Everything happens for a reason

This is the hardest part about faith.  Every religion points to an all powerful, all knowing God, who has a plan that mere mortals cannot understand and should not question.  If we believe in a merciful God, then everything happens for the best.


I want to believe in a merciful God.  But my little brain simply can't see what good can come out of a mass shooting or what good can come out of a mother starving her 5 year-old so that the poor child weighs 19 lbs.  The shooter will face his judgment, the mother may yet have a chance to repent.  Those outcome do not bother me.  The 14 lives that were taken, and the one that maybe permanently damaged bother me a lot.  Was that part of God's plan?  Are these deaths and suffering better than the alternative? For the victims or someone else?  In the little girl's case, will an eternity in heaven even compensate for 5 years of abuse in the hands of the person who is supposed to love her the most?  My small human brain does not have the capacity to understand God's love and His plan, so instead, it is grappling with concepts of justice, fairness, and simple human emotions of sadness and anger.


Humans are given free will.  Children cannot exercise their free will.  That makes the responsibility of parents and caregivers so much greater.  We are the ones to safeguard not only our own souls but also to fill the souls of those in our care with love, happiness and positive emotions.  This is what I can control.  I choose to believe my free will to prioritize this responsibility matters in the long run.    I have to believe that if humans spread our love and our positive attitude, we can prevent those situations where people are senselessly killed or little kids are tortured.  God has mercy on us to let our efforts and our love lead to good things.

Lessons of Inside Out

8/15/2015

Inside Out was supposed to be about how a little girl deals with a big family move.  The movie is thought provoking in many ways.

All parents wish their kids will grow up happy.  We all like to be happy and be around happy people.  Optimistic people make popular leaders and are perceived to be more successuful. We teach our kids to think positive and to look on the bright side.  At some point this wish becomes an expectation, or at least as perceived by kids.

We have already heard that kids are more likely to post positive updates on social media and hide setbacks.  When all we see is other people's achievements and none of their challenges, it is difficult to normalize our own trials that others do not seem to face.  This leads to feelings of inadequacy and may lead to other self esteem issues.

Some people are naturally more optimistic than others.  Our desire to project optimism may lead us to hide our other emotions, such as sadness, fear, anger.  Our inability to admit these less positive feelings into our consciousness may lead to stress and bad decisions.

There are circumstances in life where no matter how hard we try, we cannot see a bright side.  That is okay.  Even happy memories sometimes have regretful aspects.  Being sad or fearful temporarily does not define us.  Hopefully we can look back and see that these circumstances do as much to define us as the happy occasions do.  The important thing is to let the emotions out.  Once we are done being disgusted, sad or angry, we can move on, and the joyous emotion will have a chance to come to the foreground again.

Our lives are not perfect.  If happy is the only emotion, we might cease to feel it at some point.  In fact, if we bury any one of our emotions too deep, we risk becoming adept at not feeling anything.  Some may argue that being logical like Spock is the ultimate goal for a cerebral human being.  But a being that does not experience emotions is synonymous with a sociopath.  We need ALL our emotions to live a full life.

Ultimately, the core values is what we are made off.  They may temporarily disappear but will come back if we have nurtured those values: family/love, fun/humor, honesty, friendship, passion.  The content and context of our memories will change, but will not be destroyed.  

One unrelated thought, the sacrifice of the imaginary friend brought tears to my eyes.  Yes, this is not a new theme, friends making sacrifices to help friends.  But doing so knowing that the not only will the act remain unknown, but your friend will also forget you - that is a true friend.  

Finally, in the credits, it was mentioned that the film was dedicated to the kids, and the parent's wish that they won't grow up.  This seems to be a humorous way of saying we as parents wish we can always be there for them, have the power to help them, and be allowed to help them, when they have to deal with challenges or are just sad.  Since that is impossible, I wish my kid will grow up with the strength to overcome.  May joy never be extinguished.

Fear of growing old

My 5-10/12 year old is getting a little bud of a permanent tooth behind his baby front tooth.  Hubby and I both reacted, "our son is growing up." and I added "there is nothing like your child growing up to remind you that your are growing old."

Some days, I feel like that is the most important thing.  Watching my son grow up and making sure he gets the best mommy that I can be.  Maybe that is the only thing I feel can be in my control anymore.  It is not fair, because in doing so, I am also focused on the time limit we have together.  I am reminded day after day that I am not growing any younger.  I would rather be looking forward to something in the shorter term.  I don't want to be reminded about growing old as my son grows up.  But these are two sides of the same coin, aren't they?

There was an article that talked about a boy wanting to disguise his voice and height because of a fear of  growing up.  Experts think that the boy ultimate fears growing old and the inevitability of death.  It is a sad story.  We all fear growing old.  Perhaps not as much dying as somehow becoming less than what we are and having to depend on help, being a burden to someone, or worse, living when there is no one left to care.  I think most people simply learn to put it out of their mind, because worrying doesn't help anything in this case.

I remember being depressed about the inevitability of the end of humanity as a teenager.  I cited the Sun's explosion as an ultimate end of the Earth.  Some might argue that humans will have emigrated from Earth long before that.  I now fear that we, in our greed to consume, has put our planet on a course to become less able to sustain the human population in a short century or two.  Some might also argue that we still have time.  But with a lack of consensus and a lack of action, it is hard for me to be optimistic.  Thank goodness I won't see the worst of it.  I will be long gone.  But I will go with the regret that it is my generation who failed.  Being one who have recognized the problem, it was my failure not to be able to rally my peers to do something, anything about it.  Am I resigned to that already?  How can I help?????

While the world at large is turning a blind eye, we can make sure that our offspring can adapt.  We can make sure that he has the financial ability to move or to procure energy and water that may no longer come cheap in the future.  I feel bad that I cannot prepare my son to have no empathy for the suffering of the masses - I cannot compromise my own principles, but he might be happier if he can ignore the suffering of those who have no access to clean water or abundant food.  I cannot solve those problems.  What can I do???

We all fear growing old.  Many adults go under the knife to preserve their beauty.  Some ladies preserve their fertility.  What I fear is not going old.  I fear being helpless.  Babies are helpless too but they don't know it.  So maybe I associate growing old as a sense of acceptance of the helplessness.  It is much like when Susan Hobb wrote that suicide is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice.  If there is nothing more I can do to be useful in this world, won't I be better off somewhere else.  It is not fair to my family if they are my only raison d'etre.  I need to do something...

P.S.  I don't intend for anyone to see these not-so-positive thoughts.  But to my family, if you ever read this, I love you.  Always.

Middle age health

I hate being middle aged.

Problems that are associated with youth don't go away and takes on new meaning.  

Don't laugh.  Being in your forties and struggling with acne seems to be a subject of jokes.  Most people are worried about age spots and wrinkles at this point.  Luckily products that are suppose to work for acne also works for wrinkles.  When I was in my twenties I used to get exasperated when medical insurance won't cover my acne medicines because others use it for cosmetic reasons.  Now I can take advantage of both benefits myself.

Don't laugh, being in your forties and thinking about braces is not just vanity.  Ther is a real possibility that we will live till old.  Do we want to keep our own teeth for as long as we can?  I was fortunatate that there were no major issues with my teeth to warrant that as a teenager.  Back then, it was for looks.  Now, it is really for dental health.  Maybe I will be pleased with my smile and smile more. Who knows.?  Or maybe I can die with a nice set of teeth if I don't live beyond them.

Then there are problems associated with growing old.

White hair.  I am my stylist best customer.  Routine appointment every 6 weeks.  And I keep them.  They say once you start dyeing your hair you can't stop.  That is true.  I don't want to find out how much white has been covered.  I don't want to explain half white half black strands.  Maybe when I am ready for white hair I can shve my head in support of cancer patients, raise some money, and then let the hair grow back in all its silver glory.

Then there is the eye checkups and glaucoma prevention.  Do I or don't I have risk factors?  Is my peripheral vision degrading or is it just bad?  I can do the field of vision tests.  I am just never sure and second guesses myself all the time. Did I see it or am I imagining it?  It reminds me of the hearing test that I failed when I was four.  Same doubts same feelings.  Christine said I might be too cerebral for these test, which relies on instinctive response.  That might be a nice excuse.  I also apparently have a twitchy eyeball, which I can't keep still for a 4-second retina scan.  Dr Lucia San used to say my eyes are 'active'. I wonder if that is what she meant.  In any case, I can't work with a technician whose response was "you moved.  We'll have to do it again."  Over and over again.  She may be prepared to keep doing it until she gets a different result.  I don't think much of that possibility given that I wasn't consciously moving.  So I quit, but not before she awoke all my feelings of inadequacies that I thought buried deep deep inside.  I even had a nightmare about singing a solo and some music director said 'you didn't do it right - do it again.'  I have to believe that we can do things with conscious practice.  But I can't stop involuntary movements and if the test is not compatible, I don't need to subject myself to the humiliation.

 

Year end 2014

On our Christmas card, we said we were thankful that 2014 was an uneventful year.  The truth was that there were things we don't really want to talk about and there were undercurrents that are too worrisome if we dwell in them.

The new adventure we embarked on is real estates investments.  We finally connected with a good realtor and contractors to fix and sell the old house in August.  C no longer needs to spend 2 hours each weekend to check on it.  I think we set the perfect price, because there was a single bid in 2 weeks at the asking price.  San Jose home prices are supposedly going up, but the time saved and the fact that we were not doing anything with the place makes it a good move.

We bought a house, rather impulsively, in Katy.  Houston is expected to grow by the population of LA in the next 10 years.  Katy is close to energy corridor and we picked the best schools.  The price to rent ratio is 220000 to 1700, better than ca or hi.  But property taxes are high.  We were lucky to find Fernando who was just retiring from Aspentech to spend time in the RE business, through M. Mendez.  He gets engineers and is acting as property manager for us for now.  I hope he works out and we can embark on more adventures out there.  CVX has bought some land out there.  Expansion is more likely in TX than CA, if I stay there.  But moving seems like a far fetched idea given C's field.

A house came on the market in Royal Summit.  It was priced a bit lower than recent houses because it has not been updated.  There is a mango tree, and it cost us 920000!  Still mad at Marty for missing the 800000 house on Mott Smith with 2 mango trees.  Jim is helping coordinate the repairs.  We hope to rent it out, probably to Military expatriates. Of course that plan depends on ongoing military strength and commitment.  I can see us living there, if we spend a bit of time and money to renovate. 

Job-wise, energy companies are going though a down cycle.  Capital is committed, but revenue falls below expectation because of an oversupply.  Everybody made plans to expand, thinking to take advantage of the growing market.  Then the bottom fell out of the market because the growth did not materialize or there is an oversupply.  Why don't they learn?  Every single company is greedy but fails to account for the same responses by the competition - what idiocy.  It is pretty demoralizing to hear about drastic budget cuts several times a year.  At least I was not preparing 4 budgets.  However, I don't really feel like I am growing and I am not challenged.  When was the last time I took up something with an uncertain outcome that I was in a position to shape or influence?  When was the last time when what I was doing actually mattered to somebody?  Maybe I don't seek out those types of challenges because I don't like the stress.  But it does not mean I don't want or welcome it once in a while just to feel alive.

Family-wise.  Dad and mom are getting older and less social.  Diana had another brain surgery and recovery was more arduous than previous 2x.  More radiation is planned.  Great grandma Shigemura passed at 102.  Ranny hold Joey she was his dad's mom and gave away her keepsakes.  I have more or less given up trying for no. 2.  Becky's miracle at 44 ends up in preclamcia and a pile of worries for the development of Micah.  Finally optometrist appointment at the end of the year revealed field of vision abnormalities.  Family history of glaucoma catching up to me.  I too am growing older.

Mentors

People who change the course of a life with one insightful comment.
People who change your life by who they are - I am so lucky to have been associated with them.

In my life, there have been many people who have been generous with their time, sharing their experience, lifting me up, and helping me make decisions when I am at crossroads.

Fred Shair: Chemical Engineering is more versatile than other disciplines
Glen Cass: You will succeed in whatever you choose to do/set your mind to do.  (I took it as a compliment at the time, but realized the universal truth about being passionate later.)
Mark Zahniser: It is not what you work on, but whom you work with that matters.
Christian Seigneur: I work faster when I am stressed.  I write more proposals when the backlog shrinks.
Frances Arnold: Energy is the place to be.
Nikki Blane: I never lived beyond a Senior Engineer's salary, everything else I invested.

Greg McRae: Reinventing oneself and chasing challenges/interests.  If you are good enough, rules can be bent (true for Greg, at least).
Kate Baty: optimism, ability to thrive under extreme uncertainty.
Carleton Miyamoto: acceptance of people, their strength and their flaw.

Rick Flagan: If you don't do research, you will have to work with people.  (I believed him and reinforced my choice about grad school.  He was wrong.  You always have to work with people.)

Choice

Brittany Maynard ended her life with dignity.

Diagnosed with incurable brain cancer,  Brittany Maynard moved to Oregon with her family where death with dignity is authorized.

Some say she was brave to choose to end her life this way.  Others think she was wrong, because what she gave up was not life, but hope.  Yet others question the meaning of courage in this situation: is it brave to choose to die or is it brave to keep fighting despite overwhelming odds?

Each person has to find his/her answer.

For a religious person, faith alone may be enough to keep living and putting every day, every hour in God's hands.

For a practical person, the benefits of an extra day or an extra hour with their loved ones may be worth the pain and suffering.

Everyone who faces these adversities head on is brave.  Those who are in good health have no right to judge, not even a right to an opinion.

One thing for sure, if ever I am in that boat, I would prefer to make my own decision.  I will be the one to judge whether the value of spending an extra day or extra hour with loved ones is worth the pain and suffering, to me and to them, watching.  I will be one to decide whether there is hope left.  I will choose whether to believe in a miracle or die on my own terms. (I will be the one to go to heaven or go to hell.)  No one else should have to make that choice for me; no one else should have to be responsible for my life; no one else should second-guess or regret their choices on my behalf.

May we all be compassionate.  "It is people who pause to appreciate life and give thanks who are happiest. If we change our thoughts, we change our world!  Love and peace to you all." - Brittany's last words.