"It's gonna be OK"

Well if it will be fine, there is nothing to fear. Just things to attend to without worries or desperation.

Something is happening to me. I'm not going back to a childlike innocence but the things that used to make me afraid are normal again. And I'm free to dream. For if it really will be OK... if I know that... then no matter how I feel, there is a safe place at every turn that will assure us of the outcome.

I can't explain what has changed because many issues still exist but I'm a different man.

Psychosis

Psychosis is just "loss of contact with reality" but is applied to extreme cases where violence and obsessive behaviour that affect a certain lifestyle is involved. The whole idea hangs on what reality is.

If you take purely physical reality, we were born naked in a gruesome and painful process called birth. But somehow, the life apparent in the new baby causes most mothers to smile and love and create a new reality surrounding the child called a family in all it's many cultural colours.

If you dwell on the blood, pain and danger involved in birth itself, it is perhaps more real than the psychosis of our desire for family security and joy. At the moment the baby appears in the world outside the womb, the actual physical reality is negative. Yet our desire for life in the baby and his/her potential causes many to dream and create.

Since it hasn't happened yet, is the family or joy we feel seeing the baby unreal? If you look at the blood and the pain, it is a kind of psychosis.

The point of looking at birth this way is not to pour cold water or destroy the joy of seeing new life but I just want to say, we can create reality that will happen. The choice of how we deal with the new life that occurs everyday is just like the moment of birth in a new baby.

Unlike the joy of a new child though, many face life with dread and fear because the circumstances facing us is often not good. How is the psychosis of living a hopeful life different than that which we place on a baby?

It's just what we choose to see and do. I'm not saying it's easy to live with new hope and joy everyday. I was in the doldrums and personal dread. Yet, psychosis or loss of contact with reality is precisely what hope is.

It is a dream that we can make real.

Promises

An oldie tribute to the late great Ray Charles! The rhythm is "bad ass" and the lyrics begs the question. Really? Will you be good to me? Will you love me no matter what? Does God love me if he is there?

Well I've written a lot about these questions so I won't repeat like I usually do. Instead I'll state these promises fulfilled (for me at least):

1. Love someone no matter what, in order to see God.
2. I feel love and know God is good to me no matter what.

I've posted the second Expectans Expectavi Dominum and third movements Laudate Dominum of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Here is the first movement and the text. I love this eerie arrangement because it's good but also because this is how I feel. I cried out in the silence of nothing and experienced his answer. And the feeling is this magnificent. 

(Psalm 38, verses 13 and 14)

Exaudi orationem meam, Domine, et deprecationem meam. Auribus percipe lacrimas meas. Ne sileas, ne sileas.	Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with Thine ears consider my calling: hold not Thy peace at my tears.
Quoniam advena ego sum apud te et peregrinus, sicut omnes patres mei.	For I am a stranger with Thee: and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
Remitte mihi, ut refrigerer prius quam abeam et amplius non ero.	O spare me a little that I may recover my strength: before I go hence and be no more seen.

Safe

This song may sound trivial with a "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" beat and innocent lyrics. I feel this safety in a deep deep way as my down time has brought me back to the confidence that pushed me forward in life.

Atheism is a religion just like all others because it chooses to believe in a God who is not there. Don't shoot me yet. Even Science assumes there is a system that governs the Universe because there is no need to research something without any order or repeatable events. It's just that the concept of God most people hold is neither here nor there.

If our lives are indeed against all odds in that the hostile Universe has provided a pocket of pure life sustaining balance on our blue planet and our stupid human race can find meaning to celebrate life through culture and innovation... I say there is a God. Most religions and those who go to temples want a lesser God who allows suffering and cannot control us. He is to be appeased and feared.

Well if you see how life is like winning a lottery of existence in a mostly barren violent yet beautiful Universe... how does a fearful God who wants to destroy us at every turn make sense? If he is so terrible (or if the Universe is completely random for the Atheists), there is no basis for Science, Philosophy, Society and the many other concepts on which our cultures are based. No matter how primitive or sophisticated any group are, people order themselves using abstract concepts that animals seem incapable of. We have figured out how to create some order out of chaos.

I can't prove God. I just see evidence of safety, progress, love, hope, celebration even in the darkest moment. If you look at any picture of our earth in the black expanse of Space, I see life on this beautiful earth. You can choose to see just the darkness of Space all you want and ask how can God make that. Or just assume we appeared purely from chance. It's up to you.

It does not change the fact that life is a miracle (or winning a lottery against all odds) and I feel the celebration of this simple innocent song with new hope out of the darkness of circumstance. For me God is either there or not and all the fear that he wants to destroy us, just does not sit well with the fact that we were born from nothing yet have the opportunity to live a full life. If I were God why bother making beauty only to destroy it? And I am just a stupid man who will die.

I feel safe and I know where my confidence comes from. This song celebrates this safety and love I feel.

Light

I finally got a nice picture of the Sun Yat Sen statue that no one seems to notice as they exercise around the circle of track that surrounds him. Victoria harbour is behind him and an old industrial area of Kowloon whose water front is curtained by luxury high rise flats. Hong Kong has the most expensive real estate in the world right now buoyed by mainland money.

It's ironic that none of the mainland tourists come here. And few Hong Kong'ers come here to think about what this man stood for.

On a sunny hot day, he is eclipsed by money and crowds and furious economic growth. Light bathes him but few see that his leadership began an awakening in China that has yet to be fully realized.

For the material and cultural upheaval of China during my life time so far is quite void of cultural direction. It has all been about power in small groups and now money for a new nouveau riche / middle class. This hot money which keeps Hong Kong expensive is empty and ignores anything Sun Yat Sen stood for. So I guess it's right no one comes here.

For me personally, seeing this statue every time I come here to swim reminds me of truth and ideas that guide civilization and culture. It needs money and power but the direction must be guided by truth and ideas. And these in turn have to do with light and seeing.

I am finally seeing what my passion is and how my life has been designed over the half century of my life. I lost my way for a while because I became disillusioned, distracted and blinded by darkness.

I feel like the Sun is shining in my heart and my eyes are being opened to see more clearly everyday. The rain has washed away my past and all of me is being pushed by my convictions. That's why this picture called me. I finally captured this moment of Sun shine on the dream of this man for a better world.

Truth: greatest weapon?

I'm learning how to live again without the uptight, comparing and compromises I hated deep inside. Somehow I see the heart and soul of those around me more clearly and it's like the blinds are gone and the light is shining through a window. My guilt, regret and failures seems to have washed away. And I want the truth like this song. I want to be a 21st Century kid. Ironically this You-Tube video contributor chose beautiful eyes to go with the song. 

Just to illustrate how I feel, when I started to swim again, it felt a little daunting to go nearly everyday. My legs would be tired as it was the last time I swam so often. I literally relearned how to swim using more upper body, flowing with the water and not kicking so hard. Swimming at least 6 days a week is just like waking up and I feel so free the whole day.  A little like the life we were meant to live.

"21st Century Kid"

There's maybe a way I can tell you
'Cos with everyday things continue
To get more compromised,
So who will fantasise
A new generation politicised

When things are done in our own name
Are we as much to blame?
Now it's become clear to me,
But only lately
And the ground is removed underneath

Shout it from the brink,
You're louder than you think

[Chorus:]
21st century kid, you're surrounded by illusion and confusion,
So maybe if you're holding out for the truth now,
Could it be the greatest weapon?
Could it be the greatest weapon?
Your weapon

Nothing is certain except a memory
And that's soon washed away by a low sea
Now sit yourself down my one
And see what you become,
Ignoring a smouldering gun

The white dove's flown
D'ya think we're on our own?

[Chorus:]
21st century kid, you're surrounded by illusion and confusion.
So maybe if you're holding out for the truth now,
Could it be the greatest weapon?
21st century kid, you're surrounded by illusion and confusion.
So maybe if you're holding out for the truth now,
Could it be the greatest weapon?
Could it be the greatest weapon?
Your weapon

Laudate Dominum

Love songs, praise songs and celebration are easy when you're young and partying. But to thank God and mean it, is harder when you see no way out of trouble. In the movie "Crazy Stupid Love" Steve Carrel said, "I love you even when I hate you" to his wife character Julianne Moore. Well I can say that now because I see that through all my past troubles, pain, downers, hopelessness, disappointments and even then I felt abandoned by God, I can see He has been there waiting for me.

Stravinsky's "Expectans Expectavi Dominum" which is the second movement of his "Symphony of Psalms". I felt pain when I listened to it 10 months ago. Click on the link to see the text. I felt so hopeless.

Now, here is the 3rd movement. It just says "Praise the Lord" but under music that is tragic, dramatic, sad and seemingly painful. Only I can now be grateful like the sassy choir who sings The gospel song of the same name. My favorite line is, "Be Grateful, cause there's someone else who's worse off than you. Be Grateful, cause there's someone else who'd love to be in your shoes..." Then the song becomes an African beat celebration of being thankful during adversity.

Similarly, Stravinsky's 3rd movement lifts my soul as I can feel the need to be uplifted during hard times of change. Joy and thanksgiving through thick and thin.