Back to Basics

I was in the middle of the restless crowd, train passengers, multiracial faces. A vietnamese opening up a box of newly purchased mobile phone, others in a group who came from a dragon boat training, church, or anywhere other than home. Most of them are in the present. Me? I escaped for a while. As I made my observation, there was just this split-second moment where I suddenly saw myself surrounded by mirrors without my direct reflection, but projecting the snippets of my past, and a glimpse of my coveted future.

I saw myself decades ago when my brother and I need to fetch pails of water to fill out oil-drums-turned water container. I heard my dad’s instruction telling me to go to his friend’s place, mention his name as a sign for his friend to give me my school allowance for the week. And there was I, in a cold place of the queen, making a better living, forking a blistering wind strong enough to lose the balance my slim self. From the short gander of past and future, I suddenly stepped in the midst of bucolic golden wheatfield with stunning group of baled hays under a magnificent spectrum of sunset. It made me feel I was in a middle of a panoramic canvas painting creatively drawn by the Creator’s mighty unpredictable hand.

The flashbacks and forwards happened in a snap. And then there was it, the reality of the present. The me who toughed the challenging past. The me who goals the promising future. Me. Myself. Alive.

My loved ones departed. My heart broken. My resources barely enough. But do I breathe? Yes. Do I love? Yes. Today I was reminded of the puissant meaning of going back to basics. That life is enormously simple, until we add too much color in it. That life is unique until we forged it to someone else’s without finding the truth. That life can be half empty or half full.

And that is my back to basic. The perspective that makes or breaks the refulging quality of happiness.