My friend then explained to me that Yin Yang in Chinese means "a combination of continuous opposites which are bound together as parts of a mutual whole." So I told myself how smart indeed for the restaurant to call the dish, "yin yang."
When I went home after dinner, I remembered not the dish but the principle that was explained to me by my friend. It then made me think more of what in my life would be my "yin" and "yang." Wow! indeed a lot!
I started by thinking shallow: thinking of daytime when I need to wake up to work and nighttime when I need to rest; hot chocolate to perk me up and cool water to cool me down; bright light that gives me energy and dim light that makes me fall asleep; clean clothes that make me feel fresh and dirty clothes that makes me uncomfortable; a refrigerator full of food that gives me assurance and an empty one that makes me worried; and lastly, situations that make me happy and incidents that make me sad.
Hmmm... so later on, this "reflective me" got myself into making a quick inventory of what indeed makes me happy and lonely?
Yup, happiness and loneliness- I realized that my life is not complete without these two. It was not difficult to pull out some of the available answers...
Happiness is :
- being a proud mom of 5 great children who have different characteristics and yet are able to grow sharing love and care with each other
- having a good and loving husband who's always supportive of my career and interests
- having siblings who, no matter how far they are, constantly keep in touch to know how we are doing
- seeing my two married children independently working for their own living to sustain their family's wants and needs.
- having close friends who I can share my thoughts, laughter, and great times
- having ex-colleagues who still get in-touch no matter where they are
- having a boss who others misinterpret but is still the best boss I ever had
- and the list goes on and on...
Loneliness is...
- being away from my family from time to time
- having nobody to talk to when everybody's away and seems unreachable
- longing for my parents who passed away so early in my life without seeing my full transformation from a struggling young student to an achieved mother and wife
- realizing that sometimes I also make mistakes in my choices and that I need to put in much effort and sacrifice to correct them
- being mis-interpreted by a few people when they can't understand the message I want to deliver
- seeing others in grief, in pain or having problems and I could not do much to help
- and the list goes on...
So I come to realize that (as long as I would live), my life would be a continuous process of the "yins" and the "yangs." Some situations were just unavoidable but most of the others were results of my choices: some, right and some, wrong. But no matter how I look at it, I would only know that I made the right and wrong choice only when I would already feel the good or bad consequence(s) of my choices. Well, I think that's the mystery which nobody could solve. Nobody could predict the future so people just need to rely on experience, feelings and intuition when making choices.
But what about this contradicting concept which my friend also said, "what is bound to happen will indeed happen." as if we have no control of our fate?
So then I realized why I had been so silly the past couple of hours trying to dig deeper in my life to know whether I am in the "yin" or in the "yang." It seems it's just a mystery which I cannot solve and nobody else would be able to solve for me, anyway. It seems I may have the ability to make choices but there would also be many things beyond control that could bring about much difference between my expectation and what could actually turn out.
Hmmm. what am I talking about? It started from chicken rice, then to "yin yang" then to my life, choices, mystery, expectation and result...
Sorry, I now getting confused. I leaving it up to you now to think about it all.
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