Wilful Sunflower

Hope everyone had a great Christmas :)

I've been a complete grinch this year, to the point that Erna sent me a text message saying she was worried about me. Yes, I was feeling extremely antisocial.... but I've realised something: that doesn't necessarily mean I don't want to see anyone, it means I only want to see certain people :P

So, while I opted not to join in the church's Christmas carolling this year, and didn't attend service either, I did go to Janelle's mom's place for Christmas lunch. This has become sort of a tradition with us :)  Janelle's family always celebrates Christmas in a big way with friends and family, while none of my extended family here really celebrates. I think over the years, I've kinda gotten 'adopted' by her family at Christmastime. Gosh, have we really known each other for 13 years already?! o.O

Later I had tea with another group of friends, and talked about God stuff... the kind of conversation that gets you thinking. Altogether it was a good day \o/

A few days ago, I joined a dating website because... well, I'd been talking with a colleague who suggested it to me. Those of you who've been reading my blog a long time might remember that at one point years ago, I went through a phase of joining dating websites, about... oh, 30 of them :P  (Can anyone say "desperate"? hehehe)
 
Six years or so ago I was not willing to pay money for such services, but now I'm thinking... hmmm... maybe. The site I joined allows you to put your profile up for free, but if you actually want to contact anyone, you have to pay; or, if someone sends you a message through the site, again you have to pay to see the message. I figured well, if it requires payment, probably the people there are more serious about looking for a partner, and more ready to have one.
 
I haven't actually subscribed yet, but I created a profile and did a search for men's profiles. Narrowed it down to men aged between 29 and 35 staying within 5km of the city. A glance through the 156 profiles that popped up showed me:

1. About half or maybe one-third are Chinese-educated. You can tell from the way they've phrased the sentences in their profiles, and the various grammatical glitches they've made. Unfortunately I kinda need someone who is articulate and fluent in English, because that's the primary language I use for communication.
2. Of the other half or two-thirds, only maybe 10% stated that they are Christians. I didn't actually count, so 10% is a highly unscientific figure, but it felt like 10% to me. I want a partner who shares my faith, so if they did not explicitly state that they are a Christian, I closed the profile immediately.
3. Out of that 10%, 98% stated they would take a partner of any faith, or listed several different faiths they would accept in addition to Christianity. This, to me, is an indication that they don't share my values and don't view our faith in quite the same light... so I wouldn't seriously consider them either.

One wonders what are the odds of finding someone compatible from the handful that remain after all this preliminary "weeding out" is done...
 
The other interesting thing I noticed from these profiles is how little "marketing" is going on. You'd think that people would try to portray themselves in the best possible light in order to get someone interested in them. Such was rarely the case. Firstly, a number of profiles had glaring grammatical errors (which is jarring to someone like me!), and secondly, the way a few of the men described themselves or their likes & dislikes... in some cases they were EXTREMELY honest. I'm not sure if one can be too honest, but I quietly applauded their honesty whilst simultaneously going, "Err... okay... o.O" at the statements they made.
 
I have serious doubts that anything is going to come out of joining this dating site. I mean, you never know, but it doesn't look encouraging :P  Still, my profile's up there for anyone to see, so if something (or rather, someone) does come along, it'll be a bonus ;)

My parents had -- probably still have -- a 'thing' about sending Christmas cards with the image of Santa on 'em. Any card with Santa's image on it would automatically get trashed. Yep, hard-core! As Mom would say: Christmas, after all, is not about Santa, neither is it about presents (my family doesn't exchange Christmas gifts), nor fir trees decorated with tinsel and lights (never had a Christmas tree either).

I, on the other hand, have a 'thing' about buying Christmas CDs with songs about Santa, Rudoph the red-nosed reindeer and Frosty the snowman. I own about 30 different Christmas CDs, none of which happen to mention any of those three characters. Wow, my parents have rubbed off on me far more than I realised! :P  And I won't buy Christmas cards that have Santa's face either... or rather, I wouldn't if I were to buy cards. Can't remember the last time I sent a Christmas card to anyone!

I'm actually feeling fairly indifferent about Christmas this year. Last year I joined my church choir and went carolling with them in shopping malls. This year I heard about the carolling again and was like, "Meh." I'm feeling antisocial and mostly just want to hibernate in my house like a grumpy grizzly bear.

Regardless, I might be all "bah, humbug" but I still feel strongly about giving credit to "the reason for the season". As with the so-called marriage 'jokes' which I wrote about yesterday, a song about Mommy kissing Santa Claus might be fun and seemingly harmless... but it is insidious. Slowly, slowly, these songs become accepted and embedded into our culture, and without realising it we perpetuate ideas and concepts which clash directly with what we purport to believe. Children grow up accepting Santa as an inescapable part of Christmas, focussing on the gifts which he purportedly brings, overlooking the miracle of God becoming man, the miracle of amazing grace.

I guess there has to be a way to preserve the wonder and joy of the season without making it about gifts, or shiny tinsel and lights. I really don't know how -- after all, Mom & Dad eschewed all these things and left me feeling very unmoved by the season, despite the fact that I know exactly what and why we're celebrating. The problem is, it doesn't feel at all like a celebration to me, since we didn't do anything to make it special. Knowing something and feeling it are two different issues; the head and the heart have to meet. If I ever have children, my husband and I are going to have to figure this out. Meanwhile, I'm going back into hibernation. *grunts*

Funny quote of the day:
A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.
—Zsa Zsa Gabor

Last week someone posted this in one of the social network mailing list thingies that I'm a part of. You hear "jokes" like this every day. Who hasn't heard the one that says marriage is a three-ring circus -- "engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering"?

I'm sorry, but I really don't think such "jokes" are funny. I think they're rather sad.

We live in a society where divorce rates are rising and even when couples do not divorce, that doesn't mean they're happy or fulfilled in the marriage or that they're thankful to still be together with their partner after all these years. In fact, a truly happy, healthy marriage is pretty hard to find. When you look at it that way, the prospects for a fulfilling and wholesome marriage are rather bleak. And then we accentuate the bleakness by making "jokes" about marriage, perpetuating the idea of marriage being a ball and chain, or reinforcing stereotypes of the domineering wife and hen-pecked husband.

Now, I don't think anybody should go into marriage all rosy-eyed and expecting "happily ever after". People should be prepared for the amount of effort it takes to meld two lives into one, two very different personalities and characters coming from different backgrounds, with different expectations and all kinds of weird habits. That's one thing. But there's no call to make marriage sound like a jail cell, the death knell of joy, or a harbinger of doom. Come on!

"Jokes" like those I quoted above undermine the whole institution of marriage, the covenant of marriage. Yes, if you're a Christian, you know that the marriage vows are a covenant, a solemn promise made to your spouse and to God. What does it mean when we promise to "love, honour and cherish" and yet joke that after the engagement ring and the wedding ring comes suffering? And then we laugh at the so-called joke, not realising that when we laugh, we are tacitly acknowledging the implication that spouses are often dominering or unreasonable. Do you realise how this actually shows dishonour to a spouse?

Also -- it's never funny to garner a laugh at someone else's expense, and in fact when we laugh at "jokes" like these we're laughing at the people who struggle to make their marriages work, people for whom everyday life is a challenge because for whatever reason, their marriage is in upheaval, or at least facing major difficulties. It's not funny to them, and it shouldn't be funny to us. It's not funny to reduce very complex problems into a simplistic, stereotypical script and run that off as a two-line "joke".

When I was growing up, Mom had a saying: "If you can't think of anything good to say, don't say anything." Based on that principle... if we have to be negative and cynical about marriage, we'd be better off saying nothing. And, if you must quote someone, just so you know, there are better people to quote than Zsa Zsa Gabor:

• Love is not a weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
  —Boris Pasternak
• A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' come together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.
  —Dave Meurer
• A happy marriage is a long conversation that seems all too short.
  —Andre Maurois
• A marriage is like a long trip in a tiny rowboat: If one passenger starts to rock the boat, the other has to steady it; otherwise they will go to the bottom together.
  —David Reuben
• A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
  —Mignon McLaughlin
• To choose a woman for a wife is not to say to Miss So-and-so: You are the ideal of my dreams... To choose a woman for a wife is to say to Miss So-and-so: I want to live with you just as you are... It is you I choose to share my life with me, and that is the only evidence there can be that I love you.
  —Denis de Rougemont
• A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
  —Ruth Bell Graham
• Real giving is when we give to our spouses what's important to them, whether we understand it, like it, agree with it, or not.
  —Michele Weiner-Davis
  
• Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.
  —Tom Mullen
• The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.
  —Carolyn Heilbrun

My favourite quote, though, comes from Winston Churchill: "My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me."

I need to give myself more time to write. It's not that I don't have things to say, it's that i just don't think they are that important to get "out there" anymore. Is anybody even reading this now? lol

Work is good. Some of you know that I started teaching in July. I'd been thinking of teaching for the past... oh, maybe 3 years and to finally be doing it was strange and funny and cool and scary and amazing. I still have trouble thinking of myself as a teacher; "writer" comes more easily to mind, but teaching is fulfilling and fun in a way that writing has never been. Maybe writing was just too easy :P

Can't believe that a semester has already ended, I've been teaching for a whole semester. At my performance review, my boss said I'm "a natural teacher". My jaw dropped! Like, what? Really??? I'd never thought of myself as a teacher before (probably why it's so difficult for me to think of myself as one, now) so to be told that I'm a natural has left me rather speechless. I know friends had told me they thought I'd be a great teacher, but they're friends, they're SUPPOSED to say things like that :P  Hearing it from your boss is another thing altogether!

My boss also recommended me for permanent employment -- I'd started on a 6-month contract, which was supposed to end mid-December. After I signed the offer letter with HR, I left feeling like, omigosh I'm really, really, really a teacher. For the foreseeable future! Wow!

And it's... good. Really good. I wouldn't say that teaching is my "dream job" -- that has too much of an idealistic ring to it. My dream job was journalism, which I did approach with a great deal of optimism and excitement, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to try it. But teaching is so much more "real". Can't explain it any better than that :D  It just "fits", it feels right somehow.

I'm looking forward to next semester!

Had dinner with Mom, she's flying back to Sabah tomorrow. Managed to stay calm and unirritated during dinner, which is great ;)

As I dropped Mom at my uncle's house, where she's been staying, she told me to feel free to let her know if I have any prayer requests. You guys know what I said, right? I said, "Pray for a husband!" (See? You totally knew I was going to say that!)

"Pray every day?" Mom asked playfully.

"Um, pray lah."

"You're serious? All this time, I always thought you were joking!"

I was like O.O ... I mean ... hello the WHOLE WORLD knows that I want to get married, how is it that my mother doesn't know? It's not like I've made any secret of it! I have continually mentioned it throughout the years!

I'm so baffled. I'm wondering, What planet has Mom been living on?!? Granted, this is not something new, but really... how could it possibly have escaped her notice that I really, really want to find someone to love and be loved by, to marry and to have children with???

Parents!!! *rolls eyes*

People keep telling me I'm smiley and I get accused of smiling even when I'm not. I think the ends of my mouth just naturally tilt upwards, either that or my facial muscles arrange themselves into a semblance of a smile even when I'm not smiling.

Over the weekend, I read a 2002 Reader's Digest article about facial expressions. [condensed from the New Yorker, original article here] Apparently research has shown that if your facial muscles move to imitate an angry look, you'll correspondingly feel out of sorts, and if they work together to display a sad look, you're going to then feel dispirited and unhappy. Usually we think the face reflects what we already feel, but psychologist Paul Ekman found that emotions can also start on the face.

This is interesting because we all know people who have a naturally fierce or angry kind of look if they aren't smiling or talking to you; and we also know people who have a rather dissatisfied, unhappy kind of look that seems permanently stamped on their face. I always thought that it was one of the vagaries of nature, what kind of look you end up with. I didn't ask to be smiley, I couldn't imagine that these other people would have asked to look fierce or unhappy either!

But I wonder if it's buried in our subconscious, and if we could perhaps change or control it if we tried to. I know I generally feel good, not bouncing-on-the-walls ecstatic but quietly contented and happy; maybe that's related to my smiley-ness? I'm told I smile at my computer monitor, I smile when I'm reading, I smile when I'm staring into space and thinking of nothing in particular... well, maybe that's what makes me feel optimistic and positive. I don't know.

Ekman (the psychologist I mentioned earlier -- remember him? hehe) asked volunteers to make faces expressing various feelings, showing them how to manipulate the various facial muscles in order to get appropriate results. Then he asked the same people to think about an incident in the past which would make them actually feel that way. He found that just making the facial expression affected the volunteers' heart rate and temperature -- which are physiological signs of emotions -- in the same way that the actual feelings did.

So if you generally feel unhappy or discontented with life... well, maybe that's due to your circumstances, which you can't really control or change. But you know what? You can change your facial expression. And maybe feeling better will help you to focus more on the positives in your life and that will give you the strength and energy to face the challenges or difficulties. I dunno... just a thought ;)