Books Read 2013

1. Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison • Piper Kerman
2. The Signature of All Things • Elizabeth Gilbert
3. Teach Us To Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing • Tim Parks
4. The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling • Stephen Cope
5. The Faraway Nearby • Rebecca Solnit
6. The God of the Hive • Laurie R. King
7. The Language of Bees: A Mary Russell Novel • Laurie R. King
8. Running with the Mind of Meditation: Lessons for Training Body and Mind • Sakyong Mipham
9. Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life • Brendan Brazier
10. True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart • Tara Brach, PhD
11. Running the Edge: Discover the Secrets to Better Running and a Better Life • Adam Goucher & Tim Catalano
12. Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row • Jarvis Jay Masters
13. Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers • Karyl McBride, PhD

Haruki Murakami's 2005 Marathon Time

Haruki Murakami's 2005 New York Marathon Time: 4:10:17

I'm slightly obsessed with celebrities marathon time lately.

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

It's getting closer to Christmas. (Yes, I know it's only November - but the decorations are up at the stores. )

Christmas always put me in a strange mood. I get moody, more reflective, and sad. I get nostalgic, and I miss people. Right now I need to remind myself of this - and hope to live a life without these regrets. So I'm posting this here again, as a reminder to myself.

No regrets. 

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?

Surrender is Not An Option

Great Eastern Women's Run 21.1 km Finisher medal

I earned this Finisher Medal for this year's Great Eastern Women's Run Half Marathon. 21.1 km, or 13.1 miles.

I started my journey as a runner last November. I went out one morning, ran for a while, and was defeated after less than 15 mins. I ended up walking home breathless, with the full awareness of how out of shape I was.

One year later, I find myself finishing my first half marathon. It was a humbling journey. Running is painful, and there were a few injuries along the way. I learnt so much, and yet there's still so much more to learn.

I am still limping a little from my shin splint and IT band sprain (suspected). When I showed up for my half marathon last Sunday, I just told myself to try my best - and finish. I asked myself, what can I do, if surrender is not an option?

I did think about not showing up. Sleep in and rest, I told myself. Rest.

I showed up anyway. I am glad I did.

I am not fast, but I managed to run and walk my way through a half marathon.

What am I capable of, if surrender is not an option?

A lot.

S. Rajaratnam, on Preserving History

I saw this on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sosbukitbrown

"A sense of history is what provides the links to hold together a people who came from the four corners of the earth. Because our history is short and because what is worth preserving from the past are not all that plentiful, we should try to save what is worthwhile from the past from the vandalism of the speculator and the developer, from a government and a bureaucracy which believes that anything that cannot be translated into cold cash is not worth investing in.”

- S. Rajaratnam, “The Uses and the Abuses of the Past”, Seminar on Adaptive Re-use: Integrating Traditional Areas into the Modern | Urban Fabric, (Singapore, April 1984)

S. Rajaratnam was the man who wrote our National Pledge. I wonder what he would say, to how blatantly we are destroying Bukit Brown.

POEM | Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

Time and again, I am reminded of this poem, and what it has to say about our notion of failures. In particular, the heart-aching closing lines: "I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,/but just coming to the end of his triumph." Nothing lasts forever. Just because something ended, does not mean it was a failure or a mistake. Dare to try, and dare to risk falling. Or else, you risk failing by default, for never trying.

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

19 Lessons Running Teaches You About Life

One day I might be experienced enough to do my own list of lessons from running list. Until then, here's a list of 10 lessons from someone else who runs (I hope): 10 Lessons Running Teaches You About Life.

My favourites:

2. Consistency creates habit.
8. If you wait for the right conditions, you’ll never get anything done.

Really - just do it. Quit waiting for yourself to get fitter, or to lose weight before you do it.

Just Do It.

Yeah, I'm a big Nike fan.

Time to Look Ahead

I started the beginning of this year with the intention to write more on this blog. Well, it started off well, then I stopped for a while. This has been a pattern with me lately - getting sidetracked from where I had intended to go, intended to do.

The last few months have been busy. I have been running more this year, but not as much as I had wanted. My health took a toll this year. Been to the doctor's a few times, but nothing major.

Highlight of this year should be the trip to Seattle and later to New York. In Seattle I met up with some friends I met online, and have been chatting with for the last couple of years. It was fun, and I am glad for this chance. The internet is a great social space where we get to meet other people who we might never have come into contact within our usual social circles. Some of them are creepy, yes - and you should always take precautions when meeting the people you connect with online. But I was glad this one panned out.

After Seattle I made a trip to New York - alone. I was supposed to go with a friend last year, but it soon became obvious that my friend and I had different ideas about budget and what constitute as "essentials".

I am traveling again, and it feels like a sudden cool breeze in a hot summer. It reminds me how much I wandered away from myself the last few years. I didn't need anyone else to make me happy. Whatever I needed to be happy, I had to do for myself. I thought I was so full of wisdom and insight from the books I have read, from my practice. The last year or so have been uncomfortable - I am as capable of deception and self-deception as anyone else.

I am not sure how things will go from here. But it's time to start looking ahead. Someone asked me what's on my bucket list. I haven't really thought about the things I wanted to do. Maybe it's time to update the list again. The places I wanted to see, the things I want to do. In some places, they have started putting up the Christmas decorations. 2013 is ending soon.

Locating this Quote

Someone told me this was by Jeanette Winterson. Anyone knows the source of this quote?

Yes, we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check their diary when we arrange to meet.

Amanda Palmer, on The Quietus

Also, Palmer on the letters of Korean Zen master, Seung Sahn:

When people come to me in times of real trouble, and sometimes they do, there's a couple of books I recommend as a way to feel grounded. One of them is a book by a Korean Zen Buddhist named Seung Sahn. It's a series of letters between him and his students. I read that book. Anthony gave me that book when I was about 23, and I took it on a trip to Australia, where I was going to street performances and try to make some money on the Adelaide street fringe. It's a long story, way too long for your article. But when I was in Australia I got accidentally arrested. I had just been reading that book that morning and the previous day. In the morning of sitting and talking to a bunch of Australian police, I really had the experience of watching my own mind battle myself and want to defend myself and get angry and revert to my old patterns of behavior. And instead I just calmly sat there explaining what had happened and feeling the power in non-reactivity and the power of not getting angry and the power of realising that these guys were just doing their jobs. And that was one of those life-changing moments. I've probably bought that book a dozen times and gifted it to people who were in need. I don't give them [a copy of] How To Understand The Music Business; I give them the Seung Sahn letters.

He also wrote this book, The Compass Of Zen. I wouldn't recommend starting with The Compass Of Zen. I would recommend starting with the letters. Because you have totally normal people dealing with totally normal problems. "I don't know what to do with my life. My parents don't fucking understand me. I keep being distracted." These are kids in the sixties and seventies. The problems are all the same. It takes no intellectual stretch to read these letters that these kids wrote to their Zen teacher, or a teacher they saw at a talk. And he writes back these beautiful, considered, really great, no-bullshit answers about what's important. He actually influenced my correspondence style. I read those books often, and I notice when my writing style tries to mimic it. I start speaking in these short, terse sentences as if I were a Korean monk who didn't speak great English.

QUOTE | Boldly Do Things Which You May Previously Never Thought of Doing

“I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover.

Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.

My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.”

― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

Post-Run Yoga Flexibility Routine

QUOTE | When we lose one blessing

"When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place." - C.S. Lewis

POETRY | Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

LIFE | Dim Sum in the Morning, Laundry in the Afternoon

Today is Vesak Day, as well as one of those rare days when my brother and myself are not working at the same time. The whole family went down this morning for a bit of dim sum brunch. We used to have dim sum as a family many years ago, when I was still a teenager. We have stopped doing things together for a long time.

At the end of the meal, my mom brought out tissue paper and handed it out to everyone. Our family have a bad habit - my dad, my brother and myself - none of us ever learnt the habit of bring tissue paper out; mom always was the one to bring the tissue.

My mom has early on-set dementia. She is not the same person I grew up with. It has been difficult these last few years. These days I feel more like an adult, trying to mother my mother. But this morning, she still does what she used to do - hand out the tissues.

Sadly life will always have its moment. This afternoon, my mom and I argued over the laundry again. Seems like we are always arguing about this absurd need for me to have autonomy over my laundry. My laundry is the metaphor for my relationship with my mom. I want to live my life on my rules. All I want is for her to leave me alone - and she always replies, "But she is my daughter!"

My mom will never let me go. It is both good and bad. It is neither good or bad. It is what it is. Our parents can only love us the way they have been taught, the way they know how.

Essay from Haruki Murakami: BOSTON, FROM ONE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD WHO CALLS HIMSELF A RUNNER

Haruki Murakami's essay on the Boston Marathon bombing, here. He still amazes me, not just as a writer, but now that I started running, I am somewhat in awe that he ran the Boston Marathon six times. He ran marathons all over the world, at Athens, Chicago, New York, Honolulu - and of course Boston. He has a personal fondness for the Boston Marathon. This essay reminds me that I have yet to read his book on running, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

To overcome this kind of trauma takes time, time during which we need to look ahead positively. Hiding the wounds, or searching for a dramatic cure, won’t lead to any real solution. Seeking revenge won’t bring relief, either. We need to remember the wounds, never turn our gaze away from the pain, and—honestly, conscientiously, quietly—accumulate our own histories. It may take time, but time is our ally.

For me, it’s through running, running every single day, that I grieve for those whose lives were lost and for those who were injured on Boylston Street. This is the only personal message I can send them. I know it’s not much, but I hope that my voice gets through. I hope, too, that the Boston Marathon will recover from its wounds, and that those twenty-six miles will again seem beautiful, natural, free.

Running to Train Myself

“If you’re trying to defeat the human spirit, marathoners are the wrong group to target.”

I read this quote on Facebook soon after the Boston Marathon bombing. Since I've been running, I am only feeling the amount of discipline and will it takes to train for a marathon. To complete 26.2 miles in the Boston Qualifying time takes more than running 26.2 miles. It takes years of focused practice, who knows how many thousands of miles ran - not to mention the aches and pains that came with it all. Marathon runners take all of this in, and they still continue.

This is why I want to continue running. This is a training of will. If I can do this, I know I can do anything. I'm tired of giving up. Tired of not following through. Tired of letting myself down.

Saw the News about the Boston Marathon Bombing Today

I was up around 4 am this morning. I saw all the posts on Facebook about the bombing at the Boston Marathon. I went to check on a friend who lived in Boston (she's ok). Checked in with my running group, and there's a lot of emotions running about the bombing. Just last night, some of the girls in my running group were talking about making the qualifying time for the Boston Marathon.

So, I did what felt right this morning - I went out for a 3 miles run. I try to keep the people who were affected by the bombing in my thoughts as I run - because things like these are not supposed to happen at the Boston Marathon. Because the Boston Marathon is about running - and your politics, skin colour, religion and any other differences is not supposed to matter there. Then I found my thoughts going out to the people I care about, and I wondered if they are ok. And I thought about the people that I care about - but we no longer speak, and I wished we could speak again so that I would know if they are okay.

More than anything else, I want people to be ok.

Picked this up today

Went to the bookstore today.

Forgiveness by David Whyte

Forgiveness is a heartache, a giving away, and ultimately the refusal to be possessive about the original wound; it is the act of letting the wound have its own life so that it can heal, mostly by re-imagining itself, and not by our telling the story again and again from the point of the one who carries the hurt.

Forgiveness is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, it not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw center, to re-imagine our relation to it.

It may be that the part of us that was struck and hurt can never forgive, and that strangely, forgive- ness never arises from the part of us that was actually wounded. The wounded self may be the part of us incapable of forgetting, and perhaps, not actually meant to forget, as if, like the foundational dynamics of the physiological immune system our psychological defenses must remember and organize against any future attacks – after all, the identity of the one who must forgive is actually founded on the very fact of having being wounded.

Stranger still, it is that wounded, branded, un-forgetting part of us that eventually makes forgiveness an act of compassion rather than one of simple forgetting. To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt, to mature and bring to fruition an identity that can put its arm, not only around the afflicted one within but also around the memories seared within us by the original blow and through a kind of psychological virtuosity, extend our understanding to the one who first delivered it.

Forgiveness is a skill, a way of preserving clarity, sanity and generosity in an individual life, a beautiful way of shaping the mind to a future we want for ourselves; an admittance that if forgiveness comes through understanding, and if understanding is just a matter of time and application then we might as well begin forgiving right at the beginning of any drama rather than put ourselves through the full cycle of festering, incapacitation, reluctant healing and eventual blessing.

To forgive is to put oneself in a larger gravitational field of experience than the one that first seemed to hurt us. We re-imagine ourselves in the light of our maturity and we re-imagine the past in the light of our new identity, allowing ourselves to be gifted by a story larger than the story that first hurt us and left us bereft.

At the end of life, the wish to be forgiven is ultimately the chief desire of almost every human being. In refusing to wait; in extending forgiveness to others now; we begin the long journey of becoming the person who will be large enough, able enough and generous enough to receive, at the very end, that absolution ourselves.