celebrate

it didn't hit me until a full two days after my birthday that this was a pretty big one. i will never be a twenty something year-old again. i may even have to check the next age bracket now when i'm filling out forms. i've been on this planet for almost THREE WHOLE decades. i suppose compared to a tortoise or a sequoia, thirty years isn't much to brag about, but it just seems so old when i still feel like an awkward, moody teenager on the inside most of the time. :)

getting old, though, is definitely more fun when you have good friends to celebrate with! and celebrate we did. viv, a september sister, and i decided to co-host a big birthday bash together with theme "shanghai glam." we held it at a fabulous wine bar (JWOW) and felt the love from about 70 of our friends.

the birthday girls

celebrations are always wonderful. but i suppose if i've learned anything from these three decades on earth, it is to be thankful in feast or famine. to fully savor and enjoy each day as it is given, to enter the disappointments as well as the joys with a constant heart. to remember past goodness and always hope in future grace. may it ever be so this year, let my heart be constant...

from one of my favorite hymns, the lyrics that best sum up my current state of heart and mind:

Haste thee on from grace to glory,
Armed by faith, and winged by prayer.
Heaven’s eternal days before thee,
God’s own hand shall guide us there.
Soon shall close thy earthly mission,
Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days,
Hope shall change to glad fruition,
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

thankful, ever thankful.


cups of coffee: 2 1/2

mood: blissful

my-o-pia

we have such a propensity to be myopic. easily entangled in the trappings of daily life, our vision often extends only as far as the here-and-now, our focus constantly shifting back to the narrow field right before us, barely past the tip of our nose, and we plod forward earnestly with blinders on. how the i's, me's and my's resound louder than any other inclinations or pleas in our life. utterly absorbed.

i wish rising above circumstances were somehow easier. like in 'charlie and the chocolate factory' when charlie and his uncle sneak sips from willy wonka's fizzy concoction, discovering the carbonation enabled them to rise up effortlessly. what a delight....well, until they got dangerously close to the fans above.

i am happy. i can say those three words with a healthy serving of surety. i am happy with my work, my life in shanghai, my friends and sense of community....the list goes on.
yet.
i am always looking for more, riding bouts of ennui and dissatisfaction, wanting and wishing for the intangible and indescribable.

i suppose that's the tension of life, isn't it? caught between the rooted and the nomadic lives, feeling both satisfied and insatiable. the cries of "my cup overrunneth" juxtaposed with "how long, o Lord?"
the here but not yet.

sigh. a little perspective, please.....

cups of coffee: 3

mood: floaty