Author: Rebecca Toh

“I think in terms of the day’s resolutions, not the years’.” – Henry Moore

I really like this quote by Henry Moore because it reminds me that it’s better to live our life in days, not years.

Also, it’s in line with my desire to not over-plan my life. I feel it’s enough to have a vague idea of which direction I want to travel in and to leave the path open for sneaky surprises. It’s too boring to plan one’s life out in meticulous detail. And the last thing I want is a boring life.

Anyhow, writing this from Finland. It’s at least -10 degrees outside and the whole day it’s been snowing nonstop. I wonder why we aren’t buried under snow yet.

I fell sick yesterday/today and had some time to think about why I haven’t been writing as much as I want to. I opened my blog (this wonderful place) and realised the last time I posted was in January. If only I’d written more. Then I’d have recorded a little more of my life. Then the memories wouldn’t have slipped away.

Going to New York City next week and I’m looking forward to refreshing my impression of that place (change my mind, NYC), but mainly I just want to eat all kinds of deliriously good Chinese food there.

All I think about is noodles these days.

I almost forgot about my guestbook but I just read it and I’m surprised that there are new entries! Thank you for writing in my guestbook 😉 It’s such a wonderful feeling to read these words written by people I might never meet. But for some reason these connections feel very real. If you’d like to sign my guestbook too, you can click here. And if you have a blog too, let me know. I’d love to connect.

“Stop” is a word I like very much.

Every day we are buried in a deluge of new information, new content, new this, new that. We are collecting and watching and reading and listening but not processing. So all of these information and content become just noise. Meaningless noise. Once in awhile, something jumps out at us, and we feel the desire to dive deeper or to process it, but we’re instantly hijacked again by new information, new content.

The cycle is deep and endless and tragic.

So it’s good to stop. Not just taking in less, but taking in none. Even one day of stopping works wonders for the soul. Three days are better. A week even better.

When we stop consuming so much new information and new content, we have time to look through our backlog of things we really want to look at. Books that are collecting dust on our bookshelf, an essay that we want to read again, an album that deserves our full listening attention, and so on. We stop consuming new stuff so we can have the capacity to digest the old stuff.

And it is the digesting and processing that is meaningful. We get to synthesise the new knowledge with what we already know, and we also get to properly learn new things without being swept away by the next Youtube video, the next great article, the next inspiring Instagram post.

Wishing you a Happy Lunar New Year and may this year be full of the best kind of stopping.

Two parts of an inspiring post:
Part I
Part II

Thank you Brandon!

1. My current favorite emotion is JOY. It’s light in the body and bright in tone, yet not overly so – a nice balance between happiness and excitement.
2. Big dreams, small steps.
3. When you feel lonely, it’s because you think nobody loves you or loves you the way you wanna be loved. But accept all love as love. Understand that no one knows how to love perfectly. And that at each point in our lives someone is always trying to love us. Accept the trying as being enough.
4. Enough is hard but always worth gunning for. (I have eaten enough. I have rested enough. I have worked enough. I’m loved enough. I have enough. Etc etc).
5. You can’t love everyone in the world, but you can love the ones you love harder. (Similarly, you can’t have everyone in the world love you, but you can ignore these people harder😂)
6. Wisdom accumulates in the person who tries their best to wake up from the slumber of life.
7. Money is just a game. Play it well, play it badly, it’s up to you.
8. The most interesting person you can be is… drumroll… your good old boring self.
9. Read fewer books but fall more deeply into each book.
10. Lesson #286 from skateboarding: If you’re coming down a slope, lean forward, look ahead and enjoy the ride. (If you’re still leaning or looking backwards, you will fall!)
11. Pay your bills on time, but apart from that, remain a kid at heart.
12. Whenever you can, be thankful for a seemingly ultra-trivial thing in your life. (Today I’m grateful that I can move my fingers and type this!).
13. Stop looking for your purpose in life. There is no purpose, but there is what makes your heart SING.
14. Nothing is scarier than empty beautiful photographs (or art).
15. If you find yourself saying “Aiyah cannot one lah” immediately change it to “CAN ONE LAH!”
16. Make no distinction between hard and soft, art and business, life and death.
17. Listen > talk.
18. We are not more special, but we’re no less special.
19. Wander aimlessly – it’s okay.
20. We all view the world through a particular lens. If you’re unhappy, change/discard the lens.
21. Force yourself to do hard things. Then enjoy the easy that comes after.
22. In the end, the highest goal is effortlessness.
Bonus 23. You or I can go anytime. We can lose everything, anything, anytime. There is no guarantee in life or death. Change is constant. Life is transient. It’s all impermanent. On this basis, let’s stop resisting joy. And may all the suffering in the world be transmuted by time. From dust, to dust. Let’s enjoy being here for now.

“Unless you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – C.G. Jung

“Do not struggle. Go with the flow of things, and you will find yourself at one with the mysterious unity of the Universe.” – Zhuangzi

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” – Thich Nhat Hanh