Life as It Is

I was thinking about yesterday’s post.

About how Alex met up with someone who upset him and the other person got a telling-off by Alex. I realized that life brings people and experiences into our lives to change and enrich us. I have a friend (Eve) and she always says this to me:

"In this life, we have lessons to learn. Failing which, we will reincarnate over and over again to learn the same lessons."

In yesterday’s story, Alex gave the doctor – an arrogant person, a dress-down. Perhaps he needed a lesson in humility and Alex was just there to give him the lesson. And in Alex’s case – as he was ranting about how the doctor fucked up his day and how frustrated he felt after screaming his head off at the fella, I guess he needed to be reminded that there was much that he needed to improve and change in his life.

That he had not arrived there as a person.

When things we don’t enjoy happen, I like to think that it happened for a reason. I have gone through much disappointments and hardship in life even though I'm still half way through my life, struggling to make a living.

Life is about change and one state leads to an opposite state.

If you are humiliated, then you will be exalted
If you face sorrow, you will enjoy happiness
If you face hate, you will experience love
Life is a contradiction in every way

We are wayfarers journeying in this life.

A friend borrowed me a DVD the other day - some artsy-farty movie. "The Gleaners and I". It is by this French director - Agnes Varda’s work, which treats the concept of gleaning—foraging fields for post-harvest leftovers—as a metaphor for her own directorial ethos.

Damn good movie!

In France, such a romantic place, such a modern city with ancient architecture and beautiful statues – it’s an immaculate contradiction. A developed country and yet you have gleaners, people gleaning off the streets, off the garbage cans and refuse thrown by restaurants, farmers and what-not.

I was very touched by the movie.

I saw a French guy, a truck driver by trade lose his job due to drinking and lost his family and kids when they left him later – collect food from the garbage can and eat. I saw another French guy, foraging for food at the market dumping container normally used for trash. I saw him fish out discarded fish, meat and bread and take it back home to cook and eat. I saw an old woman picking up vegetables from the floor of the market.

It really presented a face of France that I never knew. These countries despite their wealth and development, the people are the same. We have beggars and street people in Asia. I used to think this is so because of the corruption prevalent in many Asian economies and perhaps this is part of the growing and development pains that we must endure to go to the next stage.

But poverty and survival instincts occur everywhere.

Putting all this together, I really feel convicted that life is to be lived to the fullest. You can be rich or you can be one of the homeless but you can live. You know something. I saw more happiness and freedom in the faces and smiles of the homeless than in the rich people’s faces. They may be homeless and destitute and eat from garbage cans but they are happy and free regardless what society may think of them.

It’s a movie that you really have to watch for yourself.

Life is full of lessons
Life is a contradiction
Live in pain and joy
Live it to the fullest
For it is your life….