About Christianity

'don't tell me... you have already... forgotten how to smile?'

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the once kind and loving king, upon witnessing the crumbling of his country (which was actually not his fault), seeing the suffering of his people and not able to do anything about it, had despaired over the situation.

over the course of despair, he had seeked an alternate route to end all of the sufferings... it's complicated... the story. so just take it as for now he turned evil. the kindest person who wished, more than anyone else for his people to gain happiness... turned into a person more evil than anyone and more cruel than anyone.

in one of my posts long ago, i wrote about how people went about wearing fake smiles. i thought, that was normal. and i still think it is. but you know, to forget how to smile, even if it is a fake smile, i wonder, how tragic is that?

i don't think it happens in stories only. i believe somewhere out in this big big world, out of the population of 4 billion there are some who really had forgotten how to smile. a smile represents that a person is experiencing a happy emotion. although it is sad that we are always wearing fake smiles, it is still within the acceptable range. because we still remember the meaning of a smile.

a person who had forgotten how to smile, i can only think that he or she had gone through despair beyond his or her own endurance. like the king in the story, the despair over the years had sunk him down into such despair that he saw no more hope. he had already forgotten the happy things.

despair, i think, is a very destructive emotion. not everyone of us go through it. don't bother those emo people who for a little hormonal change in their body which caused a slight depression acted like they are in despair.

despair is a state which one person enters when he cannot take any more pressure, be it grief, or hopelessness... etc. it is not easy to sink into despair. but i guess, it is not easy to come out either. i guess there is no need for me to say this, it is the ultimate level of hopelessness, it is one of the most extreme of feelings one can ever get.

since it is a feeling so extreme, certainly it will change a person. just like how hope can bring a person up, despair can bring a person down. a person in despair may not act like one. afterall, there are all kinds of people. and reality is or may be quite different from stories. not all the people will go on a drinking binge, or coop up at home rotting away. in reality, a person in despair may still go through the motions of life. the only difference is that, he doesn't hope anymore, doesn't dream anymore, doesn't expect anymore, doesn't look forward to anything anymore. everyday, walking on and on along that road of life. nothing but just walk along the road aimlessly, waiting for the end to come. to me, this is my best description of despair.

maybe, he will forget how to smile. maybe he will forget the important things to him. no, it should be, he had already forgotten how to smile, and forgotten the important things. forgetting to smile means to forget all the happy things which happened to a person, and all the happy things which can happen to him. it is a very scary feeling. yet at the same time, those feeling despair may not actually find it scary.

i did not go through despair before. and the above is the nearest description of what i know of what may happen to people in reality. maybe i am just saying what i do not know. if i am, please correct me.

as christians, despair is a feeling we must never feel. because hope is one of our most important way of life. if i walk along the road of life, and i met one person having despair, would i lend him a helping hand? will i tell him, 'hey! look in front. the light is shining.' will i do that? i don't know. i hope i do. because i think, that kind of feeling, isn't supposed to be in this world.

if all else fails, we can turn to our last hope. turn to God. He is the one who wishes for our happiness too. with Him around, despair can be taken away easily. your tears can be wiped away. even the smile which you had forgotten, He will let you remember. then as you believe in Him, place your hope in Him, one day, you will be able to smile again, and not just a fake smile, but a genuine smile which comes from your heart. because, you have remembered once again, that you actually know how to smile too.

If only she could have cried awkwardly,
If only she could have forgiven them at that time,
If only there had been someone she could have leaned on...

In that body that knows nothing
Did night turn into day?

---

there are many tragedies in life that many people go through. rape, abuse, murder, war, poverty, starvation, illness, accidents... etc. although i have a very strong tendency to envy other people for what they have and for what i don't, i am actually very grateful to God that so far, i have not met any situations like that. so far, i have not experienced any tragedies that will sink me into despair.

many of us too. we lead a normal life, live a blessed life. although we envy others, we ourselves sometimes know deep down in our hearts that for all the envy we have, for all the 'depressions' we have, for all the frustrations we have, we have not yet been sink into a despair we cannot climb up of. or maybe, we have not even stepped into the swamp of despair before. walking in a rocky road perhaps, but nonetheless a road.

do we know people who sink into despair? maybe the death of someone, maybe a person's own helplessness at being unable to prevent a certain tragedy. maybe a guilt too serious that he/she cannot forgive herself? we all have different limitations. some sink into the swamp quickly, while others took a longer time to sink. but, still, whether quick or slow, it did not make the fact they are sinking any more false.

like the girl (see the opening of this post), she was in despair. she cannot cry, she cannot forgive, and she had no one to lean on. in the end, the day never came. because she never lived through the night to see the day.

we have many emotions, and for every emotion there is a counter emotion. for every positive feeling there is another negative. love and hate. hope and despair. if hope can bring a person back from the 'dead', despair can send a person down to her grave. those of you who had gone through despair before, you would have understood.

the girl, her parents were dead. she could not cry. she could not forgive. she had no one to support her.

the act of crying, is a sign to show others we are weak at that point in time. unfortunately, sometimes people are unable to cry. maybe people don't want to see you in your wreak state. maybe, you just want to show people you are strong. maybe, we think we are not fit to cry (this would be the most logical reason i can come up with). unable to cry not only means we are suppressing our tears, it also means we are suppressing whatever we are feeling inside of us. hiding it, cover it... but we cannot eliminate it. not being able to face ourselves, what can we do?

forgiveness, one of the laws of christianity, is there for a reason. not only because God forgives us, it provides a way for healing. if we cannot forgive, how can we get out of the hurt? maybe i can say that because my parents are not murdered or something. but, if we don't forgive, we cannot move on. just like that girl, she was unable to move on. being stuck in the past, experiencing the pain over and over, until she reached her limit. if only she had forgiven them, she might have been able to see the day.

if only she had someone to leaned on, she might not have died. if she had someone to support her, she might have gone through the crisis. when we are in despair, we fall, and we don't want to pick ourselves up. you feel very tired, as if nothing else matters anymore. as if even if you die, it didn't really make a difference. with no one to help you, with yourself in that swamp of despair, sooner or later, that is going to make you drown. at that time, if someone lent her a helping hand, pull her out of that swamp, she would not have died.

what do i want to say?

of course you can say God is there. but, even though He is there, how many of those sink into despair will take His help? the emotions suppressed inside, the hatred, and the feeling of helplessness - even though God can take it all away, how many of those in despair would let Him do that?

maybe then, if we see someone like that, we can be a bridge to link her/him to God. even if they refuse to believe in God, maybe we can do something.

maybe, she won't let her feelings out in front of you. maybe, she won't cry in front of you. but, at least, if you are there for her, she may have the courage to face herself. she might not know it, but in fact she might be crying really hard in her heart. crying so hard she has no idea when that will stop. and that will not stop as long as she don't face herself. if you are there for her, maybe, you can just give her a little courage that she needs.

forgiveness. some of us find it hard to forgive. even though hating a person is tiring, but sometimes we just cannot bring ourselves to let go. i know that myself, perfectly well. what can you do? i don't know. hatred is something that cannot be taken away that easily. but i can say, if you are there, maybe that person would know that there are more important things than hatred. that life is worth something much more than that. it is hard to give up hating. but one has to come to terms with that. one has to resolve that matter in her own heart. but, if you are there, although you cannot walk the road for her, you can walk the path with her, right?

having someone to lean upon. this, i am sure, most of us can do. for those in despair, the least we can provide is emotional support. the person in despair is at her weakest, especially emotionally. breaking down is not uncommon. and like that girl, suicide is not uncommon. if we can be there, to show that at least she has someone she can rely on, that at least someone is there for her, maybe, she can see that hope. of course, don't give her the wrong kind of hope. give the correct hope.

a person in despair needs help desperately. it is urgent, and your actions may save a life, literally. if today you see a person in despair, if you can, lend a helping hand. if you can, sit down with her. if you can, walk down the road with her.

so that she can cry. so that she can forgive. so that she can find strength to go on with you supporting her. and finally, so she can go through the night to welcome the day. because eventually, the day will come. and the night will be gone.

before his friend turned into sand, his friend asked him, 'so, what is your wish?'

'i just don't want to lose all these things. i only want, to take back all the happy memories of the past.'

and as he said that, all that was important to him turned into sand and disappeared.

---

this teenage boy, in order to turn the current reality into something like the past, challenged 'god'. his past was that of a happy one, with friends around him, and had little troubles compared to his current situation. but as always, reality is not always beautiful. his important friends were gone, and all he had was a nightmarish reality and loneliness. he did all he could to go back to the past, to revert things back to the previous state. in the end, he challenged 'god'.

how many of us are like that? well, not to the extreme of challenging God. how many of us are stuck in the past, unable to look forwards?

life is beautiful sometimes, and ugly sometimes. if there is happiness, there is sadness. if there are ups, there are downs. success and failure. stress and relief. everyone experience the same thing - joy, grief, victory, loss..etc.

maybe, at your current stage of life, everything looks so bad. so bad you want to despair. so bad, like that boy, you think it is a nightmare. there is nothing in front for you to look forward to. whatever you do, you keep failing. and maybe, finally, you give up hope, and dare not hope anymore.

and when that happens, it is human tendency to look back to the past. to the past when everything was so beautiful. there are many reasons why we do that. maybe it is the only source of strength that lets us go on. maybe we want to go back to that state. maybe, just naturally, as if addicted by drugs, we cannot help but go back to the past where our memories are.

but, i thought, if we cannot let go of the past, we cannot move forwards. if we cannot let go of the past, we cannot face the reality now. in a way, it is like drugs. for a short moment, we thought it would help us go on. but in the long term, it actually makes us despair even more.

why do we still hold on to that past? because, it is very hard to let go. because, the reality we are facing now is too hard for us to bear.

sometimes i am like that too. even though i know i cannot keep on doing this anymore. like that boy, if we continue to do this, if we cannot let go of the past, whether by despair or by desperate attempts to return things to the original state, one day, we are going to lose every single thing important to us.

because, the past can never return to us. that is why, it is called the past.

we need to let go of the past. but letting go does not mean you have to forget them. the past is important. but if we cannot let go, we have no future, and our present is so dark we cannot move on.

talk is easy, right? i thought so. i only know how to talk, so i don't know what to do myself. but i thought, maybe i can introduce you someone who can help you. maybe, i thought, i would introduce you to my God.

if one day, or now, you find your present too dark to go on, your future too uncertain to move forwards, why not ask for help from my God? He knows the way, the past, the present, and the future. if the road is too dark, ask Him to light it up for you. if the future is too blur, ask Him to guide you. i cannot promise you the road He leads you will be smooth. but this i can promise you: He won't give you a road too hard for you to walk. this i can promise you: wherever He led you, there He will be with you too.

let go of your past, so your heart won't hurt anymore. so you can turn your head around, face the front and continue walking. i don't know how long you have to walk, but one day, you will be able to see the light. if you really cannot go on anymore, then ask God for help.

of course, as we walk, we sometimes do look back. i think, it is ok. as long as we don't reach out our hands and try to grab it and turn it to our reality. the past can never be the present.

but i think, maybe, from the present, like what the people in stories always do, we can tilt our head sideways a bit, smile and say to our past, 'i am glad i was there once. it really made me very happy.' or maybe, we can tilt our head sideways, smile and say to our friends, 'i am very happy i once walked this road with you.'

it won't be easy. but this, is the key for us to face the present, and to walk towards the future. so, turn back and smile. don't cry because the past is behind you. at least, you have a past you can look back to.

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fans may already know this - Mizuki Nana's dad passed away on 29th october 2008. it is on the news. anyway, my deepest condolences. her blog updates will be irregular for now though. for her blog entry on this issue, j1m0ne had done a translation of it on her website. http://atemonai.com/blog/mizuki-nana-on-her-fathers-passing/

'It is true I cannot understand you. But it is because I cannot understand the pain, that I can give you support. It is because I don’t know the suffering, that I can encourage you. If I truly know and truly understand, then, maybe I could not even utter a single word.'

i like this phrase a lot. as usual, for the n-th time, it came from a story. how i wish i can come up with such beautiful lines. well, these lines were said by a man to a woman he loved, to the woman whose pain he could not understand.

have you ever have the feeling of asking people to shut up? sometimes do you get the urge to slam at people and shout at them and say, 'Don't talk about things you cannot even begin to understand.' all people have problems in their lives, big or small. what is small to you may be big to others, what is big to you may be small to others. there are different kinds of big problems as well. one person may grow up in a very poor family. the other may grow up in an abusive home (well i don't really call that a home anymore). the third may grow up alone, without family.

because of our characters, which i believe are given by God, which is also moulded by the environment we are in, we make different choices in the same situation. there arises different opinions. makes sense?

and of course, people make decisions that benefits them. nobody in their right mind will make decisions to harm themselves unless for a very special reason. even people who take drugs, i guess (since i never try before) they want to escape from reality or just for curiosity sake. to them, their benefits are escape from pain or satisfying their curiosity. that, is the benefit they derived from it.

because humans are logical beings, we make decisions that we deemed as the best for us. however, what we think is best for us may not be that way as others see it. back to the example, person A takes drugs because he wants to escape from reality and the pain, but person B might not see it that way. he might see going for counselling to be a better option.

this is a small example. bigger, more common examples would be abortion, euthanasia...etc. i am not going to talk about that now in this post. this is not the point of it anyway.

sometimes we see people doing things as wrong, whether it is very obvious or not, and sometimes we slammed the people straight in their faces. scold them, criticize them, whatever. or maybe we didn't do this ourselves. but people do this to us. i am excluding your parents and your teachers punishing you because you are naughty, ok? lol.

and when that happens, sometimes we tend to or actually shout back, or get shouted back, 'what do you know?' or 'don't talk about things you cannot even begin to understand!' when people threw this words at us, or when we throw it out at others, what is the emotion we are feeling? i can say, almost 100%, it is anger.

for simplicity sake, we assume we are the one shouting at others. so, we feel angry. why? because there is this joker, who didn't even understand our pain, didn't even understand our situation, didn't even understand a single thing, came and condemned us. this person, who did not even go through the pain himself, actually scolded us. he who did not know anything has no right to say anything. that is what i always thought. really.

but why? that is in contradiction with the very first paragraph of this post right? the reason i said that is because the first thing people do is to condemn. maybe people are like that. maybe we ourselves are like that. how many of us, before we say something, even bother to understand the person right in front of us?

the fact that a person is smiling happily doesn't mean he has no troubles. people don't usually wear their feelings on their faces. there is no need to tell the world you are in trouble. people are not interested. we wear a mask we called 'smiles'. naturally, as if we are born with that talent, we can switch to that mask whenever we are with people. we are so gifted at that we don't really consciously tell ourselves to keep the mask on. it is as easy as breathing, as walking, as eating.

so, when we see the person standing in front of us, do we understand him/her? how much do we know about him? when we condemn, or scold, or criticize, why do we do that? yes we know he might be wrong, from our perspective. so? why do we condemn? is it because we care for the person in front and want him to turn from his ways? or is it because of that self-righteousness inside of us that we allow ourselves to be the judge over him?

if it is the latter, i guess it would be better for us to shut up. because we accomplish nothing. nothing at all. so what if we declare judgement on the others, when we are not even supposed to do that in the first place? does it help? no.

if it is the former, that we want to help, then maybe, or we should, get the situation right first. yes, he may be wrong. but how do you feel if someone who don't know a thing come and tell you what to do? you wouldn't like it, and you would reject it. i know i would. but if you show you care, you show that you want to help, and instead of condemning him, you gently tell him what is wrong, or by practical efforts show that you really want to help, then, wouldn't it be a much better choice to make? wouldn't the result have a higher chance of turning out to be more positive?

different people have different capacity of stress and pain, sorrow and despair. maybe the person who suffered, he had already suffered more than you can ever bear. maybe he suffered a pain greater than you imagined, such that if it were you who were the one going through it, you might already have long been gone, or made a much worse choice.

because we have not gone through it, we have no way to understand the person in front of us. but also, like the man said, it is because we have not gone through it, that we can see things objectively, that we can encourage, that we can help. because we still have that hope, because we still have that energy to move. because we can, and able to pull the person up to a place where there is light. of course, a person who went through the same pain and came out of it would be a much better person to help.

the above 2 paragraphs seems like a contradiction right? i guess i will explain it later.

all that i said just now, they were of course somehow extreme. we don't usually meet people who despair. but we do meet people who are in pain most of the time, whether we are aware or not. but it comes down to the mentality of us when we face others.

i will now explain the contradiction. if we don't have a mentality of wanting to help, then we should shut up. like i say, we might not take the pain if it were us. so instead of condemning, it would be better for us to walk away.

if we want to sincerely help, then, we would have to make use of the hope and strength we have to pull the person up to where there is light. of course, give the person the right hope, not the wrong kind of hope. i made a post about that on the blog post 'hope is cruel'. go see that if you want to.

we understand nothing. and from there, depending on your mentality, for the same situation, we could greatly affect people in 2 very different ways. if one day, i am asked, 'what do you know?', i hope i can come up with a reply as beautiful as the one made by that man who has the love for the woman.

'you are cruel. you gave her a hope that she could never reach. she would have been fine the way she was. but you came and gave her hope. if she never saw hope, she would have never known what is despair either.'

the above conversation, does it sound familiar to all of you visual novels fans (i am referring to fans who read VNs for their story and not for hentai only. for more details about VNs, go to my main site, games section)? if you do play VNs you would most likely come across this line.

i came across that few lines of conversation roughly 2 years ago when i was playing the game, and i could not get it out of my head even after so long. of course, i did not replicate word for word that conversation, since i depended on my memory from 2 years ago. regardless, the most important thing is that the main idea is still the same.

ok. so. what happened? this girl was suffering from many things since she was a kid, all the way till she grew up. a boy, without knowing fully her situation, gave her a hope that she could be free from her suffering. the girl had not held on to any hope, until that boy came and gave it to her. like the above said, it was a hope that she could never reach.

moral of the story? am i moving on to the moral of the story too fast? lolx. ok maybe i should say something more.

hope is cruel. this is the topic of my post. everyone knows, that we need hope to survive. he who has no hope has no purpose. he who has no hope cannot live life fully. we see people down and we give them hope. we see people struggle and we give them hope. correct? most of us do. but before we give them hope, maybe we ought to think a little bit more.

many people give others hope, even though they knew or maybe they knew not for certain that the hope can never come true, no matter how much he try, no matter how much he hope. for example, you tell a cancer patient that he would get better and recover. you tell a person whose beloved will wake up from a coma. maybe something near to us, you tell a person everything will be all right when you know it is not. familiar? very. i am sure most of you do that.

to give people hope knowing full well they cannot get it is not only cruel, it is downright irresponsible. you may think you do a good deed by giving people hope. you may think you helped him or her by giving her hope. but if you give a person an anticipation of something that will take more than a miracle to come true, then you are just deceiving yourself and the unlucky person. in the end, the one who suffer more would be the person you had encouraged.

or maybe, you give a person a hope that may be achieved through a lot of effort. but the thing is, you give him or her hope, and then you leave her alone. you did not help. all you did is to talk nice. if you give a person hope and leave him or her to struggle for her own, what is the use? you would be making him suffer more. the process may even backfire.

what does that makes us? hypocrites. again. i seemed to always use this word in my posts. i guess it must have become my favorite word. yes. talk and no action. talk without sparing a thought for others. talk and forget. we don't think of the consequences. he is down. we must encourage him. she is in despair. we must give her hope. so? what is the point if they had a hope they can never achieve? we cannot just talk, we must also pull them up. give them a reasonable hope. you don't tell a 4th stage cancer patient he will live on for a few more years. you don't tell the wife of a man who became a vegetable that he will wake up.

of course, i admit hope is neccessary for life. without hope there is no life. but what i want to say is, if you want to give people hope, give them the right kind of hope. a hope which can be attained. a hope which could drive them to move on, not to drive them into further despair. extreme example: you convinced the wife of a man in a coma that he will surely wake up. she believes you. the next day, he died. tell me, what would the wife feel? sad before you gave her hope. sadder after you gave it to her.

moral of the story? i think i got the moral and the main story mixed together in one lump. regardless, there is one hope we can always trust. that is Jesus Christ our Lord. because to Him, impossible is nothing (my favorite addidas phrase!). He will not give you the wrong kind of hope, and what He said, will happen, because He don't lie. Because He is not a hypocrite.

remember, hope is cruel, and the person who give the hope is a cruel and downright irresponsible hypocrite if he do not give the right kind of hope and drive people further down into despair. giving hope is not neccessary doing a good deed, giving the right kind of hope is. also, when you give people hope, it is for their sake, not for your own sake of 'oh i did a good deed today!' mentality.