"Time turns flames to embers
You'll have new Septembers
Every one of us has messed up too"

Upstate New York

Three days ago, the short hike in the Corbetts Glenn brought back the memory of when I discovered how healthy and enjoyable taking walks can be.  It's October, and as I was told, the leaves are turning into their foliage form for the autumn season, though there are many more green leaves as the leaves won't change their color until the end of October and even November.  The beautiful bright yellow, orangy-red and light brown colors of the leaves turn the park into a magical place and as I continued my easy stroll, it was as if I was in Harry Potter land, the British landscape in England.  One could not believe how beautiful they are until he or she actually situates himself at the exact location. People say you have to see it in order to believe it. In the same way, we have to actually see it in order to appreciate how beautiful mother nature can transform this all green park into a multi-colored place.

The next day, I had a chance to see Niagara Falls and boy, it was something my small mind was unable to predict and expect.  The falls were hundreds of feet high and the length of the falls totaled up to thousands of feet (there was a small sign telling visitors the exact length and height of the falls; I have a tendency to look at signs and numbered facts while seeing attractions during my travels).  The currents of the rivers were forceful and fast and with one drop of an object in the river, one can see the current was able to push it forward to the other bends with intensity and great force.  The American Falls and the Prospect Point gave a spectacular view of the falls and for the first time in a long time, I remember how I could not imagine how such beautiful and majestic could be real, right in front of me. Don't get me wrong, I have seen many falls in Yosemite in Northern California but this falls were something else. It was bigger and it can take hold of the mind and let it see how big mother nature can be.

From this trip, I realize that it is easy for us to forget how the small things in life can be put aside in our mind and how we need to focus on them to live a joyful life.  Niagara Falls and Corbetts Glenn are not small things; they are beautifully created by mother nature and they some how can capture a person's heart and mind with just the way they are. It's like real love. Your boyfriend or spouse should love you the way you are and not because of the type of job and how much money you have and they should accept your bad and good sides too.  Likewise, your friends should love you just the way you are, they should love all your flaws and all your goodness and they should always be there for you when you need someone to talk to and spend time with.  The Bible called this an unconditional love and we all should follow it. It's a good Golden Rule to remember.

All in all, the colder weather in Upstate New York didn't deter me from enjoying the delightful weather of the country side  and the suburban parts of the state New York and I hope one day to see it again. Until next time New York. Ciao.

The Rules Out There

In order to succeed in life, we have to follow some rules.  And there aren't many of them out there. They're just guidelines on how to approach situations and they are not complicated, however they can have dire consequences when we refuse to follow them. These rules can be written, spoken or unspoken and unwritten.  If we break them, they will break us.

This applies to any situations in life, from a school setting to the work environment. For instance, we all have to listen to the teacher's rules from primary school and up to college level, otherwise we fail.  If the rule says 3 + 3 is 6, and we say the answer is 9, then we have an incorrect answer. We didn't follow the rule of addition.  There are always rules at work in an academic settings; the instructors or the academic institution created them.

I remember when I first followed certain rules, it was the hardest mental task I have done in my life  especially when it came to taking tests, particularly science tests.  If the professor and textbook told me to use certain equations and concepts and apply to the question on a quiz and tests then I have to do it. If I don't, I will get an incorrect answer and if I do, I can get the right answers and score more points.

In the same way, there are rules at work I have to follow. If my supervisors want me to do a specific job and there is a deadline I have to abide by it or else I risk of getting terminated.

What about the rules in a social setting? Such as at a party? Should a guy get a drink for a girl if he likes her or should the other way occur.  I do believe there are rules in social settings such as when to do something, eg when to start a new job and career, when to end a relationship, when to join another circle of friends, and etc. However I do believe the rules in a social setting are more lenient and they are much easier for us to break and we have the tendency to break them at times. However when we break these rules, there can be direct consequences and the results might not be wanted and we might not see it until in the far future.

Rules are just statements telling us what to do and what not to do and as a kid, they can seem daunting to follow. Though I must say some kids are not afraid of these rules. It helps to be raised in a family where they give emotional support and to have friends who give the support a person needs to succeed in following these rules.  Especially when a person is committed to follow these rules.

I also notice that people can intentionally or unintentionally follow rules. Though one might asked what type of person do better in life: the one who follows the rules intentionally or unintentionally?

In conclusion, rules are always helpful to follow. They can be difficult to follow due to our stubborn mind, the good thing is when we change our mindset and accept these rules, they will free us from any imminent frustrations and future ones as well,

Just A Thought

Here is a thought. I've been contemplating about this topic this past days and they seem to be an annoyance and less of a help than whatnot. Of late, I've been thinking people seem to have all their lives together, a good career and good relationships. I sometimes feel I don't have what they have and I need to have what they have.  I went into the cycle of comparing my life to other people I know and it's the most destructive and demeaning way to treat the self.

Somehow I forgot I have many experiences under my belt. I forgot I worked hard to get my Bachelors and that I worked very hard to keep my many jobs that were not too easy to obtain and kept at times. These experiences didn't give me the paychecks that doctors get but they taught me lessons that I would never have get if I didn't have them in the beginning.  They gave me the tough love I needed, and they taught me how to be the person who needs to succeed in life at a professional and personal level.

One thing that put my mind at ease is the thought of how people don't think about me as much as I believe they do. And this did the trick. It unleashed me from this mental bondage and this torture that I have put on myself and with just this new way of thinking, magic happens and I became a new confident person. 

Adaptation-- A Root Canal Experience

After the permanent crown was put on my tooth, my bite became uneven. Frustration settled in and I found myself to feel as if I was a my moody teenager self once again. What if this feeling of uneveness and discomfort linger for the rest of my life? What if the next step is to get the surgery, the one that my orthodontist recommended me to have over a decade ago? I am okay with doing whatever it takes to remove the discomfort but the risk was just something my mind could not accept-- nerve damage was one of them according to my current dentist.
These are the thoughts that have been on my mind since last Thursday and they began to dissipate by Sunday of last week and I am very glad these negative thoughts are disappearing.

My dentist said normally my teeth will position themselves in a way where my body and mind get use to the new bite. I didn't believe him because for one, the thought of the discomfort from the uneven alignment was very unbearable and very disappointing. Let's just say it was not pleasant to go through all the root canal retreatment and then having to get anesthesia injections for the placement of the temporary crown before the permanent crown was put on and then having to hear from your doctor that you might feel some discomfort from these procedure: the only word that perfectly describe this entire experience was pain. We all want good result from an experience and especially from a medical procedure and when this does not happen, it can throw us off a bit. The endodontist prescribed me pain medications for several days and yes, the pain stayed for more than two days to be exact after the root canal retreatment.

Today I am glad all the hard parts are over and done with and I feel more confident that my teeth will settle and position themselves in a place where my comfort level will normalize and I will not feel the discomfort such as when I first had the temporary crown put on.

One of the lessons I learn from this experience is the body adapt to whatever it confronts. There are many parts to the body: we have the mind/brain, we have the limbs, the organs, the cells, etc. However when we mention the word adaptation, it usually referring to the mind. It's how the mind handles the situation and how it wants to put it in perspective. The key fact to remember is the body adapts with time. Time and the act of adaption is correlated and when we believe this, we give ourselves some peace of mind when life gives us lemons.

Our Mind

I used to be mad about how people treated me badly, whether in a professional environment or in my personal life.  Rather than lock myself in this mindset of unhappiness, I decided to change it. I realize that I can do something and sitting and locking myself in a room would not do any good. I remember as I went through this process , I had to continually remind myself that things will pass and that taking actions and keeping my mind busy was the key to unlock myself from this doomed situations.

In this post, I would like to talk about how our mind works and what I learned about it for this past years and I took my brain as a testing objective. Please note that many people who are in different age groups and in different professions, from white collar to blue collar jobs, have the same experiences as I do.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Case study: I've been monitoring my brain and read countless books and news article on it this past years and I realize that it is capable of accomplishing what we want if we trust it.

I notice a few facts about how the brain wire and I would like to share them in this post. And yes, I do not buy in the idea that our IQ is determined by our genes, no matter how much fact someone shows me.  Why? You can argue the premise with a counterargument that our mind is shaped by our environment and there are supportive examples and personal testimonies to support this subject matter.

In any case, here are a few observations I learned about how the mind works this past three years:

1. Are you feeling regrets and sadness? No problem, our mind can handle that. It can forget and let go if we let it. The key objective in these situations is to shift our mind to another objective, something more positive and something other than the object that is making us unhappy. If we remember the word "shift" then our mind will help us to heal.

2. Not sure if our decision is the right one? Then the high chance we are not ready to commit to whatever is.  Maybe the right decision is to wait and explore further before making any sort of commitment.

3. Having happy thoughts and you can think clearly at the same time? Whatever we are doing is the correct course of action for our mind. Keep doing and remember to go back to whatever makes our brain feels good when we are in the low part of our life. Take notes if you want to remember later on.

All in all, I find that people who are "smart" know how the brain works and they use it accordingly and thus they succeed academically and make good decisions through out their life time. Why not imitate these so called "smart" people? They learned it from some where and someone too and so can we.

The Stages

As a kid, people always confused me. I didn't understand how the adult world works. I didn't understand the many aspects of being an adult. I did't understand what it takes to be a great human being and how to succeed. Looking back, it's not that I was dumb, it was that I didn't have much confidence in my own ability to think for myself and on my ability to approach different problems and situations.

Then college began. Though I commuted to school, I find it was easier than I thought when it came to easing my way into this world of people who seemed to possess more confidence and who seemed to exactly know where they will be heading in life.  I found part-time jobs as a tutor and worked my way out of college with decent grades and a lot of experience under my belt.  There were boy complications here and there but I thank God that they did not reck me and prevented me from completing my degree within the four year limit.

After undergrad, work took over my life. I remember working overtime because I had nothing better to do. Work was a part of me and it became my identity. The first year was a tough one. I did not enjoy every bit of it, nevertheless I have to admit I learned something along the way ever single day. I learned how to be a great parent by talking to all the coworkers who were mothers and fathers at work--I worked in a job where majority of the employees were at least 40 years older, thus this gave me the opportunity to grow up quicker just by hearing their advice and life stories. They told me the good events in their lives and the bad situations they got themselves into; and so I found myself to become a better person by learning from other people's mistakes.  In addition, I learned how to be a good coworker who brought snacks and food and shared them with other fellow coworkers; I must add that I gained a few pounds from this fun experience and also learned how to be kind to people whom I do not know well.  I learned how to be a great sibling to another person by hearing my coworkers talk about their immediate family.

Don't mistaken, I completed my assigned work every day and the reason why I had time talking to the older coworkers at work was because I became a quick learner and was able to finish my assigned tasks at a quick pace.

Another experience that changed me the most was my volunteer experiences at a hospital called St. Mary Medical Center back in 2013. Here, I met some of the brightest people in the United States. I met resident physicians, attending physicians, nurses, medical students, high school students.  Let's just say they were not your typical average Americans.  These professionals know how to use their brain at a capacity that I rarely saw in a person.  This is a trauma hospital and it's a teaching hospital, therefore the people who receive any form of training here have to be on top of their work or else there would be bad consequences, or worst they lose their jobs.  For instance, the resident physicians have to stay in the hospital and made sure the patients in the Intensive Care Unit are well cared for and little mistakes can endanger a life.

Then I also had the opportunity to meet some of the brightest students in the United States. I met some high school students from magnet schools in Southern California and as I watched them helped the patients and talked to the hospital staffs, I realize that my brain was picking up some skills they had. These kids had great interpersonal skills and they knew how to study well while still putting in some fun time in there.  Another occurrence was my time talking to a medical student from UCLA; she completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and was doing her third year rotation for medical school at St. Mary Medical Center.  I accidentally ran into her while we were watching the resident physicians perform a procedure on a patient in the Intensive Care Unit and we started this one conversation and for some reason, my brain enjoyed the convo deeply; it liked the fact that this girl was right in front of me and showing me what it was like for person like her (coming from top universities in the nation) handle such a stressful environment. If you ask any physicians who have worked in the Intensive Care Unit, they will admit these patients are really sick and they need more care than your average medical surgical patients.  Furthermore she was just like any other classmates I talked to in undergrad, however her confidence made a difference. Her sentence structures and her voice tone showed the confidence that many college students do not have. 

I have moved on from my many experiences as a college students and young adults, professionally or personally, for the past two years and the lessons I learned from those experiences are invaluable for my success in the next step I take in life.  They say it takes a village to raise a child and it felt sometimes that my many jobs and my many volunteer opportunities were the villages that raised me and made me who I am today and who I need to be later on.

A Note to My Mom

The best decision my mom ever did was to move my whole family to America. Don't get me wrong, I fight and argue with her from a young age to this very day, nevertheless I learn to embrace this woman for who she is and how strong she was when she made the decision to move her four little girls to the US.  And she didn't know much about this country except that it will give her girls a brighter future than the land where she lived and worked for over forty years. She left everything behind to move us to America-- a great business that was striving, a beautiful house she built from the ground up, her family, my grandmother and all the comforts that were there.  This woman worked so hard to put her children in this land and I don't know what I would do without her. I love you mom <3 p="">

It's Not Hard, It's A Lot of Work

Whenever I ask a person a question about a skill, I notice some people have a tendency to use the word "hard"  to describe his or her feelings toward an experience.  And yes, I do believe they're feelings and they're not an objective fact. As a college graduate, I understand what that word means. It means it takes a lot of energy and effort from the doers to perform certain tasks in life and we not only talking about school work; I'm referring to tasks at a particular job such as at a Starbucks, a restaurant, at an office, computer science, etc.

 As a kid, I dread that word when I heard it from classmates ( especially this bunch), neighbor friends, church friends, strangers, etc. Sadly almost about everyone I know on this planet used that word now and then in my presence.

Instead of using the word hard, we should describe a particular activity as "it takes a lot of work." When I hear this phrase, my mind thinks there are ways and techniques to do certain tasks easily and we can do them well too.

My conclusion is when we learn anything in life  we should have the right mindset first and then we can do much more from that.

A Sunday Afternoon

Today I had a chance to talk with a new friend whom I met the other day during a church service on  a Wednesday night. She was telling me about her great career (go Nurse Practitioner!) and though it was exciting, what made me remember the most was her personal stories she shared with me.

Now, I have heard countless stories while working for a social service agency and I did this for five years, that is I heard hundreds and thousands of life stories, some were sad, some made me laugh and some were just head-scratching. At first, it was hard to understand and sympathize with the families I once called my "clients" but then as I became more proficient and good at the technical tasks at work, and not having to worry of my boss' nagging,  I learned to truly listen to their stories and be as neutral and non-judgmental as possible in all situations.

Today's story was different. I felt I could relate to her story and heartbreaks while I have never been in situations that she was in. She has a child and the kid was beautiful and observant just like any toddlers out there in the world. She has big brown eyes and light skin and as I watched her eating, I couldn't help but to continue watching her as she allowed her mother to feed her small pieces of the blueberry muffin that was served after the church service.  This child was a someone this new friend of mine was most proud of having and I couldn't help but enjoying how much love my friend was showing to the child.

This new friend of mine has gone through so much and I could see courage all over her face. And despite the fact that she is a bright person academically (NP schools makes their students work hard, from what I heard), I learned that just because we have our job and careers together, it doesn't mean life is perfect. There are other unexpected events that would hit us in the head and wake us up to to the reality that is right in front of us.  Steve Jobs once said, "Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith." Life hits, or will hit, us in the head sometimes here and there and we shouldn't lose faith and any motivation to continue this road we call "life". But rather we should get back up after every fall and roll with the punches, as the saying goes.

Becoming the Next Harper Lee

I was forced to read "To Kill the Mockingbird" back in junior year of high school and despite how much I dislike reading, I discovered that the characters were very fascinating and very much relatable to most of the people living in this world. 

After learning more about the author Harper Lee I actually want to become a writer some day.  Her book "To Kill the Mockingbird" changed the world and definitely the future generation to come. It sheds news lights to hard conversational topics such as race, relationships between people with different race, and casts a new light on how we should see the authorities in our lives. 

Written in February 2016

Dear Life, 2018

Dear Life,

You are beautiful in all of your ways, from the people who inhabit on this planet earth to the very places that occupy it.  Europe is an amazing place for those seekers who thirst to have their spirit be renew; the history, the food, the people and the culture of that continent will forever be a part of the visitors, no matter how old they are.  On the same note, Asia is beautiful in itself and you particularly sculpted their people very well; for instance, a dark featured woman with light skin exists in the region and seeing them leaves me question how can this genetic mixture exits. Shouldn't light skin woman live in the colder region such as North America and Europe? How can a woman like that lives in a tropical climate such as Vietnam or Cambodia and still be light skinned like other European women? Life, you sure never fails to amaze me with whatever happens in each human's life. Each person is so different and special in all their ways that I am always in awe after encountering each one; sure we get in fight and get angry and stuff but when we come together, beautiful things happen. Innovation are created, other lives are changed.  

However, you can sure be cruel. Why should there be disease and illness? Why should there be hurricanes, tornados and tsunamis that can devastate many lives and land marks?  I think you should reconsider them and please take them away so we all can live in a peaceful and comfortable lives.  

As for personal conflicts, why do us humans and even animals have to fight and make fun of each other? Can we all get along and sit down for a tea without arguing and trying to prove to each other that we have a worth? Sometimes I just wish these conflicts, or what my mother called nonsense, can dissipate in the desert or Mars so those of us who are involved won't ever have to deal with them or see them.  On a negative note, problems wreak havoc in the human body; such as hormone imbalances, heart issues, muscle aches, pain, stomach problems, etc. It is never fun for the body to have to go through those. If there is no problem then we don't have to give so much trust funds or finance to the doctors.   That money can be spent in going on adventures that this earth has for us humans. 

All in all, life hasn't been fun for some of us but I think you are worth giving a shot and worth living for. There is so much more to life than problems; there are exotic places to see, there are people with different ways of living and habits to meet, there are innovations (yay to Tesla and other electric cars out there in the world!) to be created to make this planet a better place for people and the land itself.

It's the year 2018 and many millenial are older, we are entering our late 20s and early 30s and some of us are still confused with how everything runs. Whatever happens this year, I hope it will only better the lives of each of us and that those who are in pain will get some relief and continue on this journey that you have given to us, Life.  

Your tenant,
Karen