life – Clara Hsu

Rest In Peace, Live Forever

Elegiac poems are immediate and touching because they speak from the heart. I heard another one tonight at Sacred Grounds, and learned that a friend had passed away. It felt strange, because I just sent her an email this morning. She was one of the names on my mass email list.

A number of friends have died in the past years but their email addresses remain active. In a way the dearly departed have been immortalized. The communication is active, albeit one sided.

Death does not exist in cyber space. Memories are kept alive by Google and Youtube. It seems even easier to keep in touch with friends who are no longer around. They are just one button away.

Heart and Mind

fiery heart — The True Color Of Heart by Fiery-Fire

“I change my mind.”

“I have a change of heart.”

Why are these two conditions stated differently? It seems the mind is being controlled by us, as we are able to select from whatever thoughts and ideas that it has formulated to make a decision. But the heart! The heart “sees” and decides, and the change has already happened before we know it. I think that’s why we say follow your heart and never follow your mind.

The heart is a pure source. Like the right peg in the right hole, when they are engaged a new dimension opens up. The heart declares. It doesn’t provide information or analysis. It doesn’t compare and contrast. All that is the work of the mind. Perhaps that is why the mind is in constant conflict.

It is a matter of trust when following the heart. Life will be different, not better or worse; and it will be true—at least for the moment.

An Ordinary Life

Friends and family puzzled over the announcement that I have written a memoir. “I thought memoirs are written by people who have already lived a life.”—was the general sentiment, and, “What have you done in your life to fill three-hundred pages?” Do my friends and family who are not writers live a life without drama? I think not. Mostly, I think, they don’t consider their experiences important beyond themselves.

Alcohol, drugs, sex, obsessions of the fatal kind and high profile people make it into the bookstores for readers to devour their rise and fall. But each one of us in our little world are struggling every day with all kinds of emotional and physical challenges. What is perceived as ordinary takes great patience and endurance to accomplish—The bakery that provides fresh bread every morning, a 9-5 job, or the old woman who carries her grandchild on her back.

My cousin, who was a judge, once chuckled at the jury process. When asked who were the people who made it to the jury box, she said they were the ones you saw standing in line in the DMV. An off-hand remark separating us and them for a good laugh, until my aunt said, “I was picked three times.” We are as ordinary and extraordinary as we want to be.