i love it when i’m outside with a friend, getting up to our usual antics, and end up making a stranger smile at our silliness. a smile is such a great thing to induce, which is precisely why i love poking fun at others. some are able to tahan it, but some have no sense of humour whatsoever, which results in a rather awkward moment hehe. oh well.

i do suppose happy people do attract people. i’m always happy to be around a happy person, but while withdrawn folks may scare people away, i think i unknowingly try to do my best to make them smile. it’s like those soldiers you see outside palaces. they have a stern/serious face, and people keep trying to make them have some sort of expression. when i was in kl we went to the sultan’s palace and you know, there was this soldier in red on a horse. I SAW THAT SOLDIER SMILE!! hahaha some guy wanted to put his kid on the horse heheheh so cute la. in canada, we never let people sit alone at dinner. anyone sitting alone at dinner had to join our table. kind of reminds me of lilo and stitch. ohana means family. family means no one gets left behind. or forgotten.

there’s this online friend that i have on my msn, and her dog just passed away. maltese, 12 years. at first she made me really sad and i didn’t know what to say, but then she showed me her dog on her display pic, and i tried to cheer her up. loss is something i had to deal with at an early age, and i know that death is part and parcel of life, and that God put me through so much to make me the person i am today. but i didn’t want to be numb. in the past, i told myself to be strong, to be emotionless, to be the iron man that others aren’t. then i realised i didn’t want to be that person, to desensitise myself, to lose fundamental feelings that maketh a man. i wanted to feel, to be able to empathise, to be able to put myself in someone else’s shoes to be passionate about a cause, but yet not get too emotionally involved or affected. as i grow older, i think i’ve finally managed to somewhat succeed. it’s hard, especially when you’re a female, but it’s plausible. crying is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of realisation, of a connection within you that has changed its wiring, of a beginning that you’re starting to accept new things and surroundings. a sign that you’re growing even more, even stronger, even hardier.

what do i say to someone who’s just lost her loved dog of 12 years? i’m not a pet owner; i can hardly empathise. but all grief is both similar and different. they have their roots in loss, in longing, in pain. this is a powerful emotion that can bring the strongest man to his knees. but every connection between lives is different, and it’s impossible to stereotype grief and read it like a textbook. everyone has their own way of coping with grief, and for her, she’s been keeping to herself and refusing to talk to anyone about it. i don’t know why she told me about it, especially since i’m just an online friend who’s not really close to her, but i’m touched. i thought she would be defensive and not really take me seriously, but she did, and indeed, i can’t affect you without you affecting me. happiness is a perfume you can’t spread without getting a little on yourself. if not more. when will people learn that grief is okay? it’s natural, it’s a perfectly healthy process after a loved one’s demise. take things at one time; there’s no need to rush. “don’t cry because she’s no longer with you, but smile because you had her love & company for 12 years.” it’s like the end of a romantic relationship, but with death, it’s never the end of a relationship. it’s a beginning of another phase of your relationship. one that can withstand long distance without contact, one that can last all eternity. what you have now, is so much better than what you lost. you’ve had fond memories, her legacy, her offspring that remind you of her. and you know that she’s still with you. when a loved one dies, she stays with you in your heart forever. she’s never really gone from you.

(and then there’s all that usual stuff about her being in a better place, back to her maker, only a matter of time before you see her again. false promises, i call them. i believe in god yes, but not everyone does. to push my beliefs onto someone else by force? not going to do much for her grief. i don’t do false promises that i am unable to guarantee. i am not one to honour this promise. i speak of logic and perspectives.)

when my grandma died last year, i didn’t feel as sad as i thought i would. i felt that my mum and aunts were selfish to keep her alive for so long. she’d been groaning in pain for so long, and still they kept her alive because they wanted her to be with them, just a little while longer. selfish is what it is. they made her go through painful chemo sessions and even considered operations that they knew she couldn’t take because of her weight. by the end of it all, she had lost all her long, shiny, black hair and was nothing more than skin and bones. she didn’t even remember me, or her daughters. what is the purpose of keeping her alive? does it make you happy to see your own mother in such a state of pain every single day? why do the authorities not see the humanity in euthanasia?

speaking of euthanasia, the aforementioned friend had her dog put down by euthanasia. i think it was for the best, since her dog had kidney problems, and was in great suffering. my friend had to cut short her overseas trip and rush home to see her dying canine. i’m not a pet owner, as i mentioned earlier, and i support darwin’s theory of evolution, and so to see how animals have better treatment in terms of choices than us humans is just mind-boggling. but this is not an entry about euthanasia, and i shall not go into it at length.

i don’t mind making a fool out of myself as long as people are happy. i do say the darnest things sometimes, which also includes putting myself on a pedestal to have people laugh at my narcissism. even something simple like holding the door open for others makes me warm inside. i’m really not all that complicated. a simple smile, a simple gesture of appreciation is enough to make me happy. that is precisely why i want to do something humanitarian as a career. i am in pursuit of my own simple happiness, and it stems not from eros but from phileos and agape.