Questa è Enida

A friend stopped by tonight. No, that’s not true. It was I who stopped her on her busy track. I just wanted to say hello. But I didn’t just get a hello back. She stopped and gave me power!

She enriched me with a simple-but-simply-overlooked philosophy, that “Life is a process.” I thought I knew that all along. Well, indeed I did! I knew that. All along. But the trouble with knowledge sometimes is, we don’t put all of it in words. And when a great friend came along and put my knowledge in words that I thought I had heard before, I was stunned nonetheless.

For I realized that it was not her words that I actually heard. It was her thought. One of those many that I had shared. All along. In silence. And from a distance. She was there to say hello and release my wordless thought. The stopping-by was brief. But it was enough to have done wonders.

I am blessed with great love from great people. So blessed… that it made me wonder if in the many of my previous lives,  perhaps I was that smart accountant in Singapore, or that marathon runner in Hong Kong, or her sister in India, or was I that great professional gallivantor who speaks English, Dutch, French and Malay just as easy as her eating Nasi Lemak with sliced cucumber, boiled eggs, roasted peanuts and deep-fried ikan bilis?

Life is a process. And that’s what I am. In this life I am that thoughtful but wordless writer who knows very well how to love but knows not what love is all about.

Being thoughtful and wordless hurts. But that’s a process. Knowing how to love well, yet clueless about love… is painful. That, too, however, is a process.

But then, one day… when I have all the words and lose all the thoughts, the process will end. When I know what love is but know not how to love, I will end.

I would rather be a process in this life then. Be a work in progress. And in the meantime enjoy every strand of my gray hair, every wrinkle on my face and be entertained by every slightest thought of revealing the real name of that Shower Cap Woman (who had no idea that her middle name is also the brand of birth-control pills… until she got pregnant and did not know who the father of her baby was!)

I like this process of accepting that life is a process!