Hot Chocolate

A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were discussing their lives at a class reunion. They decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired, who was always an inspiration to them.

During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work, lives and relationships.

Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups. Some cups were porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite. He invited each to help themselves to the hot chocolate.

When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor shared his thoughts.

“Notice that all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.”

“While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.”

“The cup that you are drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.”

“What each of you really wanted was hot chocolate. You did not want the cup . . . but you consciously went for the best cups.”

“And soon, you began to eye one another’s cups.”

“Now friends, please consider this . . .

“Life is the hot chocolate . . .your job, money and position in society are the cups.”

“They are just tools to hold and contain life.”

“The cup you have does not define, nor does it change, the quality of life you are living.”
“Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us.”

The happiest people don't have the best of everything.
They just make the best of everything that they have!!

~ and remember ~
The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least.

Enjoy your hot chocolate!!

Travellers' Inspiration

May this Canadian Traveller be an inspiration to all Travellers. =)

Random Quotes

Don't let someone become a priority in your life, when you are just an option in their life.
Relationships work best when they are balanced.

Never explains yourself to anyone.
Because the person who likes you dosen't need it,
and the person who dislikes you won't believe it.

He will find you, just when you stop looking

Father John Powell, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, writes about a student in his Theology of Faith class named Tommy:

Some twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith.

That was the day I first saw Tommy. My eyes and my mind both blinked. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn't what's on your head but what's in it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped. I immediately filed Tommy under "S" for strange... Very strange.

Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew.

When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a cynical tone, "Do you think I'll ever find God?"

I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!" I said very emphatically.

"Why not," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."

I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out, "Tommy! I don't think you'll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that he will find you!" He shrugged a little and left my class and my life.

I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line -- He will find you! At least I thought it was clever.

Later I heard that Tommy had graduated, and I was duly grateful. Then a sad report came. I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time, I believe.

"Tommy, I've thought about you so often; I hear you are sick," I blurted out.

"Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It's a matter of weeks."

"Can you talk about it, Tom?" I asked.

"Sure, what would you like to know?" he replied

"What's it like to be only twenty-four and dying?

"Well, it could be worse"

"Like what?

"Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies in life."

I began to look through my mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange. It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification, God sends back into my life to educate me.

"But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, "is something you said to me on the last day of class." (He remembered!)

He continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, 'No!' which surprised me. Then you said, 'But He will find you.'

I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time."

My clever line. He thought about that a lot!

"But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that's when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven. But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit."

"Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn't really care about God, about an after life, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought
about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: 'The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.'"

"So, I began with the hardest one, my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him. "Dad.

"Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper.

"Dad, I would like to talk with you."

"Well, talk.

"I mean..... It's really important."

The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?"

"Dad, I love you, I just wanted you to know that."

Tom smiled at me and said it with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him. "The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me. We talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me."

"It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years. I was only sorry about one thing --- that I had waited so long.

Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.

"Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn't come to me when I pleaded with Him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, 'C'mon, jump through. C'mon, I'll give you three days, three weeks.' Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour. But the important thing is that He was there. He found me! You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him."

"Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love. You know, the Apostle John said that He said: 'God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.'

Tom, could I ask you a favor? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now.

Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing it wouldn't be half as effective as if you were to tell it.

"Oooh.. I was ready for you, but I don't know if I'm ready for your class."

"Tom, think about it. If and when you are ready, give me a call."

In a few days Tom called, said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me. So we scheduled a date. However, he never made it. He had another appointment, far more important than the one with me and my class. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed. He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever imagined.

Before he died, we talked one last time.

"I'm not going to make it to your class," he said.

"I know, Tom."

"Will you tell them for me? Will you ... tell the whole world for me?"

I will, Tom. I'll tell them. I'll do my best."

So, to all of you who have been kind enough to read this simple story about God's love, thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven --- I told them, Tommy, as best I could.

The accommodating point

In one of my books (The Zahir), I try to understand why people are so afraid of changing. When I was right in the middle of writing the text, I came across an odd interview with a woman who had just written a book on – guess what? - love.

The journalist asks whether the only way a human being can become happy is to find their beloved. The woman says no:

"Love changes, and nobody understands that. The idea that love leads to happiness is a modern invention, dating from the late 17th century. From that time on, people have learned to believe that love should last for ever and that marriage is the best way to exercise love. In the past there was not so much optimism about the longevity of passion.

"Romeo and Juliet isn't a happy story, it's a tragedy. In the last few decades, expectation has grown a lot regarding marriage being the path towards personal accomplishment. Disappointment and dissatisfaction have also grown at the same time."

According to the magical practices of the witchdoctors in the North of Mexico, there is always an event in our lives that is responsible for our having stopped making progress. A trauma, a particularly bitter defeat, disappointment in love, even a victory that we fail to quite understand, ends up making us act cowardly and incapable of moving ahead. The witchdoctor, trying to connect with the occult powers,
first of all needs to get rid of this "accommodating point". To do so, he has to review our life and discover where this point lies.

When I was young, I was always fighting, always hitting the others, because I was the oldest in the gang. One day my cousin gave me a beating. That convinced me that I would never again manage to win a fight, and I began to avoid any physical confrontation, even though this meant that I was often taken for a coward, and let myself be humiliated in front of girlfriends and companions. Until one day, when
I was 22, I ended up unwillingly getting into a fight in a nightclub in Rio de Janeiro. I got beaten up, but the "accommodating point" went away. Nowadays I no longer fight, not out of cowardice but rather because it's a terrible way of expressing oneself.

For two years I tried to learn to play the guitar: I made a lot of progress in the beginning, until I reached the point where I could advance no further. Because I discovered that others learned faster than I did, I felt mediocre and decided that instead of feeling ashamed I was no longer interested in playing the guitar. The same
happened with snooker, football, cycling: I learned enough to do everything fairly well, but then reached a point where I could go no further.

Why?

Because, according to the story that we were told, at a certain moment in our lives "we reach our limit". There are no more changes to be made. We won't grow any more. Both professionally and in love, we have reached the ideal point, and it's best to leave things as they are. But the truth is that we can always go further. Love more, live more, risk more.

Immobility is never the best solution. Because everything around us changes (including love) and we must accompany that rhythm.

I have been married to the same person for 28 years, but I have changed "wives" (and she has changed "husbands") several times during our relationship. If we wanted to keep on as we were in 1979, I don't think we would have come so far.


www.warriorofthelight.comCopyright @ 2007 by Paulo Coelho

deja vu

it seems all so familar that all that is happening around...

i beg to take back ALL my apologies and my beaten ego.

privacy are meant in confidence and not publicly declared, if it is meant to be share, then what is the relationship between u n me and of everyone else?

still water runs deep...

strangely that all this while, i thot i was wrong but realized that i was actually being made used of.

regardless of how careful, i still fall, fall, fall. every fall makes me wonder will i ever fall again , and i smiled to myself and say, no way, at least not the same way. =p

thank god i found all my answers which helps me to plan a better 2009.

The Terminal 2 @ Mexico's Airport

I still remember when i have to spend one night at the airport.
http://innoc3nt.blogspot.com/2006_12_02_archive.html

gosh, i miss traveling so much...

By MARIA GALLUCCI,Associated Press Writer AP
- Saturday, November 22MEXICO CITY -

Hiroshi Nohara is on a layover at the Mexico City airport. It has lasted almost three months, and he has no plans to leave.


For reasons he can't explain, the Japanese man has been in Terminal 1 of the Benito Juarez International Airport since Sept. 2, surviving off donations from fast-food restaurants and passengers and sleeping in a chair.

At first, he frightened passengers, and airport authorities asked the Japanese Embassy to investigate why the foul-smelling man refused to leave. Now, he's somewhat of a celebrity, capturing Mexico's collective imagination with nearly daily television news reports on his life at the food court.

Tourists stop to pose with him for photographs or get an autograph.

The Tokyo native flew into Mexico with a tourist visa and a return ticket home, but he never left the airport. In an interview Thursday alongside the airport McDonald's, he said he had no motive for his extended stay and doesn't know how much longer he'll remain.

"I don't understand why I'm here," he said through a visiting interpreter originally hired by a television station. "I don't have a reason."

The embassy can't force him to leave, and since Nohara's visa is valid all Mexican officials can do it wait for it to expire in early March.

During his stay, Nohara's wiry goatee has grown into a scraggly mass. His red-tinted hair is speckled with dust and dandruff, and his cream-colored jacket and fleece blanket are dingy with overuse. He smells like he hasn't had a shower in months.

"He's a calm person, a nice man," said Silvia Navarrete del Toro, an airport janitor. "He just sits here and eats all day."

Various stalls in the food court give Nohara free snacks and drinks, sometimes even throwing in hats or coffee mugs with store logos to get free publicity during his frequent television appearances.

Strangers often buy him pastries or hamburgers; he prefers the latter.

He sits with the interpreter, talking and laughing for hours, at a small table covered with cups of cold coffee, packets of ketchup and sandwiches wrapped in foil.

Stroking his facial hair, Nohara said the 2004 film "The Terminal," starring Tom Hanks as an Eastern European man stuck in a New York City airport, was not his inspiration. But he acknowledged the similarities.

"My life," he joked, "is 'The Terminal 2.'"

Top Student or NOT?

Appalled by 'obsessive' study habits

Fri, Nov 28, 2008
The Straits Times

I REFER to last Friday's articles on the PSLE top scorers.

It was a pleasure reading of these delighted children, especially if they had overcome obstacles along the way. However, I was appalled by their study habits.

Two comments stood out. One student stopped her piano and tennis lessons months before to concentrate on the exams. The other studied close to midnight every day for months, taking only 15-minute breaks every two hours.

Is this something we should be proud of? Every article ended with a similar study tip, as if these methods are secrets to academic 'success'. I do not see anything to be learnt from this except the upsetting fact that Singaporeans think this is what makes a good student.

We all know Singapore culture thrives on exams and results, but this is bordering on obsessive. We are talking about 12-year-old children here, not college students.

In the whirlwind of good results, I am certain many have forgotten the others who were not top scorers. Some of these disappointed children, who studied hard and tried their best, will now try to emulate these perceived models of success, thinking they themselves did not do enough.

We need to ask ourselves if these are really the best models to follow and if we honestly want our children thinking they could have done better if they had stopped having fun, if they had locked themselves away, burning midnight oil.

Jessica Walker (Ms)