Old cycles and new

Many of you will know that I have very recently quit a job I had held for nearly 12 years. It was time to go and look for new adventures, but the decision was not easy. Cleaning up my inbox this morning though, I found this old email forward.

I think Paulo Coelho summarizes, better than I ever could, my situation, and also gives me a fresh burst of hope and gumption for the coming days and months. Haven't we all gone though relationships that died, ventures that inexplicably failed, losses we couldn't bear or explain? Or long moments when we freeze, hesitating before taking the next step, embracing the change that waits just around the corner from where we live. Those are the times in our lives when the message, simply, is: Move on, move on, it's time.

Closing Cycles
by Paulo Coelho

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end.

If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.

Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

Random Hong Kong image #1 - The meat shop

Typical roadside shop selling airdried pressed duck and chickens and Chinese sausages (often fatty pork, duck, or a combination of pork and duck) plus roasted goose, duck, pork and chicken -- does roaring business on the eve of the Lunar New Year.

A salad for summer

I love vibrant colors, especially in food, and with summer approaching I am again inspired to create technicolor salads, moving beyond romaines and arugulas into combinations of corn and beans, coriander and tomatoes and lime.

Sweet corn, black beans and tomato salad

Boil 2 or 3 ears of shucked fresh sweet corn in water that's been lightly salted and sugared. Let cool, slice off the kernels. Combine with a 15-oz can of kidney or blackbeans (drained), some chopped red onion, two handfuls of plum or cherry tomatoes (sliced), the zest of 1 or 2 limes and a few tablespoons of chopped coriander (but really, who's measuring? I just toss in as much as makes the salad look pretty).

Make a simple dressing using a teaspoonful of lime juice, 3 or 4 teaspoons of good olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, a sprinkling of brown sugar, one bruised clove of garlic and a bit of chopped red onion--pour into a screwtop bottle (or Tupperware container) and shake. Toss the salad, making sure every bit of the dressing is evenly distributed, and voila! A lively, aromatic, quintessentially hot-weather salad is served.

Babies & showers

IT'S SPRING. Yes, I thought I should write that in all caps to wake you all up on a lazy Sunday morning. Trees are sprouting little deep red, baby-pink and coral spools of what will be flowers. After the somnolence of winter the birds are back making their usual racket just outside my window. Finally there is sun again and light and HEAT--not yet the sharp true heat of July and August, but enough to go out in short sleeves again.

I am suuuuch a tropical person. My ideal home would be somewhere in the tropics (or subtropics, which is in many ways better because you have some semblance of seasonal change without the extremes of cold.)

A couple weeks ago friends and I hosted a baby shower-slash-barbeque at the Tai Tam Reservoir country park for a friend who's expecting her first baby this May. It drizzled on and off throughout the day, but the food was good, the company fun, and hey, you can't let some dampness get you down. :-)