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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

New Year, Resolutions, and Risk Taking

An unexpected thing happened when I met up with a couple of my closest mates at our favourite kopi tiam in Ipoh during the last few days of 2008. We made a commitment to each other and a common resolution!

Unsurprisingly, we really got hyped up with the reality of the situation in Malaysia as 2009 loomed in the horizon. We talked about job security, worsening economic woes, increasing faith issues, politics, etc. etvc. But instead of just leaving at just "coffee shop talk", we decided that, as a group, we could do something together, for ourselves and all others around us - connected or otherwise.

And so, in a jiffy, we had come up with a small but important mission that we could work on together. And, we made it a point to meet up more frequently whenever we were in town, to keep in touch more frequently wherever we were and to support each other in realising our stated common work.

And so far, one week into the new year, we have kept our word.
Only another 51 weeks to go!

Which brings me to this reflection by Richard Bach:

Tired of Clinging

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great
crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all - young
and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way,
knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks at
the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the
current what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, 'I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot
see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I
shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of
boredom.'

The other creatures laughed and said, 'Fool! Let go, and that current
you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and
you shall die quicker than boredom!'

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at
once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him
free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, 'See
a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come
to save us all!'

And the one carried in the current said, 'I am no more Messiah than
you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work
is this voyage, this adventure.'

But they cried the more, 'Saviour!' all the while clinging to the rocks,
and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone
making legends of a Saviour.
-
from his book "Illusions"

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Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision. --Anthony Robbins

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