Plateaus

Sharing some thoughts: When I feel like I'm in a rut I remember it's the little things in life that are important like having a meal with family, hiking the trails with a friend, praying in the morning and evening, dancing in the living room, writing a poem in solace, or eating ice cream with my nieces! Now I understand what it means when people say the best things in life are free! ~ Have a blast in July!


I wrote the above note sometime in late June in my Facebook profile earlier this year. It helped me get through some frustrating thoughts and circumstances that affected my state of mind negatively while I was at HK. I was searching for peace. I knew that could not be found in external things including my job, friends but sometimes yoga did gave me internal answers. Hong Kong was surely a pivotal point in my life. Looking back now, I had actually hit a plateau for the first time in my 35 years of life. Perhaps that was my karma and what I had to go through in order to arrive at where I am now at this very moment as I'm writing this. This plateau is an invisible line or a brick wall we all must move pass at some point in our lives.

I come to learn more about this in some recent essays. One passage from Randall Williams 'Back to the Woods' made an impact on me. He wrote, 'The world is now variously new and exciting, but old and tiring at times. It is new territory, but not without old pitfalls. The modern world too often takes from us that part which is the most important, the human part.' And, another passage from Marianne Williamson 'Enchanted Love' struck me profoundly. She wrote, 'Middle age is the age of regrets. Turning forty is hard (of course I'm not forty yet). You are forced to take stock of your life, whether you are in the mood to do so or not. Regrets humbles us. They take us to our knees and help us go forward from a higher place than before. There is something about age that makes the seriousness of life quite obvious. And, yet people age the way wine does, when our understanding of ourselves and others is allowed to deeepen and express itself fully.' By writing this blog entry, I hope to exercise that point.

The above passages helped me sort through my plateau. While at HK, underneath the cosmoplitan city life is an unwavering and powerful dragon, that could swallow its citizens up alive! The monotony of 'money-mindedness' actions and behaviors, the constant self-loathing, criticism and cynicism to make every task successful blinded by the use of the word 'improvement', as if at the end, success and failure are all that would sum up a human being's life, paralyzes the human spirit. HK's search and chase for economic growth, material wealth as well as consumerism and consumption at its far extreme in a free market enterprise, are certainly admirable but at the same time 'taxing' at the end. It's a hard-driven society with hard-driven individuals. I fell prey to the whole system and finally hit a plateau in early 2008.

If HK was the epitome of modern life, then like Randall Williams, I believe my human part was stripped and sliced away slowly and precariously in a system that favors demands without kindness, hard labor without appreciation and rewards, and relentless pursuit of 'success' without clear visions. All of that leads to a dead-end, without balance, without reaching higher levels of growth and therefore a plateau. That would also lead a human being to believe that he/she is not valuable enough unless he's this or that. But, if one is decent, kind-hearted and wise then that is enough to be valuable in our cold and lonely world. I can assure you it's not an Eastern concept or philosophy because Buddhism and Taoism are mindful of the human spirit and the balance of human capacity (bodhachitta, yin & yang, etc..). It is very rare to meet someone in HK who not only embodies a deep human spirit, self-awareness and an open outlook but also possess total joy simply for being who they are. I appreciate that rarity in a few souls and when I do encounter the like, I am completely engaged and fascinated. There are a lot stories there to share.

And, despite all the dragon tails I've expounded here, I still have abiding love and respect for Hong Kong. I value Hong Kong for all that it is. It was born out of nothing and came to flourish through huge and various struggles. It is not your sleepy little small town. It is intensely dynamic and ambitious. It never stops reaching for all it's destined to reach. Some locals criticize their own home for all its gross materialism and unwavering anxious level of energies that never stops. But, we all have to agree that there's no place like Hong Kong on this earth. And, most of all, Hong Kong is my origin. To negate it is to negate who I am and who my ancestors came to be. Without it, I would still be stuck in that 'aged' plateau and not climbed out of its slopes by now. The question isn't am I free now? but how can I keep my human part alive in our modern world no matter where I am? At the end, hope your plateaus keep you on your toes and remember the best things in life are free..(as Janet Jackson sang in a song with the same title)....Thanks for reading and eat your cake and ice cream too! Bye now!