When should we change?

At some point in time, almost everyone would have lacked the courage to express love. Or to take the leap of faith to love, for that matter.

I didn't allow myself to pursue it.

This experience of lacking the courage to love (or to fight for it), is a very good lesson for me.

Because of what held me back, religious differences prove to be a really huge hurdle for people to cross. Especially when the other party is fiercely devoted to his/ her religious beliefs, and of which defers from our own/ or the lack of compatibility in beliefs.

Through this, i found out that we should only change when we are ready and when the need/ want is innate. I never knew i had this conviction until now, what more the intensity of it. Never for anyone, or to salvage any situation, but because we want to, from the bottom of our hearts.

Please remember that.

And of course, it is just one out of the many lessons this episode taught me.

As much as i have had my fair share of sleepless nights and rollercoaster days, i'm not complaining about having to go through all these. What better ways to live life, than to go through all the ups and downs and feel each emotion at their very core. I don't like the sadness and heartbreaks, but i love that i had the chance to soak in the emotions thoroughly.

Live and feel more.

(:

Love more.

I dont know how to put my thoughts about this photo into words, i just thought that this picture is so soft and it captured so much love.

There is no way i would know for sure if they are father and son, no way i would know for sure if anyone was bullying the kid prior to this photo being taken. But what i see is an anti-thesis of what a person would normally construe of a guy with tattoos, and i see how the guy means the world to the boy at that instant. I see protection, a shelter and peace. Like a quiet certainty that the world is going to be okay.

More generally, everybody could do with more hugs.

So don't be stingy with them!

(:

What does love mean?

See How 4-8 Year-Old Kids Describe Love

When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.

Rebecca- age 8

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2. “When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.

You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”

Billy – age 4

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3. “Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.”

Karl – age 5

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4. “Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.”

Chrissy – age 6

5. “Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.”

Terri – age 4

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6. “Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.”

Danny – age 7

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7. “Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss”

Emily – age 8

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8. “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

Bobby – age 7 (Wow!)

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9. “If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,”

Nikka – age 6

(we need a few million more Nikka’s on this planet)

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10. “Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.”

Noelle – age 7

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11. “Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.”

Tommy – age 6

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12. “During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.”

Cindy – age 8

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13. “My mommy loves me more than anybody . You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.”

Clare – age 6

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14. “Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.”

Elaine-age 5

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15. “Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.”

Chris – age 7

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16. “Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.”

Mary Ann – age 4

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17. “I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.”

Lauren – age 4

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18. “When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” (what an image)

Karen – age 7

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19. “Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross.”

Mark – age 6

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20. “You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.”

Jessica – age 8

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21. And the final one — Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge.

The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, “Nothing, I just helped him cry”

- from http://www.thingsaboutlove.com/what-does-love-mean

I love the ones in orange.

What does love mean to you?

What the author meant.

I've been wanting to blog about this since forever and i'm finally getting down to doing it.

Came across this when i was surfing tumblr randomly:

I was a lit kid and i could totally connect with this haha. I used to do Wilfred Owen's poems and we were analyzing a bending black shadow and my tutor said something about the soldier being forlorn and missing home, after being out alone in the battle field for so long.

While it is fun dissecting poems and going through each word and stanza interpreting them in our own ways, sometimes i do a double take and wonder if we are looking too much into things. I find myself often facing this even now, now that i am in the social services.

When a client says that she is fine, do we pursue? After exploring for the tenth time and she maintains that she is coping (but we disagree when we pit it against our own living standards), do we still pursue? Having went through episodes of heated discussions, i have learnt enough to know that we all develop our own baselines for intervention in the profession. They might not be the catch-all, they might not sit well with everyone, they might not be the best baselines ever. But, at the end of the day, with everything being so subjective, is there ever a "right" baseline?

My first is health but i'm not going to stop exploring and expanding.

What's yours?