Someone told me that the first day of new year is just another day, as like another day before and another ahead. However, I would like to still keep up with my personal traditional and annually mission to write something to farewell the passing year and to welcome a coming new year.
Taking some time to sit and write of what I think about myself and my world, of what I have learned and what I am going to do for the next year becomes my routine for the past five years. The supreme goal is to reexamine my past 365 days, and kinda make an agreement or a promise to myself to do something in 365 days to come.
Year 2010: it was somewhat an education year for me, the year of studying and trying to understand to adapt myself to a new environment. I had been living in Bangkok for a year, I wasn't happy at all at first, the only thing I kept going with my life was the thought of getting out this place real soon. Suffering was not able to describe my feeling, I did feel sad inside and nothing could fix that until I started to think differently, positively.
Everyday I wake up and walk to school, I found that it is just a walk but such a relaxing and wonderful time during the whole day. I talked to people along the way to school, I touched the trees, I smiled to the building and I greeted the sidewalk. My world in Bangkok began to change, actually, my perception about this city had changed, my mind opened to see things as they are. I was happy again.
I never like my university, I do not like Bangkok, but why I applied to study here? I do not know. However, it appears to me clearer that everything happens for reasons. I chose and I lived with it, I made a decision and I was responsible for that. I can't complain. That's how it goes. I might not be always happy for what I chose or whatever happened in my life, but I do believe that leads me to something. 'Something' that I can cultivate and take the best out of it, to learn, to face, to have, to lose, or to get through with it.
For a year, I grew such a good feeling from talking and interacting with people in my neighborhood. Almost every single day I will walk out from my room and buy a bottle of urban herb juice. A granpa who is standing there selling juice since he was 17 year-old, now he's 73, his smile and greetings lightens my days. Yes, I buy a bottle of that juice, and I also get to talk to him and get to know more about this neighborhood back in tens years ago - long before I was born and came here. He didn't let me taking photos at all. But after days and days I walked and greeted, and bought some herb juice, finally I got his wonderful smile.
What I have learned is nothing else, but to learn to be nice to myself, to be friendly to my own mind... I am thankful for what I have been given. I miss my walk. I miss my path, I miss their smiles.
