Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
When I was young, I used to think about my future, jotting down the years ahead and thinking about what I would be.
Now that I have reached the time from the wonder years, I look forward to futures, while setting my foot on present. Although I am not as faithful as I used to be, I still regard the Bible as the source of practical wisdom that has survived for thousand years:
Matthew 6:34Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Waking up every morning is like every birthday to us, and we can live these moments to the best we can, doing our daily tasks. I know I am also afraid of what tomorrow will bring, but it never knows, and honestly, I don’t want to know. Saint Teresa of Avila knew it hundreds of years ago:
Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.
One of the reasons I like Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte is their happy ending with the most unexpected gift in the bliss of munificent largess that turned around their lives as la dolce vita. Likewise, (and frankly speaking) my Dickensian style of the greatest gift could be a recovery of my father’s stolen ancestral land in the will left by my grandfather.
A Shakespearean play, it may seem, my father’s land was forfeited by his half-brother, who falsely attested to the probate court that my father was lost in contact and, therefore, presumed to be dead. We have recently learned about it and still can’t believe this preponderance of lies. With the purloined land, the half-brother enriched his family, helping his two sons to set up their businesses. The promised land would have significantly helped our family, and we would have lived in a better environment with a Dickensian happy ending.
That happened to Charles Dickens. It was a small estate inherited from his paternal grandmother, which released his impecunious family from a debtor’s jail so that they could settle down in a fixed abode. So, yes. I should be so lucky if we could get back our land. That could be the greatest expectation.
Those were my green salad days on the following Sylvan campuses with pleasantness on memory lanes.
Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey– It was more of a preparatory school for me to prepare for a four-year university. English is my second language (“ESL”) – and the most beloved-and the college had an excellent ESL program equivalent for TOFEL or CELT. I was enrolled in an Honor Program, which helped me to transfer to the higher-level of university.
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey – I lived in the dorm and loved everything about the school. My major was English, so you can guess my initial intimidation of the subject as an ESL competing with native speakers. But I was on a Dean’s List in my senior year, and I am very proud of it. I loved reading Renaissance and Victorian literature classes in their original forms, which were exhilarating. I joined Army ROTC as a student cadet and the NJ Army National Guard at Rutgers. I also joined the Color Guard and Scabbard & Blade, a military honor society. I was a very active student and miss those days.
New York University, New York, New York – While working as a legal secretary at Dorsey & Witney in New York, I attended evening classes for a certificate in Paralegal Studies at NYU. The instructors were all practicing NYC lawyers passionate about sharing their practical knowledge with us. I graduated from the six-month program with good grades, and it was an enriching experience.
Looking back under ever foreign palm trees in California, I miss the east coast where all my college years and my prime times are buried.
Without my subscription to the newsletter “Letters of Note” by Shaun Usher, I would not have known that today was “World Introvert Day.” In celebration of the Feast of Introverts, I want to share some of the scintillating comments on the solace of solitude relished by the great writers of all time, which are selected by Usher, the founder of the Letters of Notes series, now also presented as in live shows where famous thespians – primarily British – including the excellent Benedict Cumberbatch, narrate many of the great letters from the series.
Elizabeth Bishop must have felt the same as I do many times when I am forced to be in situations where I must pretend to be outgoing and all-around friendly to be with, joking and laughing in nonstop chattering: “After being so social… I don’t feel like myself at all. I’m exhausted all over but particularly the dace, which I suppose comes from wearing a horrible fixed grin for so long.” From her letter written on November 10th, 1948.
But Sylvia Townsend Warner’s letter to David Garnett, written on September 2nd, 1970, won the olive wreath with a gold medal: “I live in a house too large for me, with three cats, and when the telephone rings and it is a wrong number, I feel a rush of thankfulness.” It’s a witty felicity of comfort in the company of romantic solitude. No, it doesn’t mean she is antisocial, but not everyone is outgoing, and outgoing people are not always positive, adept, or healthy. You can’t put people on the polar ends of the continuum of personalities and see them only in black and white. Surrounded by the crowds of vocal extroverts at work, where quiet is synonymous with sullen and too severe, I cannot help but agree with the writers mentioned earlier, for my sentiment shares with theirs. Perhaps it’s because we write, and writers are different tribes of people who hear and see things not recognized by those who are not.
But for what’s worth, it doesn’t matter if you call yourself an Introvert or not because, as Ernest Hemingway chipped, just be content with what you are and how you are: “I don’t know what an introvert is, but if that is what you are may all my children be then.” Ditto.
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.
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