Inspiration & Paradox 85: Deadly Poison Now A Hot Favourite

Botulism toxin, one of the world's deadly killers, today has become a favourite cosmetic treatment called “Botox”, amongst thousands and thousands of mainstream people. A growing number of people are not only going for the cosmetic surgery but are now getting the treatment as festive and birthday gifts for family and friends.

No longer the preserve of Hollywood stars only, this famous poison in the diluted form is injected into the skin to weaken the facial muscles that control wrinkling. The Botox effect gradually wears off so repeat injections are required in about four months.

Where’s the common sense that it’s totally unnatural to inject a toxic chemical into the body? Common sense it’s not so common, I suppose...

"We are all born mad and some of us remain so!" Samuel Beckett

Inspiration & Paradox 84: Be Still When Gripped by Fear

Someone recently pointed out how irrational we can become when fear strikes. Sharing about his night topo out in the jungle back during his army days, he recalled how terror took control after receiving no reply came from his army mates no matter how he cried out for them. In that instance of realising that he was all alone and had lost his direction in the pitch-dark jungle, his very first reaction was run! And he ran as fast as he could without any vision or knowledge of which direction he was heading. "Staying put" was not an option in that state of panic...

How often are we like him? When the situation becomes so difficult that we want to run away from it, when a job becomes so unbearable that we want to call it a day, when someone do us wrong, we want to get back at it right away, when the road is long and winding, we want to shift up to a faster driving gear so that we can quickly see our destiny at the other end of the road... Often we already have a big reaction before we could think and assess the next best course of action to take.

Inspiration & Paradox 83: Greatest investment in this economic downturn

As I hugged my 3-year-old daughter this morning while trying to pull her out of bed, I asked myself how many more times of such hugging do I have....kids grow up too fast, by the time we know it, we have to relate to them at a different level. I was reminded..."when they are still young, find every opportunity to play with them, love them, teach them, and be with them, it may seem rash to give up your job when many jobs out there are becoming unstable, but you will surely realise one day that children are the greatest investment during this economic downturn..."

Inspiration & Paradox 82: Fulfilment of Being Ordinary

We were at my daughter’s childcare annual year-end concert this morning. One of the classes presented a Chinese song and dance item entitled “The Heart and Soul of a Small Fry” (my own translation), and I instantly turned to my husband who was sitting next to me and criticised that the teacher could have made a wiser choice of song. I was expecting the five, six year-olds to be singing with positive exuberance and embracing with all their hearts the future with great hopes for big achievements in life. I just could not understand the appropriateness of singing a song that promotes the happiness and contentment of people who contributing to the society by being just ordinary people holding small, lowly jobs. It was an absolute ridicule, I thought.

But as I sat there totally uninspired, thinking about the silly irony that the concert was presenting, something even more ironical happened. The words of the tuneful song spoke to my heart ... it went “I have never been bothered before that I am not somebody famous, because there is really also a blessing and a sense of fulfillment in being very plain and ordinary.” I did not immediately know why I reacted so emotionally to the song, but I came to realise something that was deep down in my heart – that I was yearning for simply living! And perhaps I needed a song like this to brace myself for a decision that I have trying to make for the past many months – to quit my full-time job and be with and for my young children more. I wrestled with the conviction that my kids are the most important people to me, my personal desire to achieve and fulfill more than what I am able to today, and be all that I can as a career woman. I wanted others to be proud of what I could do as a working mom and be inspired by my drive and capability and also had the fear of being rejected by the workforce if I wanted to find a job again after several years of unemployment.. And with the recent months of staffing issues and piling workload and incidents of being misunderstood at work, great discouragement set in and bogged me down, and at the same time, the impulsiveness in wanting to make things right away at all cost caused me to feel extremely anxious and depressed. A part of me wanted me to escape from all these, to see that it was time for me to let go of everything and leave the job and just be with the children, and another part of me told me to hold on and find vindication.

I still have no idea exactly what course of actions what I should take now, but the song lyrics surely did something to me; it tore apart the veil in my heart. I seem to be able to sense my own heart better and have received a clue to the answer to my confusing questions -- “It’s okay, don’t justify, stop struggling, let go of your pride, be still and spend time to find out and work out God's place for me in this world by pursuing the most important things in this season of my life."

Inspiration & Paradox 81: Sleep Talking

It’s strange; when we sleep, our brains seem to be as active as when we are awake, and our thinking, as logical, even though our body acts as if it’s in a state of paralysis. Just like in the case of my husband - he sleep-talks, and whenever I catch him doing that, I play along by responding to what he says, and almost every time he would “converse” with me as if he can really hear me. What’s so funny is, because only he can understand the context of the topic he has created in his dream, what he says to me is often gibberish and doesn’t make sense at all! The most incredible thing is, sometimes when he is obviously still sleeping, he can even tell me that he is awake and that I should stop poking fun at him!