“If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
Thank you for teaching me to leave, 2014.
For showing me that the word is not just about parting
that it is not forsaking but actually bequeathing
that going is growing
and leaving is giving and living.
Thank you for the 40 plane rides that brought me to a series of coming in and going out. The places I’ve been to had several faces and I am grateful for the hugs, the smiles, the hand shakes and all the stories that amplified the purpose of my existence.
“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
Thank you for the hi and goodbye. It’s funny how we get a lot of apprehensions before we meet someone and end up crying when the time is up. Crazy, isn’t it? Just when friendships are forged and everyone is making good memories, time will be up. Or maybe it’s not the circumstance. I was the crazy one. There’s a part of me that has always been afraid of change so I had the tendency to hold on to what is steady, the so-so, the just okay. I knew it wasn’t right but aren’t we all like that sometimes? We hold on for so long hoping that the world will be in a standstill so that things and people remain as they are. Yet the clock ticks and each second brings changes that require us or our loved ones to move out. I won’t say it’s easy because it’s not. But if there is one thing that I got from a mentor, that is the selflessness in leaving. Someone must leave so others can grow. Someone must move forward so others won’t get stuck.
I also learned that in the story of leaving, there’s the one who goes and the one who loosens the grip. So thank you for the people who let me go when I had to leave. If the whole of my 26 years was a career trek, then 2014 was my peak. I owe it to the people who gave me their trust and love and sacrifice. To them, I give my highest respect.
I must also admit. There were words I had to leave unsaid. Call it play safe or cowardice or anything you want but to me, this is leaving in another context. There are battles that need to be won by silence. And if silence means leaving the words afloat to that vast starry sky, then let it be. Because some things are just beautiful as they are and walking away before they even begin or end is an expression of a greater love.
Finally, hurray to you for uprooting me from home. Thank you for taking me out of comfort zone so I can come back to it with more love and appreciation. My deployment in the global response was growth in all its sense. Thank you for the road, the long stretch of rice fields and mountains and seas where most of my resolves were made. You are a prelude to a grand crossover, my affirmation to what is about to come.
Thank you for teaching me to leave. I may have sank deep somewhere but you showed me that I couldn’t sink deeper in His grace. And so the journey goes on.
Thank you for teaching me to leave you with a smile, 2014. It has been a year of spectacular things. I now close the final curtain and take a bow.
Always in awe,
Joy
Joy
