Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Rediscovering The Child Within

Just before Raya, two of my good friends bid their goodbyes as they will be starting a new life as doctorate students overseas. One in Durham UK and another in Bonn, German. Unlike some of my batchmates who did their postgrads overseas, I am quite envious of these two as I know they will really enjoy every moment of their student’s life there. Particularly because of their scholarstic attributes and they know what they want.

Myself??? It was a wonder I finished high school and get my Bachelors degree. Honestly during my brief stint in Form 6, I knew that I am not meant for the academia. But luckily, my Chinese mindset (one of the very few things that I can boast as Chinese other than my surname) ruled over my heart, I persevered to get that piece of paper that can guarantee a good place in the career world. After graduating, I am sort of like "letting life taking its own course".

A week before the Ramadan, I had breakfast with Ramli and Kolony and Ramli gave me a good advice. He said as we are moving up in our career as an Administrative and Diplomatic Officer, one of the requirements to be considered for promotion by the Public Service Department might be having a higher or professional qualifications. I do agree with him on that because in both private and public sectors alike, we would like to have people with the right qualifications and experience to fill in the top positions. I went back later that evening asking myself – what is my next step? A month had passed and still I dont feel the urge to start considering about the possibility of doing postgrads. The same feeling I felt during my insurance meeting when my GSM asked me “why do you do insurance? Why didn’t u do more? Don’t you want to be a millionaire?” I guess it point down to one thing – the urge to do it.

The funny thing is in my quest to urge myself to further studies or make myself richer or loose few kilos or get myself a husband (wish we can shop for one) I came across a book by Lilian Too entitle Discovering Yourself nestled between all my magazines on my bookshelf. At first I can’t remember buying this book, then I realised that it was among hundred of unread books which I bought during the “Dark Period”. In one of the chapters, the author wrote about rediscovering the child within ourselves. She also wrote that the Chinese believe that regular meditation involving visualisation into a time when you were young is very helpful in recharging depleting energies of your bodies. We might also gain inspirations by revisiting our childhood days through visualisation sessions.

In fact the visualisation session is not hard to follow, find a picture of yourself when you were young looking vibrant, radiant and happy. Look closely at the picture and then lightly close your eyes and try to see “yourself” then. If you can remember the context of the picture it is even better. Then it is easier to go “back in time”. Or else let your mental consciousness help you along. For this session, I visualised one picture when I was 3-4 years standing on the family dining table and smiling widely to the cameraman – my dad. I started recalling the good ol’ days when we were staying in Bau, a small town where everybody knows everybody and as a child if you walked alone through a lonely road nobody would want to kidnap you. That time my dad had not left us to work in Penang and my mum always cooked and baked and marvelled us with her new recipes. I always loved the smell of fresh goodies from the oven for tea-time and we never buy cakes for birthdays coz my mum made ours herself. She prided herself holding parties as she cooked everything and everyone love her cookings. Then my mum left us to further her studies in Temenggung Ibrahim Trainning College, and both my sister and I were left in the care of my grandmum and maid. I remembered crying silently missing my mum and dad. And I often get scolded by my aunties for being choosy because I couldn’t swallow her cookings.

In short, the visualisation session made me recalled a lot of things – especially the reasons why I want to be in KL at the first place. To realise my dream to be a Chef hehehe... So much for wanting to find the urges.

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