About Christianity

one of the problems many humans face is the problem of letting go. be it a futile romance relationship, be it the past which you got hurt (i am not saying your past hurts are trival), be it an unfulfilled dream... etc.

i guess you are one of them? maybe you are. i know i am one of them. holding too tightly will end up hurting yourself, but we still do that, and refuse to let go sometimes. well the thing is, if we don't let go of somethings, we can never move forwards to a new future.

if you don't let go of a failed / one-sided (romantic) relationship, you will never be able to look forward to another one. if you dont let go of your unfulfilled dream, maybe you will end up wasting your life doing something you can never achieve. if you never let go of your past hurts, you will always be looking back and not dare to try out a new future.

i believe the Bible tells us to let go to. to forgive and forget. remember this famous command? why should we do that to the person who hurts us? at first this might sound demanding and strange. but the thing is if you don't forgive, your mind will always be thinking about that, and you cannot move forwards to the future properly. the same for forgetting the hurt. if you move to the future remembering all your hurts, you will not dare to try new things, and not enjoy life to the fullest. of course i have to say trying out new things also means you have to take caution and protect yourself against whatever or whoever may harm you.

letting go is hard. not everyone can do it. but there are times when we just have no choice but to let go. it may be a little painful, but i guess, once we get over it, it should be ok. so, try, and let go of the things you need to let go. so that you can move forwards to a new future.

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.

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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/