Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
Toro the General and Camille the Puss in the Black Boots 😄
I never get bored with my two cats, Toro and Camille, at home. Although my playtime is either in the Witching Hour or before dawn, I love our playtime together.
If I lose myself in reading or writing, they jump so agilely like Olympic athletes on my lap, bed, or desk to attract my attention that instead of feeling annoyed, I am amazed by their humanlike need for attention and care and thus drop what I am doing and play with them. Camille, the Puss in the Black Boots, is the most elegantly athletic cat I have ever seen; he flies in alwhither when we play, whereas General Tabby Toro prefers playing hide and seek with a toy bite.
Sigmund Freud said that times playing with cats are never wasted. Indeed so. Each time I play with my cats, I feel warmth and affection. The feelings I contemplate are what a mother might think of her children because sometimes when I awake in the middle of the night, I see my cats sleep in my arms or lie at my feet.
I find today’s prompt topic, compared to what I am experiencing, seems too pat that it gave an extra fillip. The challenges I have to tackle are lifelong, and I haven’t even half succeeded. I don’t know if you want to read this litany of woes, but if you do, I will appreciate your kind soul because writing this post will be my logotherapy for the broken heart and wounded soul.
I have zero tolerance for incivility and any offenses that others regard as insignificant because I take it as a disrespect of my existence. In the office, the majority of them speak Spanish even if they were born here in the States. I am the only Asian, and more particularly Korean, so they always treat me as if I were invisible. They may act politically correct or pretend not to exclude me, even if I try to be as friendly as possible and am always courteous, offering help they don’t appreciate. So I resign to aloneness and hopelessness in the crowds, withdrawing myself from their circle of sociability. How would you feel when everyone says hi to each other but you when they know you are there? Doesn’t My Life Also Matter?
My other challenge is to be too soft-hearted, growing no apples of wrath for those who hurt me with acrid remarks and unkind gestures. Although my furies will arise from slumber when provoked, if the instigators show moments of human weakness or even an instant ray of warmth or kindness, they will retreat with steps back until they return to Valhalla.
This morning’s episode was an excellent example of this topic. After a morning mass for the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there was a communal breakfast prepared by the church ladies. I stood in a line to bring food for my mom, who had taken seats in advance. Then, these old ladies dressed up nicely cut the line in front of me with the friendliest faces! My indignation burst out, so I asked them how they could be so sneaky when we all had just heard the mass with the Holy Communions. They apologized to me but didn’t bother to go back on the line. I was inwardly crying over the fact that these people disrespected me, and I fell to the pit of sorrow ever again.
People say to love thyself to be loved, but that’s impossible because humans are, by nature, political animals, as Aristotle said. We don’t live alone and shape our perceptions of ourselves mostly from what others see us. It’s called a “Looking-Glassed Self,” a theory of sociology coined by Robert Cooley. Thus, I feel I was born in the wrong place under the wrong circumstances. Many claim they are ugly ducklings, swans among ducks, but I believe I am the one. Hercules’s Twelve Labors seems pale in comparison with my most demanding challenges in life.
Some say being nostalgic is a herald of reaching the age of Judge according to Shakespeare’s 7 Stages of Life. Still, I tend to feel nostalgic whenever I listen to the music I first heard and liked or watch the movies or shows popular in the era I grew up with.
a scene from “Take On Me” by A-Ha. Image credit from Google
Music is the food for moods and the excellent medium to pitchfork the listener to yesterdays and make them beautifully recollective. When I listen to my adolescent 80s pop music, the images and even the smells of the time creep into my mind and fill my eyes with the vistas of the memories unfolded like a film. The following songs are the instant time machine songs of the 80s: Take on Me” by A-ha, “Telefone” by Sheena Eastern, “Don’t Forget About Me” by Simple Minds, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” by Tears for Tears, and “The Reflex” by Duran Duran. When some people, especially those of the MZ Generation whom I am surrounded by at work, say they are ancient songs and ask about my age, I tell them there is no expiration date for the love of music by not testifying to my age. Instead, I feel sorry for the generation because they have no privilege of living two centuries in this digital age.
Image Credit from Google
For the 80’s movies and shows, I loved watching “McGyver” and “Knight Rider,” which I still watch on Apple TV whenever I feel like it. It’s so wonderful to travel back in one fell swoop through the media entertainment to the times when I was the merriest without having to worry about getting a job and caring for my elderly parents. My parents were young and beautiful, and my grandparents whom we lived with together in a house cared about me.
Little more than kin, and less than kind: Toro and Camille frm L to R
Relationships are a web of connectivity that can be toxic or beneficial. Of my web of relationships, I treasure the ones connected to my team at work and my cats at home.
My new team manager neither scolds me nor drives me to the highest level of stress, which is detrimental to my health, especially the neurological aspects. She gives me the autonomy to perform my tasks at my own pace and style, and I always get the jobs done on time or beforehand. Her liberal management style, blended with concise organizational skills and firm leadership, lets me utilize the best of me in performing my assignments efficiently.
Also, my relationship with my cats Toro and Camille has provided me with emotional warmth and a sense of togetherness, which I find hard to receive from my fellow humans. Toro and Camille are transparent in expressing their emotions and unique in looking into my inner world. They know who I am and greet me when I return home as if they knew about my wrestling with the existential dilemmas and despair from working in the office packaged with favoritism, cliques, and discrimination. My cats are indeed little more than kin and less than kind.
In conclusion, my relationships with the current team manager and my cats have felicitous effects on my continuous ebbs and flows of mood waves as kind nurses tell me that I am doing fine and will do fine.
If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?
My Softball Team’s Mascots are Toro and Camille from L to R
My softball team would be co-ed, all classes, every race and ethnicity, aged 40 and above, as long as the players can do daily exercise consisting of push-ups, sit-ups, and 2-mile runs (in their own paces) with no serious medical issues.
I am not affiliated with the company 🤗 image creator: Google
It would be a league of amateur sportsmen and women who want to spend their leisure actively and healthily with good, clean fun in the credo of Mans Sana in Coporore Sano (“Healthy Body, Sound Mind”). Therefore, ASICS will sponsor our team’s sporting goods, such as uniforms, shoes, socks, etc.
Camille’s bow tie has it: red, blue, and white ⭐️
Accordingly, the team’s color will be an American tri-color of red, blue, and white, representing Health, Inspiration, and Simplicity consecutively. The mascots will be my two cats, Toro, the Tabby, and Camille, the Puss in Black Boots, symbolizing Fellowship and Sportsmanship successively.
Aristotle said that a man is by nature a political animal, and if he isn’t, he is either a beast or a divine being. I am not sure if I am a divine being (in my head in the ether), but my faculty of the mind has become more polished to discern the business of politics in corporates of nations worldwide.
For instance, the Democratic Party’s promise of cancellation of student debts for Americans was too good to be true that it almost sounded like a scam to me. I never believed it, albeit with a shadow of hope, because who wouldn’t when everything helps? Then, when the Supreme Court ruled it out – all over but the shouting -the party switched swiftly to SAVE Plan as if they had known it and devised it as Plan B. IT was a political bargain, knowing that the Republican Party wouldn’t allow it. It was a Game of Fortune on a Wheel of Fortune. Both parties know who to play it, and ordinary people – those who work their fingers to the bones with the yokes of life – are played with the scripts.
I am not against the Democratic Party. After all, President Joe Biden raised the Social Security Benefits for my elderly parents, to which we are grateful. But I don’t like when the party and the leaders use the common people like pawns as King’s gambit for their political gains. Consequently, my political views have become more wiser and clearer.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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