And still they rise..

“Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” – Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)

Smart words, ey? From a man who once faced so much in life.

Sometimes, I have just one goal at a time and I am focused fully on that one goal, taking small baby steps, trying to put my whole effort accomplishing that one goal.

Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, there’s some crisis in another part of my life; like maybe 1. my newly-appointed dashing second boss will become enormously demanding (no matter how good he looks that day, he annoys me at the time), or 2. my mother suddenly has trouble breathing ‘cos there’s so much pressure (don’t worry babes, the pressure really mostly about needing to balik kampung to Kuala Kangsar..he he), or 3. my father decides that there is an emergency that I have to handle pronto!

So this happens with such frequency, it’s almost predictable and rather nerve-wrecking, every time I start really buckling down on what I need to do to bring about my certain need. I hate that.

And trust me, when brick walls start to recur, I start to wallow in my own crapulence.

Then when I thoroughly demoralized, and lying around unmotivated, everything else in my life seems to calm down, and I’m just left wondering how to pick myself up again.

Whether I want to give it another try.

So there. Let me list here two rather common situations where these people have to deal with challenges:

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Scenario 1:

This one guy, he was determined to quit smoking, and he admitted that way before this, he has had several failures. But each time, he asked himself what he did wrong. I mean, he asked things like ‘What actually derailed me?’ questions. And later, he incorporated those obstacles into his plan.

The common ones that led to a relapse in his smoking include stressful events (like when some girl does her unintended blunder. Yikes), going out with friends that are mostly heavy smokers, and sometimes stressful family events. Eventually, he succeeded, at least for 1 month and a half now I believe, but I really think that he wouldn’t have done so if he just kept letting the same obstacles upset him.

Right?

Scenario 2:

Love sometimes can be quite complicated. They say that opposites attract. So I’ve heard.

Subsequently, what really happens to love faced with obstacles of dissimilar backgrounds, or maybe different belief systems or even geographical distance? (Been there, done that..he he)

This reminds me of my dear friend, Pau (not a real name. hehe. *Don’t kill me Pau. Please..) She has gone through so much just in the name of love. I mean not just ordinary kind of brick walls, you know. That’s all I can say. (Takot!)

Does it give us some sort of a signal impending doom of a lasting relationship? I mean, can we really tell whether we can sort this thing out. It’s like ‘Don’t worry. We’ll face this together.’ We have to set in our minds that things/problems happen for a reason. As long as we have mutual interest and both hearts are properly nourished, any sort of mind-blowing brick wall is just a piece of cake.

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But really. What I tend to remind myself is that, whenever we’re in trouble, or facing yet another impediment, which is rather continuously there (like having this really annoying mosquito that always comes back torturing, no matter how good the aerosol is), other people actually are dealing with bigger problem. A whole bigger, more complicated problem.

Thing is, challenges would always be there; at the beginning, in getting started, obstacles midway. There are always obstacles at each phase of our lives. I mean, of ‘cos we should really instill good positive mindsets all the time, but really. Face it. Troubles lurk all the time. They make us a better person.

Or not?

Life is hard, we all know this, but for every jolt, every pothole, every blindside, there is someone falling in love, there is some stupid sitcom that makes you laugh your **s off despite yourself, and there are children playing happily.

Life is just… err… life.