The Ultimate Healer

Love.

A strange thing it is. It can change your life for the better, or put you through hell. It can tie your lips to your both ears and make you want to smile all the time like a lunatic, and at the loss of it, it can make you feel as if your heart is being torn apart to pieces (I got very good at drawing a broken heart when I was in high school). Yet, when you say it hurts, you can't really say where. Because love is merely a concept, an idea you yourself plant in your brain. It's not even tangible. It is merely a chemical reaction, triggered by a person or a thing or an event. They're the catalyst. When you say love makes you happy, you can only point out to these culprits, but love is still something you can't feel in your fingers or taste in your mouth. And when you say it kills you, nothing inside you is really dying. Your heart isn't stopping, your kidney is still functioning, and your liver's not bleeding. Physically, you don't have any wound. But you feel that something is kicking inside, ripping off whatever it is you have between your intestines. The next thing you know, you already lose 2 stones. 

Being a true believer of love, I often found myself in and out of it. I like love, for all the reasons everybody else has when they are in it. And if I sometimes hate it, there's no other quote that can explain the feeling better:

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” (Neil Gaiman)

All my life, my parents (and a lot of experiences) taught me that in the end, the only person you can rely on is yourself. For me, love is something that betrays this maxim, because yourself becomes this individual you can't depend on. Yourself has become this imbecile, irrational as well as delusional being that you no longer recognize. 

The thing is, in all falling-in-love cases, you can't really choose with whom or with what you're in love with. I was just wondering how easy and simple my life would be if I weren't in love with classical music, or even piano playing. I would probably be enjoying my 9-to-5 life in a skyscraper building, working on some paperwork in my cubicle, meeting my soulmate, who happens to work in the office next door, getting a weekly escape to Bali or Singapore, letting consumerism get the best of me and ending up with some new stuffs to fill my wardrobe. I wouldn't have to have this agony of trying to figure out why my fingers won't move at one of those movements in Haydn concerto. I wouldn't have to lie in bed all night, thinking how to get more string players to enroll at my camp. Life would be less complicated. And it's just the same with people. If I can choose who I can have a crush on (before it develops into something more real, more serious), I would choose the homey, kind, simple, non-demanding, and most faithful of all man, who can't resist my charm and is blind to all kinds of female attractions. However, you really have no power about this. The next thing you know is that life is a Ferris wheel and the object of your affection has become the core of it; the bolt that put everything together, and one day, when this thing decides to walk away or when you realize it's out of your reach, your world comes tumbling down.

Yes, love could be a national disaster, at least in your heart and mind region. The first time this fatal incident happened, I thought I would never be able to love again. It took me three years to forgive and move on, and that was possible only because a new love occurred. (Now that I come to think of it, wasn't that another madness? It's like overcoming your drug addiction by becoming an alcoholic. How idiotic was that???). Then it grows, and by the time my heart is glued and fixed, I learn that this new love has became Goliath and I was just David. So small, so fragile, so incapable, in an impossible mission. And all those years of schooling never taught you how to deal with such case. You just have to find your own way of coping with the 2 possibilities: that this might work, or this might crush you again. I might end up living life happily ever after, or it might take me another year or two until, to quote my best friends, "a new, and stronger love appears in my life" (i.e. turning myself from alcoholic to anorexic) while trying to kill this ghoul with sling and stone. Time will heal, that's what people said (although when the worst happens, you want to smack whoever it is that says it to your face). 

So yes, I hate love, for the defenselessness it creates. I hate love, because even love sometimes can't lend you loyalty. Because love and pain is the two sides of a coin. The more you love, the more you're prone to sufferings. But I know that when the storms have passed, I will be able to laugh at this, talk about this with my best friends while zooming on the next smart ass I can find on a day where the sun shines. And if I can choose, I wouldn't want to miss all the ups and downs. For sure I wouldn't want to miss the excitement of waiting for a single, meaningless phone call, even if it's only on Skype. But more importantly, I wouldn't want to miss the chance of knowing that my heart is so big that it can love someone or something that doesn't love in return, and so strong that it can contain even the most excruciating pain, and so resilient that it will not be afraid to love again. And later in life, I want to be able to tell my kids that

"Eventually, you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”
(Gary Zukav)

The End is the Beginning is the End

It's over. My third music camp marked the end of another life cycle. I got the job done, and now a new beginning is waiting, with its own challenges and contrasts. I've got my paradoxes already, but I have time to deal with it.

Anyway, the end of a season always brought the contemplative side in me. And there are always so many lessons to be taken and thoughts to be remembered, and I think this is the best thing I can be grateful for when I chose to follow my bliss.

The first and foremost thing I learned from the past 3 weeks is that life is pretty fair. When somebody or something lets you down, there will be somebody or something else that will make up for it. When one of my sponsors cancelled his support at the beginning of June, I was already imagining losing all my savings AND eyeing some six digits number on my credit card bill with agony. So I asked friends to donate for the kids (to whom the donation will go), at the same time doubting whether they would care. But apparently they do. I've got some really great friends who obviously respect my efforts and they readily contributed. In fact, the heartwarming feeling beats all the disappointment. It still didn't save my saving, but at least I'm starting with zero, not negative. 

I also learn this week that I didn't get something I've been praying for for the last couple of months. Like all human, I had a good cry. But afterward, I thought about all those rojects lining up for the season and about those wonderful people I will meet (and meet again, like, for example, the DSQ), and I finally have the conviction that the next episode could be great indeed. I might be gaining some new experiences, working in the French cultural center and managing my first international camp (i.e. if and when I get the deal)... I already imagine that there'll be a lot of things to do this year, and that in itself, is a huge comfort.

The second good thing I learned is to put trust in people. My mum always raised me to trust no one but myself, and sometimes, many times, in fact, I have difficulty in letting go. However, I found out that when you give trust to people, at least normal ones, they tend to want to prove that they are worthy of such honour. And they will do their best not to let you down. 

In the end, all these experiences always tell me something more about myself. I know now that I always have a great capacity in loving, and no matter how hurt I am, this love will always put everything back in place and make me dare to hope for better days again. I think I have become the ultimate optimist, a thing I acquired by following my lonesome path. And in this life with its ups and downs, I don't think it's such a bad thing at all.