Author: Han NaGil

A painting hangs outside.

A blend of your favorite color is painted twice a day, a kaleidoscope of the entire color palette.

Inside the frame, my long forgotten friend rears its round head (not as oval as yours), and slowly arcs across the sky, to illuminate the way, so that your favorite colors can descend safely alongside the light of day. In few minuets of pixies covered in star dust, the darkness of the night hungrily devours the moon.

Alone, I sit and admire what could be a perfect evening spent with you.

But I cannot deny the beauty of this moment, and as I reminisce about the past, a fresh set of rain washes away the painting like a distant memory.

Procrastinator no longer, or taking a break from extended impasse, I have just signed up for a eight-week writing course.

People often ask me what I spend my money on. Seldom on things and trinkets as I view them to be wasteful collections stemming from mindless consumerism and intentional distractions.

I decided to invest in myself and embark on an intentional journey towards my overdue goal of chronicling my own narrative.

Because I invest my money and time on people, not things.

Unleash the beast from within.

Reveal the best that has yet to see the light.

You tiptoe and bend your shoulders forward to hunch and fit through frames made for those much smaller than you.

You find this life bland and unappetizing because you thirst for more. You are meant to drink from fire hydrants, not a garden hose.

Your one step is their thousand little shuffles. And so you’ve slowed down to let them catch up to you. You had to stop altogether because your going slow is still too fast for them. Afraid of crushing them with your giant steps, you hesitate.

You breathe small breaths for the fear of blowing them away. You can barely stretch, for the fear of hitting the fluttering pygmies all around you.

Always, you are afraid of causing harm.

Until you come across a herd of larger than life creatures.

They look like you. They bellow. They create wind as they run through the forests blooming with imagination.

They beckon you to join them.

You bring your shoulders back. Take a big breath before gulping down the green and blue liquid. You take one massive step to leap across the ocean to join your family of giants.

Because we are only in charge of ourselves and no one else.

How difficult is it to change ourselves, our habits and our beliefs? How many times have you broken a promise to yourself? I will lose weight. I will go to the gym. I will be on time. I will always tell the truth.

We try with best of intentions and fail despite being “in control” of ourselves.

Now imagine trying to fix another imperfect human.

She is my antidote. Cure against chaos. Voice of reason. Guardian of sanity.

The spout tips and tears pour out.

I come out of drunken stupor. I see for the very first time. I am surrounded by halves, another childhood habit of appeasing the timid. To bridge the gap between the pedestal from which I am perched and those admiring me from afar. A friend recounted a similar childhood experience. He called himself the “reluctant golden child”. I was the same: reluctant and recalcitrant.

She reminds me of who I used to be and where I am. She asks me tough questions. She calls me out on my bullshit.

I empty myself. Truth pours out. I am lighter and stronger than I was before we spoke.

She is my star.

Another entry from 2016:

What you nurture

What you practice

Are the things that grow.

What you ignore

Items parked for procrastination

Are the things we never become.

Why are we so stingy with receiving kindness when we are too happy to give it to others?

Journal entry from 2016. When asked for feedback, my cohort from the altMBA program said the following:

“You are warm, energetic, intelligent, observant, joyful, very likable and driven. You are also compassionate and kind.

Possibly also generous but I don’t know you well enough to determine.

You are highly capable, in fact, much more than you choose to do. I think you are very careful about the commitments you choose for yourself be it work, people or activities.

You like control and reliability is important to you. So you commit to things you know you can deliver on.

You do go for stretch but you limit the extent of stretch so that you can learn and achieve, but not fail.

You hold back your thoughts, contributions, reactions, emotions.

You share just enough to fit with the group you are in. You hold back your intelligence so that people don’t pay attention to it and aren’t threatened by it.

You practice patience but I don’t think you are that patient internally. Bottom line, I think you are much more powerful and capable than you choose to show and pursue.”

I am grateful for her insightful and kind feedback. I agree.

Instead of waiting idly, I throw things away. I declutter. I scavenge artifacts of inked pasts to reveal parts demanding to be filed away.

The helpless child has been freed. But she leaves behind her old habits.

Her crying, biting, and running away. Never secure and always afraid. Every man is a threat. She is powerless. She is mute.

Not wanting to be abandoned, she is stubborn yet agreeable at all the wrong times. She is adventurous yet timid because she knows a secret. She develops a scowl as if she were a beast to keep predators at bay. To be undesirable. To not be approachable. To be left alone. She hides herself. She hides her beauty to stay in tact. To be kept safe. She imagine a bubble to keep everything out. This also means nothing can enter.

She makes connections where there is none. She attributes her scowl or her beastly ability for escaping the thorny nightmare. She thinks what she had engineered as a child is what kept her alive.

Simple truth remained unseen. Bad things happen with no reason. The end had nothing to do with the child’s efforts or her fighting spirit.

The child remains.

I thought I had set her free. But she lingers and I must get rid of all her hiding places. So that she can be free to go into the light. She is still used to the darkness.

Tears fall as I file and shred.

I wish I could tear these memories into strips of paper, pack them into trash bags and leave them out on the curb to be picked up and thrown away. Leave me and my house. I wish it were easy.

So that I can be free of this burdensome shadow. So that I can be free to let the air in. So that I can finally disembark from this bubble of protection.

But I know better. Gibran writes, “work is love made visible”

The only way is through what the Lion calls furnace of truth. I must throw into his mouth her old habits and childish connections. I must feed fire with more truth until the furnace roars and breathes out ashes to extinguish the darkness feeding on omission and avoidance. To let the fire create light so I can see what I had been hiding for too long. To illuminate the monsters lurking in the darkness, waiting to be seen and acknowledged.

This is another journey I hadn’t planned on embarking on. The fire makes my eyes water and tears stream down once again.

I don’t want to be here, yet this is exactly where I am supposed to be.

Don’t waste it.

Don’t save it.

Don’t dread or delay it.

Use it and use it well.

Be on time. Show up.