Tag: Specialty Travel

Seasons and symmetry

Traffic in the past few weeks has come from the opposite direction: country side to city streets. Tet is over.

We had joy we had fun we had seasons in the sun. Now it’s time to ramp up, to deliver.

There are things that can only be understood in hindsight:  a failed marriage, a single parent who hangs on to his now-grown daughter etc…

Never second-guess yourself. If only I could do it over….

You got one shot at life but not blindly, since all the hints and signals were there.

As long as we don’t play “solitaire”, others would be glad to point them out to us.

For years, I have lived with the flow (time and space) i.e. could never come back to the time and place where I was from.

I have been wrong on that count.

Seasons do come around, in symmetry.

Fall aging, Summer fun, Winter loneliness and Spring hope.

There is not a thing that goes to waste under the Sun.

Years ago, I couldn’t understand why my American friend would major in horticulture. Growing up in the city all my life, I found his field of study utterly foreign; it might as well be nuclear physics.

Now we have organic foods, co-op, environmental conservation etc….

(there was a 6.4 earthquake in Peru a few days ago).

We will never be “cooler” than under current ecosystem.

One planet, one shot deal.

Love the ones you’ve got: a crescent moon, blooming flowers, a child’s smile.

Even when you decide to burn the candle from both ends, it still is the only candle you’ve got.

I can understand youthful ambition, false confidence and the illusion of grandeur.

After all, we all work with unchecked assumptions.

Yet, “an unexamined life is not worth living,” says Socrates.

The Aztecs used to run under a very different calendar than ours. So did the Mayans and most Asian countries (Lunar calendar). Circular and cyclical rather than linear or Alpha-Omega .

Because it will come around, people are more conscious of consequences (could be arriving in next life). So Tet is over, but its season of hope has just started.

Traffic is back and workers are turning on the assembly line switches.

Just as they did last year and the year before.

But next year, again with reverse traffic flow,  but the aging mother and father might not be around waiting for them at home. It’s not the unexpected. It is to be expected. We ‘ve only just begun…with seasons in the sun, its symmetry and surprises. Savour it!

last leaf

Skyline of West VA presents quite a scene and makes a case for Fall foliage. We used to play King of the Hill on top of a heap of dead leaves.

Reminds me of the Last Leaf, a story about a terminally ill patient looking out the window and said “when those leaves all fell away, I too would take my last breath”.

Our hero in the story waited till night fall to climb and paint an autumn leaf on the wall outside the window. “See, there is still hope. That last leaf still hangs in there, so can you”.

The patient eventually recovered. Without delivering the last lecture, he had the last laugh thanks to that last leaf.

The wheel of commerce has got stuck for quite some time. No capital for our capital-driven society, like a deer caught in an incoming headlight.

Terminally ill but still hopeful.

People already coined a new phrase,  “the post-consumerism society” (are we going to recycle old clothes, old styles – 70’s? ).

Like the terminally ill patient,  we as a society needs to hone our will to survive.

If I were the last leaf, I would dance with the wind, even defy gravity to buy me some time. And I refuse to go out with that institutional fluorescent overhead light (by default, it’s our last view while alive).  I would smile, and thank all the kind faces that have smiled at me during my entire life.

I often visited a cousin outside of HCMC. She was said to have visited me when I was born. I must have remembered it well, because I have returned the favor many times over.

In between stimulus and response, there is a pause. That pause of a millisecond could be for good or ill (The Vietnamese revolutionist once said to the French executioner at the gullotine, “let me die looking up so I can see how sharp your blade is”.)

In between Empty and the actual stopping of a car, there is always a reserve.

We have that reserve of good will, resilience, adaptability and untapped resources.

Put it to use now. Make it contagious. Practice leadership skills (Mongolian Khan got out of prison because his wife sold herself to the silk traders to bail him out. We know  the rest of history).

That’s Khan. That’s his-story. Now, it’s our-story. Last leaf or last laugh?