I can't sleep tonight...:P It's not much fun. People need their sleep.

Grr...I'm definitely tired and overstressed...I tend to stay up too late and just procrastinate when I feel like this. :P

Anyhow - just wanted to note that Brainfall.com classifies my personality as that of Charlie Brown, in Peanuts...

"...always optimistic and persistent, and everyone appreciates your simple sweetness. Sometimes, however, your anxieties get the best of you, and life's mysteries can confuse you."

Actually - that was rather accurate. No wonder the Lucy personalities have always frightened me. Although...I have not read Peanuts enough to know whether those statements apply to me in the exact same way that they apply to Charlie Brown.


Today during church we watched a ten-minute clip of The Nativity. I had many reflections on that but it is late and if I don't go to bed I shan't be good for any work tomorrow, and there is a lot to do. Suffice it to say I think I want to watch the rest of The Nativity too, sometime...it was very touching to realize that this...this...is the story that we're celebrating. A simple story from a rugged land in an ancient time - one whose essence is quite lost in the elegant whitewashedness of modern celebration.

So if I can be sunshine and smiles to so many people...then why do I get so depressed so often when I'm all by myself? It seems I can hardly stand being alone now, even though I need down time. I guess when I'm alone it is just too easy to think too hard about life.

from dust, to dust

As I was browsing a hi-so bookstore in downtown Bangkok yesterday evening, I observed that the overall gist of things is that we come come from apes and are headed toward machines. We are ready to find our origins in the dust of the earth, and ready to meld ourselves with the same. How strange that we are so horizontal...that rather than embracing the vertical that we are capable of, we are very willing to say that behind us, is dust - and ahead of us, which we can determine, we would also like to strive toward dust - albeit a highly developed dust.

"By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." - Genesis 3:19

I think humanity is working unawares to fulfill this prophecy - in between pre-birth life and post-death life we are adding post-birth dust and pre-death dust. Apes, headed toward machines.

How strange that the same Lord God who said, "You are from dust and to dust you will return" - the One before whose words we must humble ourselves - is also the One who lifts us beyond man's highest position in the most humanistic of thinking. He has touched us with the divine - with His image, with souls, and the capacity to think and reason.

It would seem that it is more blessed to be sick, with friends, than to be in good health and alone. I have always thought that it is wiser to isolate yourself if you are sick than to expose yourself to others who might catch it. But I guess maybe there is another wisdom that could apply.

I know a group of friends at church who would rather be all sick and miserable together because they are sick yet happy because they are together than to stay in the solitary confinement quarantining themselves and be miserable and sick and alone.

Maybe it is this carefree spirit of togetherness and selflessness in the sense that they would rather be with each other than alone and that they don't mind catching a cold from a sick friend that makes them so insanely fun to be with.

I absolutely love hanging out with them, and just seeing them all makes me smile. :)

It is funny what music is, what music can do...how it can help me to feel better, lol...and just feel whimsical. I can just listen to whimsical music and feel happy, or a little happier than before. Somehow maybe those notes elicit the few endorphines needed to make the difference between wallowing in depression and feeling the brilliant hope to carry on. Just the right music can do this. Sometimes it's rather silly music, lol. But the right notes and harmonies...

What is happiness anyway? It must be a construct. ;)

Okay...I think I must have had too much sugar this weekend. I feel really awful right now and unable to concentrate or make decisions. Sugar always makes me emotionally unstable. It is funny when the difference between a positive perspective on life and nearly wanting to die lies in a couple of sweets. :P

I've not been doing very well the past four or five days. I don't know why. It is terrible; yesterday someone made a random comment about how I maybe shouldn't have done something and instead of taking it with grace, I just burst out crying. That is so not me. :P At least, I hope it is not. Aside from that sad occurrence (this is going to be a rather bluish post), I have just come from breathing more secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke is a terrible thing. It makes me a bit upset to think that so many smokers smoke, when it's others who have to take the consequences of their habit. Maybe they don't realize, though...after all, who really keeps up with all the rumors and tabloids about developments in the scientific realm? Anyhow, in case you didn't know...breathing secondhand smoke is worse than smoking itself. So maybe in that case we should all become smokers...yeah...and breath each other's secondhand smoke. Then things would even out! Get both the good and the bad. ;)

Okay. I will try and smile. The housekeeper is really nice and I really do want to talk with her. Despite that she smokes one cigarette before lunch and one cigarette after, and that it is difficult to time my arrival right between cigarettes A and B...and even if I manage to miss the first, I don't have to courage to just get up and leave before the second - but maybe it would be better for both of us if I did - the sum of it is that my lunches are tainted with nicotine, which has a grand ability to diffuse. I have a hard time understanding what a liquid gas it is...it seems to permeate every bit of air in the surrounding vicinity.

Well...other random observations. I think Thai people are accurate guessers of personality and class. At least, the creation of class exists here because it is one of those things that materialize when people believe in it and they believe in it here. So maybe they're accurate...and they can perceive what people are really like, no matter how hard they try not to be like that...which is cool...but...way to trap people in!! Which is hard because it seems like no matter how hard you try, you are always what they perceive you to be.

Before I send this woebegone little post out into cyberspace...I think I will change the topic a bit. Today we had a meeting at the office; we discussed Imago therapy, courtesy of Harville Hendricks. It was interesting; it is a theory about how couples can move past tension and discord into relationships of harmony and fulfillment. The theory, which has quite a bit of philosophy about human nature and existence mixed in, talks about how each human bears wounds from childhood. Apparently we seek a partner who will help us, in a sense, finish our childhood by healing those wounds and bringing resolution so that we can achieve wholeness. That person is usually a composite of our parents - both their negative and positive traits, but mainly their negative ones. That is why so many marriage relationships have so much discord, he says - because we marry people who will wound us in the same way our parents did, which is an unconscious attempt at bringing us into a place where we can find healing from our wounds. I suppose we repeat the same scenarios in an attempt to find a different ending, and ending of resolution.

It is a very interesting theory and I think it bears vestiges of truth. But mainly I think it is a rather confused perspective. For some reason his reasoning reminds me of Martin Buber's relationship philosophies. Martin Buber is a religious secularist, which is already an oxymoron in itself. Perhaps there is an answer somewhere around there to why his teachings have always disturbed me. It sounds so right, and yet...so wrong. I think it is one of those theories that fits together intellectually, but in reality flies in the face of all that we believe in as Christians. In fact, it seems almost that the relationship between God and humanity could be fitted into that paradigm - almost. But no - I think that Buber is at the opposite pole. This is where you land, when you think as far as you can intellectually without God in the picture. I think that Imago therapy achieves its goal, but in a manner empty of soul and meaning...the reason being that God is the author of romance; the author of love.

This is why love songs and love stories are so close to the heart of humanity, why anyone can resonate with it, why it is a very good way to draw people's attention. This...this is woven into the foundation of our existence.

Yes, we can have romance without God...but I think it will miss the soul of it. And without the soul, it appears to me like sawdust - painful. Like a mockery of what could be. I thought the Imago therapy was very interesting to hear about and to discuss, but it was also painful to consider its product. Not bad in itself, but simply all it is not.