“Always something new.” I starred skeptically at a phrase adorning a tissue pack I got from one of luxurious toilets in KLCC mall. No kidding, what a tagline. Can they guarantee that every item I find in this mall would be something I haven’t found or seen before? Wow, let’s see.
Being a shopaholic, strolling around almost every mall available in town, especially this mall which is the nearest one to my vicinity, all the items and events including they claimed as the hottest one, the latest one, are stuff that are not unfamiliar to me. And of course one thing remains definitely the same, for some great stuff in some corners of the store, are always not affordable to me.
Or could it be something the store wants me to perceive the phrase beyond its literal meaning?
Okay, I took the challenge. I gave myself another chance to find something new in this store. I passed around level by level continuing to search something new.
As far as I discover through the journey of life, is there any real new thing under the sun? The trees, the chasing squirrels, even the singing birds outside my window this morning was the same birds that sang yesterday. The way they whistle was also the same. The same faces of family member when I wake up, the same burden of household chores, same traffic jam,…and well, I think I inhale the same oxygen that circulated around the earth in atmosphere cycle since billion years ago. The raindrops, river, and sea were right there forming from the same water molecules within the ancient earth’s clouds through the cycle of hydrology. Even rock and minerals are going through a cycle. Nothing new.
I still argue over the same matter with my spouse and neighbors, even the same story in my dream as they are just reflections of my daily life challenges. Do the people have their same experience in the past, the same hopes for the future? Don’t be silly, I whispered to myself. But I bet they are only a kind of repetition over the same concerns and worries not far from school, children, jobs, marriage, health, money, investments, aging, relationship…..
Then I arrived at a computer centre on level 3. Tell me, my thoughts wandered wildly grabbing anything I found in mind. Emails, cell phones, microprocessors, digital images, huge data storage, robots, space explorations, discovery in the origin of the universe, even cloning and stem cell, they are indeed beyond our imaginations, they’d happened. They have changed the way we live in many ways. But again, they were all there, in the magnificent potential of human brain. The nature is there from the very beginning, waiting to be discovered. They only need to travel through some journey in time and brilliant effort to be brought out into revelation.
Pfff…wow, it’s a boring life. Hey, show me something new, somebody..!
As I passed a baby and mother store, I landed to another endeavor. Of course, a new baby born. He is someone that was not here yesterday. He is something new. But…how if he carries the same soul he had in his previous life? The thinking of reincarnation gave me a shiver. Now somebody has to offer me a good explanation what is it behind the de ja vu. Wouldn’t they be some events from our past? I left that for a while. I moved forward. The bitterness of being childless pushed me away from the baby store. Okay, now, what’s next? What are the new ones, where are they?
I decided to take some rest in my favorite corner. The Haagen Dazs. I glanced round the ice cream buckets trying to find something different. Gosh, even the famous ice cream company only managed to mix up recipes that have existed before, and they call it new flavor. I gulped down my favorite macadamia vanilla, when my eyes landed on a bookstore nearby. The books people have written are more or less dug from another’s thinking or experience. I believed that all of the new inventions, sophisticated gadgets and tools in modern technology are derived from previous development. Creativity is just another way of thinking and perceiving old habits and old things into some arrangements never existed before. But then, they are not new as a whole. Even history repeats itself, doesn’t it?
Then suddenly I felt lonely and exhausted. I looked around in despair. My hope was waning, when an optical store caught my attention. Okay, this would be my last attempt before giving up and going home. I never wear spectacles. Maybe, just maybe, they have something new for me. And there it was, lying on the glass shelf, a pair of glasses anything but ordinary. I heard the shop keeper’s voice behind me, “These special glasses make any object you focus at, disappear. It’s the latest invention in optical world, thanks to the lens that is composed on a basis of special mathematic formula with regard to the manner of light-wave frequencies and interference.” I held the glasses in my hands, couldn’t wait to put them on to prove what he had explained. And wow…he was right. I put them on to find object in front of my eyes disappeared. The shop keeper standing in front of me had gone. I only saw the background stuff behind him as I didn’t give a focused looking at them. I put them off and the shopkeeper appeared again with a big grin. I ignored that annoying grin and brought the pair home with me. He promised me that the glasses will work for eliminating problems and worries as well and that was the main reason I paid for it without even asked how much it cost.
As I walked home with the glasses, I had almost forgotten of my initial discovery. I was too excited to put my new glasses on to my sister for her worries over her single status disappear, to my mom for her fear of her incurable illness to evaporate, and certainly to myself for my despair and loneliness of being childless would be gone to the ditch. I walked home in such a hurry, I didn’t notice there was a real ditch ahead, I stumbled upon it and dropped the glasses. In my effort to rescue them, I fell into the ditch, grabbing the empty air…
And I woke up. My forehead almost knocked on to the edge of the table where I ate my Haagen Dazs. The ice cream was already melting away in the glass. I looked around in a deep embarrassment, hoping that no one would have noticed me dozing off in the midst of the crowded shopping mall. I rose from the ice cream corner ready to be going home. I smiled to myself realizing my adventure had come to fruition.
It is the way we look at the world, the way we appreciate and accept our neighbors and spouse, the way we are grateful of the new day a morning brings, the way we deal with life challenges and hardships, and the way we persevere through our concerns and worries. The glasses of point of view will make a whole world a new hope and new discoveries every day.
As for me, I will always put on my magic spectacles and I know I will always find something new joyfully.
--------------------------------
Kuala Lumpur, while joining a writing workshop in British Council with Sharon Bakar, August 2006
Being a shopaholic, strolling around almost every mall available in town, especially this mall which is the nearest one to my vicinity, all the items and events including they claimed as the hottest one, the latest one, are stuff that are not unfamiliar to me. And of course one thing remains definitely the same, for some great stuff in some corners of the store, are always not affordable to me.
Or could it be something the store wants me to perceive the phrase beyond its literal meaning?
Okay, I took the challenge. I gave myself another chance to find something new in this store. I passed around level by level continuing to search something new.
As far as I discover through the journey of life, is there any real new thing under the sun? The trees, the chasing squirrels, even the singing birds outside my window this morning was the same birds that sang yesterday. The way they whistle was also the same. The same faces of family member when I wake up, the same burden of household chores, same traffic jam,…and well, I think I inhale the same oxygen that circulated around the earth in atmosphere cycle since billion years ago. The raindrops, river, and sea were right there forming from the same water molecules within the ancient earth’s clouds through the cycle of hydrology. Even rock and minerals are going through a cycle. Nothing new.
I still argue over the same matter with my spouse and neighbors, even the same story in my dream as they are just reflections of my daily life challenges. Do the people have their same experience in the past, the same hopes for the future? Don’t be silly, I whispered to myself. But I bet they are only a kind of repetition over the same concerns and worries not far from school, children, jobs, marriage, health, money, investments, aging, relationship…..
Then I arrived at a computer centre on level 3. Tell me, my thoughts wandered wildly grabbing anything I found in mind. Emails, cell phones, microprocessors, digital images, huge data storage, robots, space explorations, discovery in the origin of the universe, even cloning and stem cell, they are indeed beyond our imaginations, they’d happened. They have changed the way we live in many ways. But again, they were all there, in the magnificent potential of human brain. The nature is there from the very beginning, waiting to be discovered. They only need to travel through some journey in time and brilliant effort to be brought out into revelation.
Pfff…wow, it’s a boring life. Hey, show me something new, somebody..!
As I passed a baby and mother store, I landed to another endeavor. Of course, a new baby born. He is someone that was not here yesterday. He is something new. But…how if he carries the same soul he had in his previous life? The thinking of reincarnation gave me a shiver. Now somebody has to offer me a good explanation what is it behind the de ja vu. Wouldn’t they be some events from our past? I left that for a while. I moved forward. The bitterness of being childless pushed me away from the baby store. Okay, now, what’s next? What are the new ones, where are they?
I decided to take some rest in my favorite corner. The Haagen Dazs. I glanced round the ice cream buckets trying to find something different. Gosh, even the famous ice cream company only managed to mix up recipes that have existed before, and they call it new flavor. I gulped down my favorite macadamia vanilla, when my eyes landed on a bookstore nearby. The books people have written are more or less dug from another’s thinking or experience. I believed that all of the new inventions, sophisticated gadgets and tools in modern technology are derived from previous development. Creativity is just another way of thinking and perceiving old habits and old things into some arrangements never existed before. But then, they are not new as a whole. Even history repeats itself, doesn’t it?
Then suddenly I felt lonely and exhausted. I looked around in despair. My hope was waning, when an optical store caught my attention. Okay, this would be my last attempt before giving up and going home. I never wear spectacles. Maybe, just maybe, they have something new for me. And there it was, lying on the glass shelf, a pair of glasses anything but ordinary. I heard the shop keeper’s voice behind me, “These special glasses make any object you focus at, disappear. It’s the latest invention in optical world, thanks to the lens that is composed on a basis of special mathematic formula with regard to the manner of light-wave frequencies and interference.” I held the glasses in my hands, couldn’t wait to put them on to prove what he had explained. And wow…he was right. I put them on to find object in front of my eyes disappeared. The shop keeper standing in front of me had gone. I only saw the background stuff behind him as I didn’t give a focused looking at them. I put them off and the shopkeeper appeared again with a big grin. I ignored that annoying grin and brought the pair home with me. He promised me that the glasses will work for eliminating problems and worries as well and that was the main reason I paid for it without even asked how much it cost.
As I walked home with the glasses, I had almost forgotten of my initial discovery. I was too excited to put my new glasses on to my sister for her worries over her single status disappear, to my mom for her fear of her incurable illness to evaporate, and certainly to myself for my despair and loneliness of being childless would be gone to the ditch. I walked home in such a hurry, I didn’t notice there was a real ditch ahead, I stumbled upon it and dropped the glasses. In my effort to rescue them, I fell into the ditch, grabbing the empty air…
And I woke up. My forehead almost knocked on to the edge of the table where I ate my Haagen Dazs. The ice cream was already melting away in the glass. I looked around in a deep embarrassment, hoping that no one would have noticed me dozing off in the midst of the crowded shopping mall. I rose from the ice cream corner ready to be going home. I smiled to myself realizing my adventure had come to fruition.
It is the way we look at the world, the way we appreciate and accept our neighbors and spouse, the way we are grateful of the new day a morning brings, the way we deal with life challenges and hardships, and the way we persevere through our concerns and worries. The glasses of point of view will make a whole world a new hope and new discoveries every day.
As for me, I will always put on my magic spectacles and I know I will always find something new joyfully.
--------------------------------
Kuala Lumpur, while joining a writing workshop in British Council with Sharon Bakar, August 2006
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