A Piece of My Mind

If I can rewrite the hierarchy of needs, I would probably put the need to be listened on top.  I’m sure you have experienced some moments in your life that you don’t feel like doing anything – eat, sleep, or even open your eyes and get up – until you can just talk to someone, spilling your innate feelings and just be listened.  And we do do that on a regular basis, sometimes even more than once a day, you know, just sit or stand or walk or run and you  talk and talk, fulfilling your needs not just to be heard, but to be listened.  And it’s not until you can find someone that you feel you can trust and can understand you that you’re ready to open your mouth.  It has to be someone who can listen to whatever it is that we have to say without being judgmental.  Usually, the roles are filled by our friends, our spouse, a member of our family, or in most cases today, a professional like a psychologist.  But who would have thought that right at this very minutes, almost 50.000 citizens of the planet have been spilling their grudge, feelings, and secrets to two total strangers?

I was browsing around the other day and came across a website called Are You Tired? And across the plain white background was the sentences in a typewriter font: “Are you tired?  Tell us why.”  And that was it.  So I clicked the “us” word, and it linked to an email address tired@tired.com, and I guess I was supposed to email this website the answer to that very simple question: “are you tired?  Tell us why.”  I thought that was kinda interesting – I could say that I’m tired because my boss won’t let me take a leave and keep dumping new accounts on me, but I really don’t have any clue who I am really emailing this to.  This is like a totally anonymous confession site.  I googled this site, and came a name Mike Kuniavsky.  A web designer for Wired magazine, Mike bought the tired.com domain name from a friend in November 1997, just for fun.  And not expecting anything, he put those two sentences, and put a nondescript email address which forwards the messages received to his personal inbox.  The first message, surprisingly, arrived almost instantly, from an East Coast university, saying: “Let me get this straight.  You have a website about people being tired?  Hmm … sounds sketchy.  Either you guys got too much time on your hands, or something else.  Anyhow, I got work to do.”  Since then, hundreds of emails keep coming in every week, and to this date,  he has received around 32.000 emails, from anyone you could possibly imagine: housewives, corporate slaves, college students teenagers, to military guys, all baring their feelings to Mike, without even knowing who Mike is.  All they care about is that they finally have a place where they can spill their complaints without being judged, as Mike never published or replied to these messages.  To them, tired.com is the unlikely and unexpected invitation to complain about anything to a complete stranger who might actually listen.

This trend of “confessing to a total stranger” doesn’t stop there.  Around three years ago, Frank Warren started a community art project called PostSecrets.  In this project, people from across the country and all over the world mail in their secret anonymously on one side of a homemade postcards.  Since then, thousands of people have shared their secrets and thoughts and decorated them on a visually engaging piece of art, and Frank posted 10 to 20 chosen ones on his blog.  While tired.com is not anonymous at all – people mail in their compalins from their own personal email and therefore can be trace back assuming that they use their real name on the email – Postsecrets is a whole different story.  There’s no identity on the postcards at all, except the arts that you put on them.

And the secrets they share are sometimes so dark and unspeakable, literally something that you could never share with your loved ones.  On one postcard with a sketch of the New York Twin Towers, somebody wrote: “Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I’m dead.”  On another postcard, also with a picture of a burning WTC, somebody else wrote: “He should have been at work that day.  I wish he had.”

Some postcards engage us in the sad reality of the world.  One postcard with a picture of empty beer bottles wrote: “I get up early, before the kids, to get rid of the beer bottles so they don’t know how much their dad drinks.”  Another one was a sketch of a female body with a love sign that wrote: “I love my husband because he’s the only man I’ve been with who hasn’t hurt my body with violence.”  Some shared their innate desire and feelings.  There’s a postcard with a picture of a smiling baby that said: “For the first time since I was a baby, I’m feeling finally happy.  I’m 28.”  Another one came with a crayon drawing of a bride and an inscription: “When I see an ugly bride, what I’m really seeing is a glimmer of hop for the future.  Maybe I  will marry someday.”

When we somehow no longer find comforts in sharing our most personal thoughts and deepest secrets to our closed ones, we choose to turn to these complete strangers in the assurance of knowing that they have no interest in turning these secrets against us.  Are we all really on the verge of shifting our comfort zone, prefering to share the most confidential things about ourselves to total strangers rather than to our loved ones?

Personally, there are a  thousand things that I could share to Mike and Frank.  But today, let me just start with this:

I remember the first time I wrote a story like it was yesterday.  It was actually almost two decades ago, I was only 8 or 9, and I just finished reading this story book about a treasure hunt, and I didn’t like the ending.  I thought it sucked.  Being the spoiled little brat that I was – who used to getting anything I want anytime I want – I was determined to get the ending that I want.  I couldn’t really pick up the phone to call the author to rewrite the ending just for me.  So I picked up a pencil, grabbed a stack of white paper from my father’s desk, and started writing my own ending.  Hell, I might have rewritten the whole story while I was at it.  So I did.  I sketched the illustrations and wrote the dialogue and a couple of hours later, I got to the last page and wrote the end.  I stapled the pages, sketched the cover, and voile: my first book was done.  My family moved half a dozen time after that, and of course I lost that very first copy of my creativity.  But I can’t help but wondering if someday I become a best-selling author, someone in the level of John Grisham or Dan Brown, and somebody got a hold of that first copy, it would probably sell for quite a fortune on eBAy.  Hahaha, I think I just went way over my head just now.

  I’ve written some stories, short papers, to a mini-thesis and countless blogs since then, and every time I was so fulfilled and proud because this brain of mine has achieved another creativity orgasm.  As just your average next door girl, I know that life takes you places and situations that we’ve never thought we would be in, and sometimes not exactly in the direction that we wanted it to be.  There were many plans in my life that didn’t turn out the way I dreamt it, for example my dream to be a diplomat so I could travel across countries and see the world – I’m a huge Tintin fan since I was 6 and I just love learning about the new places as Tintin and his sidekick Captain Haddock took me to Peru, Tibet, Scotland, or even the moon.  But when I’m writing, I could be whoever I want whenever I want.  I can make my characters breathe life the way I want them to.  I can make them laugh, cry, fall in love, scream, fight, depressed, excited, or even die.  I can create a whole new world, maybe even two or three, inside my head and just pour it on paper.  Even when I’m not writing fiction, I can choose in which direction I want to lead the readers.  I’ve go the power in my head and in my fingers.  I could literally change the world – although most of the time it’s only a state of mind – in the blink of an eye.  I could change the course of someone’s life just by hitting delete or crossing out a sentence.

But of course in real life, it is never that easy.  Changing the course of our own life is never as simple as crossing out our path of life.  But the beauty of being a writer is – whether as a hobby or as a profession – we can actually direct our brain to plant this idea in our mind that we could also have a choice or more in life, that we could change our course of life if we’re willing to work on it.  I can give you this, it is not as easy as writing a story.  Well, having experienced more than one writer’s block myself, writing a story is sometimes also not as easy as it seems.  Let alone rewriting our destiny.  We are not always so lucky as to have the world handed to us in a silver platter, aren’t we?

What I would like to point out today is you should look at life as you would writing.  There’s nothing that you can’t do if you just put your heart and mind into it. God has equipped us with this incredible organ called a brain which could bring us a million different possibilities in split seconds.  An organ that can close or open door for us.  Don’t you just want to take your imaginations and fly with them and then work your way to make these imaginations and dreams take you to the places that you’ve never thought possible before?

Anyway, if you noticed, I’ve been writing a lot on self-motivation lately.  Truth of the matter is, it’s actually my own egocentric way of motivating myself.  I just can’t buy half the stuff they say on any self-help books on the market today, so I decided to write my own self-help articles, addressing my very own needs.  Hahaha, I think this is as egocentric as I can be as a human being, don’t you think?  Honestly, I’ve been going through changes and mind-shifting these past few months that I just need to take a moment and readdress my potentials and dreams.  It’s just my way of keeping the motor running.  And I’m proud to share with you that I just get a dose of gas to keep this engine top speed yesterday: I received the news that I passed my BSMR risk management certification exam with flying colors!  It’s just so exhilirating to prove that this brain is not so rusty after all.

A word of advice to you: write.  And dream big.  Pour your thoughts and imaginations and dreams on a piece of paper to get that sudden rush that you can take control of your life.  And when you do, you can actually have a shot of making these dreams come true.  It’s your life, you wouldn’t want anybody else to take the steering wheel and hit the break for you, would you?

When was the last time you got caught up in the middle of a damn good ball game?  Whilst going to the NBA game remains a dream for me, I was lucky enough to experience first hand the dazzling and disorienting stadium lights as the buffed players ran and tackled and scored touchdowns on the football field.  I know it’s been ages since the last time I saw the game live – now that I have to kiss Sports Center goodbye and rely on ESPN.  But the transcending experience still leaves a deep mark in my soul.  Yeah, it sounds kinda overboard to call it transcending, but if you’ve been a die hard sports fan or dated an athlete, you know what I mean.  Across the line of scrimmage in this contact sport, the players were battling with a spectacle of motion and action.  Thinking in their heads: could I overcome my fear of getting castrated in front of thousands of spectators and carry that pigskin?  Could I reach victory with my triumphant spirit and soul?  For a lot of these high school and college guys, football is their life.  Football is the ticket to get them out of their stinking little town.  Football is what’s gonna bring them to the finest universities, colleges, and professional sports team.  Football is what pays the bill.  For some of them, football is the only thing that they can do.

  Let me tell you a story of a football player, let’s just say his name is Bobby.  Bobby is only 17, the star quarterback of his high school team, bringing down at least one touchdown every single game, leading his team to the state championship.  As talent scouts from all over the country came to watch him play, he busted his best moves on the field, guaranteeing stacks of offering letter from universities and collegess across the country to arrive at his doorstep.  Every night, he gave his best, conquering his own fear of getting hurt to deliver that ball, one yard at a time.  Getting up from every tackle to the cheering sound of his fan.  But one moment changed his life forever.  The moment when he could no longer get up from that one, huge tackle, screaming in agony as shooting pain crawled on his knee.  After weeks of recovery, he couldn’t wait to get suit up in shoulder pads and helmet again, but the doctor’s verdict is in: his knee ligament is torn, making him impossible to get back on that field again.  As a sprain might only stop me from wearing 5 inches stiletto for a couple of weeks, the same thing will put a halt on his future.  But sat in his car, almost crying, as he said: “Football is the only thing that I can do.  What am I gonna do now that I can’t play?  Football is the only thing that I can do!”

Reflect that into your life, into mine.  And think.  What if the thing that you do right now is the only thing that you can do?  The only thing that you’re good at?  What if the thing that you do is the only thing that defines you?  What if you became nothing when you no longer be able to do the thing that you do?  Do we really live in the world where our skill or ability is what defines our very own existence?  After all, what would Picasso do without his fingers, Sting without his voice, and Tiger Woods without his hands?  What would I do if I lost my mind?  I might as well be decapitated.

It kinda put your life into a whole new perspective, you know, thinking that losing your biggest, most valuable asset – your talent – would easily mean losing your essence of life.  Especially if that one thing is the way people identify you.  Put yourself in the shoes of Tiger Woods if one day he wakes up to find that he no longer can take that powerful swing.  The devastating feeling of being a complete failure.  I really would like to tell you that there’s more to you than your talent and skill and ability, but who am I kidding?  How do you think I would feel if I woke up losing my ability to think and shoot ideas in the blink of an eye?  If I can’t find anything to write about?  If I can’t even understand a simple logical equation?  If my mind becomes only an organ in between my ears?

Shouldn’t we all have a back up plan then?  Something that we could fall back on if the main thing that we’ve been relying on to just falls off.  Hypothetically, Tiger could write a book about golf, Picasso could teach fine arts, and Sting could write songs for other singers.  Then allow me to ask you this: do you have a back up plan yourself?

The truth is, I’ve been thinking about this one particular thing myself.  What would I do if I have to erase banker as my profession?  Agh, that was one too many question that we have to deal with this fine morning.  After all, we can’t always expect ourselves to dot every I’s and cross every T’s without being flawless or careless at one time or another. 

Do you know one of those scenes in movies where the character was doing whatever it is that he or she was doing – brushing teeth, putting on shoes, driving, or just lining up for a cup of joe at Starbucks, or even just staring out the window while it’s pouring rain outside – and there was a music in the background, and then you can hear the voice of the character talking about his or her innate feelings and views on life, disclosing his or her private thoughts?  Or maybe, in the case of some movies or TV series like Heroes and Desperate Housewives, it was an outside character who was describing the whole thing, baring his or dark views out in the open to complete our visual experience.  On top of the music in the background, these voices have become the soundtrack of the character’s life.

   And do you sometimes wonder how would you express your innate feeling and desire if you were that main character?  What would you say as you get up, take a bath, brush your teeth, look at yourself in the mirror, sit in the cubicle, or commute in a moving train?  What would you say to the audience, the view, the listener relate to your very own life, to see things the way you do, to breathe life the way you would?  How would you write your script to let them peek into your deepest thoughts?

Tonight, as I got out of the elevator, walked along the hallway of my hotel, got into my room, sat on the bed and took off my shoes, walked into the bathroom and washed my face, stared at myself in the mirror as cold water dripped on my forehead, I could hear my own soundtrack.  The sound of Michael Stipe of R.E.M singing Electrolite, and the sound of my voice saying: Some people are born to greatness, some people are born to do great things in their life.  Tonight, I feel like I’m neither, as I am lost in my own aimless thoughts and numb heart.  Everything that used to bring meaning to me has evolved into a series of ridicilous events, as it took over both my conscious and subconscious mind, leaving me incarcerated, incapable of feeling anything other than bitterness and resentment.  This would be the perfect time to discuss self-inflicted pain.  But somehow, denial is the candy of my choice.  I just hope that I don’t end up denying my own self, because the last thing that I want is to be a hypocrite to my own identity.

And the screen fades to black.