Wednesday, January 23, 2013

New mindset

Yes, I know my last post was a rather strange first post for the new year, but you'd have to forgive me considering 2012 was probably one of my most challenging years. On the bright side, there were good things about the year. I was fortunate to move into a neighbourhood that I like, with the perfect environment for my dog, which to me is best dog in every aspect except that he likes chewing stuff he's not supposed to. I have a really great neighbour who helps take care of my dog and also gives me good food every now and then. Work was busy but we had a great year, and I get along superbly well with my management still. So 2012 wasn't all that crappy.

Still it was an emotionally challenging year, in terms of love, family and spiritual life. All of which are major aspects in probably everyone's life. So I guess it's not unexpected that I would come out of it with a rather different mindset on all those aspects. Well, two out of three aspects anyway. My mindset on my family has not changed much. I still can't handle living around my parents and I'm still not very interested in having children, unless I get a guy who can convince me that he's capable of helping to raise hem in a way that their view on love and life will not turn out as jaded as mine. But for the other two, there was a change, and it certainly wasn't an overnight change. Or an easy one. But I find myself now in a much better and contented state of mind.

Most people would consider the new mindset rather depressing, so I'm trying not to go too much into the details coz' if I did, I might actually end up making my readers depressed, or break your faith in whatever it is I'm talking about, which is not my intention. I would just like people who actually care to know that this is how I really feel about things. On the outset I will still behave pretty much the same as I always have, just because I don't like being asked uncomfortable questions about my unorthodox frame of mind in public. Besides, the ability to convince people that I'm always happy is quite amusing, and I consider it a positive achievement.

So in brief, here's my new take on the two main areas of life:

1) Love life
I realized that I actually don't have many desires in life. I'm not interested in a lavish life, big house, big cars, handbags, clothes. I'm not driven to climb the corporate ladder. I don't really want children. I don't have a dream wedding. There's only been one thing I've ever really wanted. And given the difficulty in attaining that one, I decided it's best to downsize my desires even further. I'd still like a relationship. But far as I'm concerned, commitment and marriage are optional. If he's not up for it, then it's fine. We'll maintain it for as long as we want to. And when one of us gets bored and decides to break it off, then it's not so bad. Yes, I know that sounds terribly un-Christian-like. How I can even consider it an option is unthinkable in my faith. Well, will come to that in a minute.
Anyway, I know I can be loyal. Just that most guys just don't have a good attention span these days. Either that or I've been cursed to attract those types. In addition to wimpy and weird types. I have such a bad track record with the male species, that seems to be the most logical conclusion. But I admit I also have an unsually high standard for guys, which seems to be only gets higher with age. It might sound unusual, considering most woman my age would take whatever they can get and deal with the consequences later, but well, that's what happens when you grow up observing a very crappy marriage. And an additional one after my first brother got married. The only good marriage in my family is that of my second brother's, who is thankfully the one person in my family whom I actually honestly enjoy being with. However, he lives halfway around the world. So not much help.
Also when you have experienced pretty much close to everything you would want in a partner, settling for less is not an option. You'd only be giving the substandard specimen your second best, while wishing he/she was like the almost perfect one you couldn't have.
But I digress.

2)Spiritual life
Quite frankly, there is no more spiritual life, coz' sometime in May last year I decided I no longer consider myself a Christian. Hence I withdrew from both Sunday School and worship ministry. I decided to keep mum about it til now because I still was on the worship roster until December, and I thought rather than request to be immediately withdrawn and have the schedule rearranged which no doubt would have raised a lot of questions, I would just continue to sing song until end of the year.
And well, since I still had a reputation to maintain, I thought better to keep it myself til end of the year, after which I could discreetly do a disappearing act from church. Which so far has worked well, since no one has really noticed except the assistant pastor's wife, who did make an effort to ask me about my spiritual condition and why I resigned from the ministries. If she had tried to talk to me much earlier on, when I was asking God to do his 'thing' where he speaks someone's heart and get them to talk to me, I think I would have been a bit more open. But at that point, which is quite recently, I was too far gone and just gave her a very vague reply. If God decided now was a nice time to finally get back to me, I have serious misgivings about his timing, coz' I knew many years ago that my faith would derail, I knew exactly what I needed to stop it, and I asked for it many times and waited a long time, expecting for great things to happen which simply did not happen. Of course, it also goes to show that I'm not that great a Christian, since I wasn't patient or trusting enough, and my faith derailed for what some people may consider relatively minor reasons. Even more reason why I shouldn't be one, I guess.

Sorry to my Christian friends. I went into a bit more detail than I promised I would. On the 'bright side', I've not become a Christianity basher. I personally think it's great if God is working in your life, and I wouldn't make any effort to shoot down one's beliefs. Such actions would stem from anger, and I'm not angry. I've just accept that I probably made a mistake in relying on something else to make things miraculously work out and give me what I need, when I should have been making more effort to take responsibility for myself and building my own character.

To my friend whose faith I know has recently derailed as well, for different reasons, my personal apologies that I was not able to answer your questions about why God does things the way he does. Or doesn't. I was having trouble with the same question myself. But hey, at least we can derail together. Weeeee.

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