Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: journal

  • prompt 73

    What is your mission?

    Image from Google

    Sometimes, I just want to call it a day in my life. Blue or Black, Low or Dark. You call it depression, but I call it existential despair, which is not clinical but – well – existential that empirical situations shape the way I look at the world, not knowing what the purposes of my life are.

    Iā€™ve read Dr. Viktor E. Franklā€™s books about logotherapy, including his memoir because he is someone I could associate with in terms of his remarkable resilience and mind power to overcome his horrific experiences at the death camps during WWII. He said three values help us to find the purposes of life, which are Creative Value, Experiential Value, and Attitudinal Value. Of these values, I am practicing the Creative and Experiential Values by reading and writing because these are something I have been doing well since my childhood. Or I should think so.

    That said, my immediate mission is to finish the books I have downloaded on my Kindle, such as Think Again by Adam Grant and The Greeks by Philip Matyszak, to write book reviews on them. Writing book reviews is another habit I have been doing since the beginning of my nine-year-old blog. But these days, under the pretext of exhaustion from the job, I havenā€™t done it, so this will be my immediate mission.

    Another mission is to keep living a life, even if I donā€™t know what it leads me to. These days, I frequently contemplate why I should continue to live. But those who come back from near-death experiences or death said living is much better than death. Since I have not been dead yet, I can only believe them. After all, you must believe someone who has gone through such an ordeal, right? Like Dr. Frankl, who survived the Auschwitz.

    I think of the motto I created, which will be my credo for missions in life: ā€œThereā€™s Hope, Thereā€™s Light. Clear Mind, Open Heart. Keep Calm, Always Write.ā€

    Peace. šŸŒ¼šŸ’«šŸ§šā€ā™€ļøšŸŒ

    My motto created by meā­ļø

  • Prompt 72

    What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

    I heard that Cher has publicly defied growing old. Sometimes, youth comes with beauty, which is what Cher has achieved under the spell of medical magic. Has she made deals with spirits or consulted Dr. Faust?

    The Greek gods knew too well that aging is a mortalā€™s Achilles Gun. So when the immortals favored selected mortals, they deigned to bestow eternal youth on them either by giving them ambrosia or throwing them in the amber of a fire. But then you have to make deals with whoever promises you with the gift of youth.

    Cicero said nature has its things in place, and each age of human life has its place in nature. So, not acknowledging it is asking for trouble, such as Vampires. There are also Madonna and Cher, who may be vampires in the beautiful womanā€™s hiding. They are strong-willed, successful women with money to purchase their tickets for youth. Besides, they never reveal their actual ages in public. Are they ashamed of being considered as women of their ages? Donā€™t they also advocate womenā€™s rights? Isnā€™t agism another tacitly recognized form of discrimination in our society?

    Regarding aging, I also think about the movie Loganā€™s Run, where people aged 30 and over become executed under the pretext of being rejuvenated. Itā€™s a society of youth and a cult of beauty. If you are not young, you are not beautiful anymore. That is a formula in our world today.

    I am growing old, and to be perfectly honest, I am also scared of it because I can see the streaks of my hair being shades lighter. As a working woman, looking young is essential to survive in the workplace, whether you agree or disagree. But I donā€™t want to become a Vampire by making a Mepistolean pact. I want to be like Cleopatra, whose age can not wither, nor custom can stale her infinite varieties. Mind you, Plutarch, in his Heroes, commented on Cleopatra that her intelligence and manner of speaking were the jewels of her beauty. Or like Sophia Lauren, who still looks divinely beautiful without looking like a Vampire because it matters how your inner self looks.

  • Prompt 71

    What could you do differently?

    Plane Dreaming is now planespotting. Image Credit by MešŸ¤“

    ā€œIfā€ is such a big word with such a short syllable. Thereā€™s even a book titled What If, packed with hypothetical answers to scientific questions. In my Book of Life, these are my what-ifs.

    I could have continued to pursue a flight attendant career shortly after graduating from college. I once applied for a position with United Airlines in college. I made it to the open interview, where only two people were selected. I took it as a sign of not calling it a vocation, so I decided not to pursue my childhood dream. But my inborn wanderlust calls me to the vision of being a flight attendant working skybound, traveling, and meeting people worldwide.

    I could have acted differently when my team manager told me last Thursday that she would soon leave the firm this month. She was one of a few commendable supervisors/managers I have worked with. She asked me if I could work with her at her new firm. Ecstatically, I said ā€œYes!ā€ because I felt insecure about my future after her departure. Being a neurodivergent, I can thrive under a patient and understanding person. My current team manager is a neurotypical supervisor who lets me work independently and contribute to the best of my abilities. While I was grateful for her kind gesture of inviting me to join her at her new firm, I should not have expressed my acceptance forthwith lest I should burden her with the weight of responsibility carried to her new place. I could have acted professionally courteously and instead congratulated her on her new future, not giving her the impression of latching on to her.

    Thereā€™s no use cryng over spilled milk, and I feel like the sorry milkmaid. Foolhardy maybe, foolish not. I could become more mature, now that I have reached the second stage of my life. But I donā€™t want to be harsh on myself for not being what my parents and brother and some people think I should be. Earth moves around Sun, and the Sun comes up from the east and goes down in the west. Not to acknowledge the nature of things is to ask for trouble. Likewise, I donā€™t want to pine for things I regret not having done or being the way I want, for life is too short to hold my what-ifs in the chapters of my life.

  • prompt 70

    If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?

    Made by Me šŸŒ»

    Life is an alternative cause between hope and despair, joy and sadness, and gain and loss, as gallantly depicted in Verdiā€™s La Traviata.

    I made the above billboard to serve as my logo for the new stage of my life this year. I hope to maintain it as a narrative for the rest of my life.

    In participation of creative experience, I shall rekindle the love of writing; however bad or good it may be, to leave my legacy of existence that I exist in the actualization of who I am, lest my life should vanish in the dust of the wind, like Lucy Maud Montgomery, who disciplined herself to devote herself in writing every day at the desk even if she didnā€™t felt like doing it. After all, didnā€™t Aristotle say we are what we repeatedly do, and excellence is not an act but a habit?

  • Prompt 69

    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 6:34 Therefore 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 donā€™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 suffice    s.

    God bless you all. ā­ļøāœØšŸ€šŸ§šā€ā™€ļø

  • Prompt 68

    What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

    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 fatherā€™s stolen ancestral land in the will left by my grandfather.

    A Shakespearean play, it may seem, my fatherā€™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 canā€™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 debtorā€™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.