And the brown bird spoke to the yellow words, perhaps for the last time ever.
So here’s a silent goodbye.
The yellow bird stared at the brown bird impassively.
You know, sometimes when I talk to you, I feel like I’m bottling up my message and throwing it into the sea, hoping that it might somehow reach you.
It was hard to tell if the yellow bird was listening at all.
It’s just that… I will always know what the contents of the message mean - the special feelings that I entrust to you within those words, but you will only ever be able to guess at them.
Still, there was no response from the other end.
So I guess this is it…
The brown bird looked at the yellow bird for one last time.
I just wanted to thank you for those pretty moments we shared under this tree. It was kind of nice while it lasted.
The brown bird tried to smile bravely at the display of nonchalance. It did not make the silence any less deafening. He turned his back around and unfold his wings. And he took flight; away from the tree, away from the stillness. Away from her.

Moments later, a boy climbed up the stout tree and found his way to the yellow bird. He removed a comb from his pockets and brushed away the debris and the leaves. He noticed that the glass orbs were a little smudged so he dripped some water droplets onto the surface.

From afar, they could be mistaken for tears.
But, of course, they were not.
They could never be.

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“We don’t know people.”

We don’t know people. We only know what they choose to show us. That’s why life frequently throws up surprises in the accounts of unexpected past and unforeseen present. And we can either choose to be disappointed that after all these years, after all those conversations that we have had and things we did together, we actually don’t really know that person, or we can choose to be understanding that life, love and loss do change people in profound ways. This sucks, but I guess we all have our secret lives - a hidden component within us that most people are not granted the privileged access to.

I sometimes wonder if I keep my friends well. Have I, in being so focused on my core groups of friends, pushed the rest into the peripherals of my life? Have I, in being so unrelenting in my pursuit of stronger ties, unwittingly created a centrifugal tension that pushes others away to the outskirts of my life? I don’t know.

Oh well. Let’s stop the melancholic muck because life is really a beautiful and exquisite piece of art and our fascination with it will only be squandered away by these unhealthy preoccupation with the minute dots and pixels! Well, I guess it’s just humbling to find out how little we actually know of one another especially when we hold these impressions of knowing particular people well.

Of egos and reciprocals

From past observations, I find that we have this interesting retributive-reactive way of treating others. If we do something for X and X doesn’t appreciate/reciprocate, our interest in doing the same thing for X in the future depreciates exponentially. This, I find, is really a by-product of our excessive pride.

How wonderful it would be if we could cast away our ego and embrace life as it is! But it doesn’t work that way. We demand respect and recognition, and any perceived or real affront to them will provoke massive changes from within that make us see the offender in a different light, which will correspondingly warrant deviant treatment from us.

Think less, love more

But relationships often involve making sacrifices that the other party do not know about. In life, the unintended consequences often matter more than the intended ones. Think less and love more, and everything will work out beautifully. I think.

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Dying Summers

We all know that friendships wax and wane to the staccato cadences of life and circumstance. It is a truism that has long been grinded into the grooves of our subconscious and it is a fact that many of us have accepted. Still, the brusque discovery of the vast gulf that has grown between us brings about more than a tinge of sadness and regret. As with all things that seemed harmonious and perfect before, the decay began with a crack. That was when we probably realised that we couldn’t speak as comfortably to each other as before. Where feelings and thoughts once flowed along the banks of our conversations, we now find the waters stagnant and wasteful.

At this point, we often ask ourselves ‘what happened’, but I think we overlook the ‘why’ component which is much more important. When did our undying summer yield to the tyrannical winter without even the polite notice of the mediating autumn? And why? Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

Shooting Stars

“Good things take time, but really great things happen in the blink of an eye.” Really love this quote. It dispels the myth that time and effort are the answers to everything and replaces this intransigent belief with something more classy and beautiful.

We often draw parallels between love and shooting stars, not just because they’re equally unpredictable, but also because they represent a game-changing window period of our lives. Sufficient belief in that instantaneous wish made upon shooting stars could significantly change our lives. Likewise, gathering the scattered fragments of one’s courage to pursue a shooting star could significantly alter the course of our lives as well.

Love happens in many moments of our lives, but often we are too blinded by pride and prejudice to see it, to seize it. Letting go of the first shooting star could be explained by carelessness, but if you were to let go of another, ‘a fool’ would be a very kind and polite description to use on you.

Rainbows

In spite of the dying summers and fallen stars, I still feel quite excited by the permutations and combinations of the myriad paths the future will show us to have taken! Winter will someday thaw to reveal the wonderment of spring, and shooting stars do appear at the most unlikely of moments. Just believe. Just dream on. Just act, when the time comes.

And when you get a glimpse of how life makes her rainbows, you can’t help but feel that life is soooooo awesome (:

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