with people who constantly boast about their own accomplishments or their children’s accomplishments. These people are also extremely competitive and they love to talk about themselves, their worlds and their views. My driving instructor once told me that one learner driver failed six times on the road because he would not follow instructions. That particular learner driver had a doctorate from a renowned university and thought he knew the rules of the road better than the driving instructor. A well qualified person who is modest and unassuming is a breath of fresh air and a real gem.

Then , there are some who want to reach the Emerald City by riding on others. These are the shallow sycophants and the opportunists who would work to selfishly advance their own careers without putting in their fair share of work. I remember someone asking me to edit a book. What I later found out was that she would ‘dictate’ some ideas to me but I was to write out the whole book. Her name would then be published as the writer and I would be the editor. I was aghast that such an idea could have been hatched in the first place.

If there is a physical and temporal emerald city, then there must be dreams and visions and values that are good and rewarding. Hard work, discipline and determination are values to be proud of. One of the students who attended a MUET seminar that I once conducted had just written to me.

“I'm Adzim and I hope that you still remember me...After a series of failures in my attempt to achieve Band 4, I finally scored Band 5 for my MUET (mid-year 2011)...Just want to let you know and I have included my results in the attachment file.”

Walt Disney said, ‘If you do not have dreams, how are you going to make your dream come true!" and "All dreams are possible if we have the courage to pursue them!"

Staying true to who we are will help us take stock and consciously shed off the trappings that we pick up along the way. It is exactly a year since I opted out for early retirement. Someone told me that I would die of boredom and that I would be running back to the office after six months. All I can say is that nothing could match the sheer satisfaction of my first year of living life in all its simplicity, with time to call my own.

As I sit in the car and listen to the rest of Elton John’s song, I am glad I took that decisive step and never looked back.

TRIBUTE TO A FRIEND

A tribute to a friend

Call it a flash of a moment
A moment of wondering
A moment of knowing
Who do you call a friend?

She is the most unlikely of friends
We connected only after a few years of letters
We all have our walls
Walls we choose to keep us safe

And yet when we finally find a common door
Not made by hands
We find in each other
A certain depth, a certain warmth

She has beautiful eyes
The windows to a gracious soul
All wrapped up in an exterior
An exterior forged by experiences

I wonder why I am thinking of her
I wonder why I am missing her so
Maybe we are alike and yet so different
Maybe we are so near and yet so far away

I wish her all the treasures of the earth
I wish her all the beauty of the heavens
I wish her all the kindness of people
That is what you wish upon a friend

GIVE PRAISE WHEN THEY ARE WITH US

I was driving along the motorway and suddenly I saw a big group of cyclists pedaling as fast as their legs could muster the strength. It was an amazing sight, just watching them in their multi-coloured lycra cycling suits, pedaling in unison with the wind behind their backs.

Life is always the first indication of summer. The apple tree is my garden is now laden with apples again and the bulbs I had planted around it when the ground was caked with frost are now flowering aggressively. There are more wild birds pecking at the bird feeders and most of all daylight hours are getting longer.

When we live near the equator we go to bed expecting the sun to rise the next day. When we head for the beach, we expect to see the sun set at almost fixed times. But now, at 10pm, the sun is still brightly shining over Ireland and I will nostalgically say the Malaysian sun has risen again.

This sets me thinking that sadly we sometimes do not seem to realise what we have until it is gone. Only when we lose something, then we are reminded of its value and wished we had appreciated it. We falsely convince ourselves that everything around us will remain constant – firstly, the people around us and secondly our sense of worth.
Human nature is such that we tend to take those who are closest to us for granted until they are no longer there. Only then do we see how big their impact really was. We hear beautiful eulogies being read and wonder why we are stingy with our praises to the living.
My mother in her wisdom told me to appreciate life. To her it is better to tell the person how wonderful she is and to affirm her worth when she is alive than to burn a thousand candles when she is gone. Yet, we oftentimes forget to express love and gratitude to our family members, our good friends and those who are concerned about us. In the heat of an argument, when we let words fly, a good yardstick is to stop in our tracks and say to ourselves ‘will I still say the same thing to defend my stand if I know she’ll be gone tomorrow?’
I have a friend whose son has not spoken to her for years after a misunderstanding. I wonder how he would feel if one day she is gone and he has not made his peace with her or vice versa. Parent-child conflicts are nothing new and there is no prescribed method for reconciliation. Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer said it best, "Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
We also sometimes take our sense of worth for granted until it is snatched away.
Our self worth is the spark that keeps us alive. Depression gnaws at self worth and the city with its busy people has no time for forging deep relationships. The price we pay for modernity and the respect for privacy is non-interference into other people’s affairs. As more people keep their problems to themselves, having no outlet to unleash their sorrows, it is no wonder that the annual report of the National Office for Suicide Prevention shows that Ireland has the fifth highest rate of youth suicide in Europe.

I was sitting next to an acquaintance in a church service and after the initial pleasantries, she told me she was on anti-depressant pills. To her, the world has become very unappealing and creativity is at an all time low. We all thrive on creativity which ranges from keeping the house and garden tidy to the finest oil painting. If a person feels no impetus to work or to engage in any activity that used to delight, something starts to die within. In some cases work acts as a catalyst for the creative force to be allowed expression and for the individual once again to start to feel: “I too am somebody.”
Before I left the church I gave her a piece of paper where I had scribbled my name and contact number and the words, ‘Call me if you would like someone to talk to over a cup of tea.’
I wanted her to feel alive again.