To Giovanni, my young Mexican friend

Giovanni:

Nowadays, we do not write letters any more because we invented e-mails which are editable when writing and faster in reaching the destination. Imagine, in an hour’s time, you will be reading my letter! And because of internet, we meet virtually and become friends of language learning, which would have never happened only 15 some years ago.

You were asking me my point of view about the differences between the relationship now and that of before in the 80’s and 90’s. Oh, boy! What a big subject! I realize how narrow or biased my point of view can be no matter what I will say! But anyway, I would like to share them with you, not to say that experience means self-righteousness, nevertheless for the sake of language learning.

I know that you were asking about man and woman relationship, if just relationship, we can talk about different relationship such as the relationship between mother son, employees and managers, social relationship, you name it. That between man and woman is obviously the most interesting one which has been fascinating us, the most painful one by which we learn about love, care and reality, and also the most complicated one which involves endless aspects of our life.

I believe we share similarities no matter who we are and where we live.  China, Mexico and Canada, now or 20 years ago, apart from all superficial or profound differences, we are all human beings, which determines that we can not be that different! First of all, the reason of forming a couple has never changed: natural biological attraction between the 2 sexes. As the result of this attraction, the relationship has been added an extra meaning such as taking care of each other.

A couple’s healthy relationship should always base on true love, but unfortunately, a big number of couples choose to stay for the sake of social pressure, family, kids, comfortable life style, financial liabilities or simply for the sake of saving all the trouble in going through the divorce. The more backward the society is, the more number of people to choose these above reasons to stay. That is why we had less divorce 20 years ago than now, which does not mean that they had more people enjoying healthy relationships.

My mom told us a sad and astonishing story. Her young handsome physical training teacher in junior high in the City of Xichang ( Sichuan Province ) was killed by the judicial system after his wife found out his adultery with one of his students and the student was driven out from the school. It is never a glorious thing for the teacher to have a relationship with his student while married even now, yet today, we would have kept his life in consideration of the pure value of life itself and we would have become more or less conscious of the reasons of his secret “immoral” relationship.  On the other hand, people have also become more conscious of their positions and the better ways of expressing what they want…In another word, we and the system we have been building has become more conscious of who we are,  what we want from each other and healthy constructive ways of problem solving…

In Quebec, again,  this “Quiet Revolution” clearly separated sexual relationship from politics,  work and moral judgement. The 15th Prime minister Pierre E. Trudeau had driven the government and the Catholic church out from people’s bedroom. He said that the government and the church have nothing to do with what people do in their bedrooms, which also gave rights to gay relationships. I should say that this small, quite unknown to other worlds’ francophone Quebec is very advanced in this aspect, where we see people having a couple of kids without getting married or couples break up so often and easily. Many people would say that Quebecois ( more francophone, while more traditional people or allophones like Jewish, Chinese or Arabs are trying hard to keep their traditions) seek to avoid unnecessary bridal expenses & divorce costs and loss as much as losing faith in marriage or relationship.

Just a few days ago, a friend said: ” I do not believe in relationship”. This remark is not new and it shows that people are lost after trying so hard but failed to find the “Right Person”. This disbelief also has become a modern cliche which is the source of hope losing. This can be seen as an intermediary status between liberation and destiny and a status before a graceful balance is found.  Our society has evolved into a conscious and health-aiming world where we do not suppress our differences, we see no necessity to conform and we value and praise so much our individualism that any pressure from other than our own consideration or choice, any reason other than our soul liberation, any value preference other than our freedom are not sufficient to be the reasons for separation. This is the greatest revolution of all times and we are getting closer to our eventual purpose of life:

Life is precious,

Love has higher price,

yet for the sake of freedom,

both can be thrown away ( my translation. I will find the original).

Such is the poem of a hungarian poet: Sandor Petofi who described the eventual purpose of our life.

From this poem, we can say that our relationship with another person is not as important as our relationship with the dreams we cherish and the values we pursue! In Christianity’s words, that is the relationship with God. I try to avoid labels such as God so that I will be understood without any prejudice. Don’t we see, after many times of trying to make the relationship work, that people cherish the same thing will enjoy a long and nicer relationship? We do have a chance to find or meet the right person, but it will only work when both persons share similar goals and have similar energy to achieve them. That can be the solution to our relationship dilemma.

I see relationship first as a profound spiritual recognition of each other and hence a deep bond in soul and body. I see it also as a partnership or a corporation to make it work between 2 people who have similar goals in life with similar or different characters, similar mentality and level of energy. As of today, energy level and personal interests are as important as the sexual attraction, educational level or family breeding, because life will have to be lived, not talked or read only. In brief, life goes beyond and time extends it power within a profound relationship, with similar goals, energy and ways to achieve them and which nurtures the secondary love between the 2 lovers.

Simplicity is the eventual way to get to our goal between people in relationship. I believe in Chinese ancient Daoism which has evolved into such supreme philosophy of life: simplicity & liberation of souls. In saying so, it doesn’t mean that we understand what these words mean. The greatest of all is to learn to BECOME  S I M P L E  amongst life’s complication and complex situations, is to free ourselves from pointless accusations and detach our minds from any singlar past negative event or even mistake. All the fights between different believers, different social ethics and different moral grounds come from wanting to be right and have power over others, all the accusations such as lying, cheating etc between couples have blocked our minds in finding out the true reasons for misbehaving,  in searching for where we really want to go and how we want to be there. We do not want to crash the relationship by putting labels on people so to put out the light of hope and possibilities for changes for better, and we would be unwise to give any judgement before we really get to know who they are and what the matter is. I see all our mistakes and misbehaving as ways of struggling to find out who ourselves are and whom we are living with…Simplicity helps unburden our souls so that they can see clearly through the fog of life to always grasp the essence of the spirit.

After all, the purpose of being in a relationship is to find a partner who can share the most what life can provide for our limited life span. At my age- an age when one knows his/her eternity*, when one does not give a shit about labels or the fact that I might be too direct because of my entrepreneurial spirit ( efficiency seeking for adding value on time or life)…I am conscious that my life is precious and important and so are yours, and that I am true to myself while offering to others my sincerity that I do my best to be kind and nice, that I try my best in solving problems in better ways than the usual unhealthy and indirect dodging, lying or cheating,  and I give you all my heart and energy to be an excellent partner on our life’s journey no matter whom I am with.

Giovanni, you are only 24 years old looking for a relationship. I believe that you will meet some one who might not know what she wants in life, whom she really wants to be or how she will love you, but it doesn’t matter. The most important thing, I believe,  is to be happy and grateful everyday and radiant your joy to other people, be active and of service to people, hence you will be well loved. I see that life is so great in front of you no matter where you go and with whom you will be.

Have a good night!

Your Spanish language student

Christie

( without review and corrections)

* Chinese saying: When we reach the age of 30, we will have established our career; when we reach 40, we no longer wonder or be perplexed; when we reach 50, we will know our eternity; at 60 our words become pleasant and at 70, we will melt into the eternity.

Just went out to move my car from one side to the other on Fabre street at Plateau Mont-Royal, because from 10:00 to 11:00am, it is the time to clean this side of the street. Fabre is a street full of mature trees and leaves fall at this time of the year. There are so many yellow leaves on my screen that I have to get rid of them myself! Wonderful leaves, but they left their life resource and become a free colorful decoration of the beautiful eternal earth.

Got a cold 2 days ago! It has been so long that devil has ever attacked again! I just boasted about my good health condition that I had not been sick for almost 10 years than I am being punished by catching a cold! For the past 10 years, I have been protected by my active professional life and sportive schedule.

I once heard that being busy can keep us from our miseries. I believe that is true. I used to work in a little clinic as a receptionist in 1999 and I saw that people who are sick and come in for the doctors are always those same people: immigrants or elderly retired! Why? we might say that immigrants have not got used to the weather here and the elderly are doomed to be sick because they are getting old! I think that might also not be true, because we can see that many other sick people in other clinics are not immigrants or elderly retired. These immigrants are just as unlucky as those non-immigrants who have probably never understand why they are always sick.

Me myself got attacked after 9 and half months of being professionally idle… I have busy personal life, but for a person like me whose profession is as important, it falls short some where! I am not a person who vent my worries to people and try to seek solutions from else where, but I do have a kind of deep concern which sort of wears me down. I am at the end of a career, end of a glamorous circle finding myself at the end of the road in-between challenges. I need new challenges! I need it so bad that my body is telling me by giving me a little pain: enough wondering, fix the target and go for it!

I got sick, but strangely, it stopped getting worse. I just have a slight head ache, a bit of uneasiness in the throat and I look a bit under weather ( well, damn weather as well, always raining! ). I have been protected by drinking water every day, even during the night and also by the little magic Chinese pill that I take whenever I sense the sickness on its way…I have always been keeping these pills in my purse and under my pillow just in case…

My pills did not save me in January, 1985 when I got deadly sick after my very first boy friend left me. That was one week before I took the exams for my post-graduate studies and that was the worst once I ever experienced! 42 degrees not only burned my body, it also burned my heart. I had no one beside me, so I had to send for my mom from 8 hours of train ride away. My sensitive mom was sitting beside my little single bed, looking at me with her tired eyes. I really do not think she would know the relation between the degree of seriousness of the problem and the failure of my first serious relationship other than the physical illness. I never told my mom what had happened and I swallowed all the moral and physical pain I went through after the operation, because I would not like to be burned again by my mom if she would have known what had happened!

Very interestingly I find that the older I get, the less ill I become. Maybe it is because when we are young, the metabolism helps the sickness develop much faster than when we are older when our metabolism slows down. Sickness was my best friend between 10-15 years old. Every year, I fell seriously sick once. I would suffer 41 degrees, have to lie in bed for 3-4 days, could not eat or drink and even could not sit up. If I had done those things, I would have vomited.  And I had been car sick all the time until I was 18! All my teenager’s life was just full of spiritual mundane and intolerable sickness…hell!  Being young is good, because our spirit is still sleeping, it has not waken up to suffer from the attacks of the sickness and to feel more the pain…

I do not know how much of a connection there is between the spiritual conscience and frequency of being physically sick.  It seems to me that the older we are, the less we are sick. Of course, the more conscious we become, the more we know our bodies, the more we know the relationship between our body and soul, the more we are taking care of them, then they have less of chances to get sick. When we are young, life is just a colorless, endless, timeless days and months and years, we thought 20 years old is too old and we did not know how young 40 years old could be! Life gains its true meaning and strength till we get around 40!

Winter is coming with colorful leaves flying, yet there will be spring soon bringing out green ones full of oxygen. Life always has its course and we need to understand that goals keep our body and soul healthy.  We are getting more and more intelligent each human-being everyday, every generation in diverting our focus from our grown-up children to the continuation of our own course of life, to follow the balance of Yin & Yang and to fulfill the beautiful purpose of our life.  Be conscious and be well, we will age gracefully with no real sickness!

I remembered that  my previous husband told me quite a few times that he was “a person with no dreams”. I don’t think he meant that he does not dream during nights, but rather that he does not have dreams as such that he has not been familiar with and that he couldn’t think himself doing, or he does not have further goals for improving himself to be better> Of course, partners should share similar life formula, in other words, mentality,  behavior wise and after all, the understanding of the meaning of life: having dreams and realizing dreams! In other words, having projects together or our own projects to keep life interesting and us interested in with passion!

My divorce from my ex served as a very good example of this partnership NOT being able to share similar life formula as he had declared of his spiritual status , therefore, this partnership was soon to end after about 2 years and it was dragged another 2 years because of my traditional moral input! The exhaustion of this unfit partnership came to an end by me feeling completely suffocated and me slowly changing  into someone I do not recognize!  We did not have the important thing in common: the spiritual hunger. Thus naturally, we did not have other things in common to keep us interested and growing together, i.e. a dream of having a house , a dream of being able to dance, a dream of  behaving differently and better in dealing with neighbors instead of yelling at them for their misconduct, a dream of  being able to visit Vancouver after 10 times flying over without feeling guilty not to hurry home to see him! I just felt in vain to have seen him LOOKING at TV ( not watching ) in the evenings and having heard him complaining that everyone at his work was an asshole.  I was exhausted by this mind with no light for me to see in an already dark tunnel! After all, the partnership ended naturally by my highly self protective instinct that I should never be  changed into a paranoid doubtful little pathetic being who should live to give back the glory to nature!

I do not regret what had happened even all my Chinese friends thought I should stay against all my western friend’s opinion, because he is not a bad person and he is quite better-off as the site manager!  After this break-up and renunciation of all my rights as a wife, what I gained showed a great exuberant power & energy with abundant positive results! These just could not have happened if I had stayed with him, because ” I do not want this person be invited to our wedding”, ” I do not want a house”, ” I can not do this, I am not interested in that…”. Life was just full of a big NO every where in our life and my life had become so easily agitating to him and I had been accused and blamed often for the things I did or did not… I would have done it again and again to renounce my rights just to re-gain my freedom as an independent spirited person with wonderfully interesting possibilities…

Since then, I have been working as a mortgage broker for 7 years, obtained a few properties, I have grown an interest in interior designing and renovations, my modern homes were designed & partially executed by myself with soon to be beautiful gardens, I can deal with problems of clients,  properties and tenants with ease, toughness, rules, kindness and enjoy what I had believed fair and good ( I do not panic anymore!)!   Now I can dance far into the nights without worrying to hear manipulative words and false assumptions…and now I can visit Vancouver without feeling guilty at all,  and I can take a complete year off not working at all,  reviewing my past life and re-adjusting my life and goals after the completion of a full circle of real estate golden 8 years…After all, alas, life is of such beautiful liberated energy and creation that bring us everything we ever wanted! Most importantly, I had been very happy with projects which required devotion, hard work and techniques!  After all, I became the example of life that is meant to praise God, its dignity, free spirit and its ultimate value of life.

A few nights ago, I had a weird dream. I dreamed that I met Brad Pitt in his thirties, the 10-years-ago sex icon, attended dancing shows and joined charity activities! Very impressively to myself after I woke up, I still saw a girl reciting a poem in front of me. She stroke me as a very young and sweet person with extraordinary big eyes! Those vast eyes with wavy long eyelashes were cast on her oval shaped face and I was so deeply attracted by the expressiveness of the keen eyes which were obviously trying to say something sweet and important, yet astonishingly, there was no sound heard! Is it because I saw no lips so I heard no sound or because dreams are just simply mute…I felt quite sad about the fact that she could not talk out what she was trying to say, but her eyes were keen and diligent enough to tell what she was trying to make across, maybe not well received by the one she meant to speak to, yet to me, it is enough to make an unforgettable impact …

These are literary dreams. Yet do they have anything to do with our real life? Dreams are not exactly our reality, they are most probably the reflections of our daily thoughts or actions, and they might direct us to the place where it displayed in the dreams.  As it is said in this article about dreams, they are our daily events incorporated and complexly woven together . Most of the time, we are not clear or sure about what we want, thus dreams serve as some important way to help us understand what we want(our dreams), especially when we are about to enter into taboo areas…or even dreams can reveal the future results of what we are heading for…

Wonderful and mystical in a weird way, isn’t it? It seems that life itself has an almighty function: creating dreams, displaying thoughts and events in some seemingly non-connected way and eventually resolving problems. We need to be patient of ourselves, listen and watch our own dreams, follow the results that have been displayed there in the deep dark corners of our soul…of course, before they are forgotten after waking up! But weirdly enough, usually, what is deeply wished and wanted or what is of top importance in real life will not appear at the beginning of the night, they will always wait for us to fall into death-deep sleep before dawn to appear in our dreams,  to reveal the truth about life. In doing so,  the timing makes us always remember the important and meaningful dreams even after we wake up,  only to remember the details of the events and feelings,  to recall the direction the dream is pointing at, to receive the meanings of dreams…

As I get older and have less confusion and fear about life, I have less and less unimportant dreams. My countable literary dreams are getting closer and closer to the dreams of my soul: what I really want from life for my life. Life is wonderful and incredible with both kinds of dreams! It radiants energy and power, it liberates our soul and spirit, it points out directions and unfolds vision! Life hurts, but dreams console and heal! Daily-events-incorporated dreams retroactively print significant impact on our life with sunlight, life with solidity and no regrets!

Life without dreams is not worth living!

Old n shabby lamp

lights up Aladdin’s dark little room

though behind him is still the frightening shadows, the far corners still dim n gloom

the importance lies in the eyes of Aladdin, the eyes with keen n flickering flames…

Who gives us a magic lamp?

what lights us our path?

what drives away our fear?

n what keeps the flicker flicker n pokes up the dying  fire?

Flame n eyes

it radiants into the eyes, 90 degrees direct

they reflect the glow not slanted cause they are searching

n for more the reason of understanding the connection…

It doesn’t belong to his servant who traded it for a new

It belongs to the only Aladdin who treasured the old n shabby one

even though he lost it and has to gain it back

yet it is His anyway, the magic lamp of Aladdin

Am I your magic lamp?

n are you my magic one!

mutual connection lights up our path

we are the light for each other n we are Aladdin at the same time!

Poet: Hai Bo