Category: The inspirations and words quoted

On Making A Change

“There was no miracle (moment). Good to great transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Rather, it was a quiet, deliberate process of figuring out what needed to be done to create the best result. A cumulative process–step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of a flywheel in a consistent direction–over an extended period of time, that adds upp to sustained and spectacular results.”

image

(Jim Collins, in his book ‘Good to Great’ summing up the interviews with good to great – companies’ executives)

Thank you, Murakami, Sir.

”

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

“

— Haruki Murakami | Kafka on the Shore

 

On Entanglement.

This post was originally written by one of my best friends (with whom I am currently dating), Ramda, on his twitter page. I write it down here because I am now in an excruciating fear of losing even more (though I’ve lost almost everything in the past few months). The post somewhat calms me, and reminds me that in everything I’m facing now (and maybe later),

the only thing I can do is to do my best.

 

We all yearn to find the truth behind relationship. What is it? We only have vague understanding of it. We know that we know nothing. So we follow our desire. We try to be as careful as possible not to give our heart. We failed. We try not to broke any. We failed. We try everything we never thought of, only to dive deeper and deeper into our own secluded space. We begin to face ourselves. As time goes by, we learnt that we can get what we want, but most of the time we don’t really know what we want. And that we know a lot about the people we care, but we never really know our careless selves. We ignore our own faults.

Ultimately we found that relationship is an enlightenment: that you have to be really sure of what you want and wanting what you’re sure of. It highlights your flaws and misguided premises about how things may unfold and the real value of time. It teaches you. It nurtures you. It is not a simple knot as a symbol of strength. Instead, it’s a weaving fabric of time and love. It is the blanket that keeps you warm.

Not everyone is willing to share a blanket. Some want more for themselves, leaving the other a little bit too cold. Leaving them restless. And when you’re willing to share, you’ll find the innermost fragment of yourself. Pieces that may surprise you. Pieces that was unexpected.

Some say the collision of two souls will transform both of them. I’d say we’re not transformed: we’re merely entangled. For which we’re being thankful while it lasts, until gravity and time takes it away. It also gives an important lesson of inevitability:
..that everything is ephemeral. That for the brief time that was given, we have to realize that moments, good or bad, are finite.

And that the brief period of the entanglement is priceless and ever-revealing.