Memories ...

... are powerful - you can distort it, relish it with happiness, relive it with anguish ... but can we ever unload its emotional impact? We may put on spectacles with tints of rainbow, viewing snaps of our lives in the colour we choose ... Yet, deep within, we still feel the pain and sometimes, the joy, it brings ...

Robinton Mistry wrote in "a fine balance"; " How much Dina Aunty relished her memories. Mummy and Daddy were the same, talking about their yesterdays and smiling in that sad-happy way while selecting each picture, each frame from the past, examining it lovingly before it vanished again in the mist. But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passage of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain".

Definitely a source of pain, but maybe sadness and happiness generate a different type of pain ...

A man of wisdom ...

"Flatter me, and I may not believe you.
Criticize me, and I may not like you.
Ignore me, and I may not forgive you.
Encourage me, and I will not forget you.
Love me and I may be forced to love you.”

~ William Arthur Ward

This is definitely how I feel ... love and encouragment are impossible to refuse ... Is is true for you?

Rainer Maria Rilke said ...

... For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

... Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

... Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

marriage ...

... is probably the subject which I have been talking the most of this week ... it is emotionally draining ... I talked about it with my little sister, my friends, my patients ... sometimes you wonder how many "couple therapy" one can endure in a day ... it is strange in that those at the start of this life-long marathon sound so optimistic, so hopeful of what the future will bring ... next along the lines are those who have been married for a while, with their soles of sorrow, painful joints ... and at the end, there are those who have endured a quarter of a century together, with their broken promises, bottles of tears, glasses of misunderstanding shattered on the ground ...

... it does make you wonder ... but hey, some people do make it through intact and smiling ...

Jeff Buckley ...

... amazing version:

Well I heard there was a secret chord
that David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
Well it goes like this :
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah ...

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
And she tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah ...

(Yeah but) Baby I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor, (You know)
I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
and love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah ...

Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me do ya
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah...

Time ...

... can be measured by the moving hands of a clock, as it ticks away the seconds, the minutes, the hours ... but what does one turn to when we reach the days, the months, the years ... do we refer to a calendar? or our diary? What is the mind map of our life on earth? If I ask you: "Where were you last year when they were showing the firework?", how will you search for that day in your mind ...

Some people may anchor it by their travels, "ahhh, I missed it as I was at the Big Apple"; or by their jobs/studies, "On-calls, on-calls, on-calls"; or by their relationships, "I watched it with my ex"; or by their feelings, "Very stressed out that day - can't remember what I thought of the firework"; or by our beliefs, "God seemed a distant memory then" ...

Maybe how we divide our lives, both in reality and in our minds, shows what has the uttermost prominence in our lives, but as C.S.Lewis said:

"The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is".