Broken Vase

Thinking about the week that is waiting for me ahead scares me quite a bit. 3 exams/quiz, 2 tedious assignments due on Friday, a response paper due on Tuesday and the 80pages long article I have to read just to do a 1/2 page response (which I'm still slowly plowing through). It feels like I haven't learnt much this semester even though the workload has been crazy heavy. O.o And video lectures are pretty torturous! May this semester pass quickly (and hopefully be a good one)! It appears that there might exist a negative correlation between the number of days you have to go to school and the workload of the semester. The less number of days spent in school, the more work that has to be done.

“Trust is like a vase.. once it's broken, though you can fix it the vase will never be same again.”

There are many variations to this quote and I didn't use to think much about it. Perhaps I even thought it to be a little silly. However, when I was trying to put into words what I've been experiencing, this analogy just seem to apt to me and I cannot think of a better way to describe it. The once broken trust will taint everything from then on. The consequence is long-lasting, and perhaps even permanent.

Let's throw in some more quotes on the topic shall we?

“Those you trust the most can steal the most.”

It's is indeed a sad realization that when you give so much and put all of yourself into something, that is when you are the most vulnerable and stand to lose the most.

Another quote that has the same idea behind it:

" Love gives us a power to hurt that hate cannot match. "

Love and Trust. Trust and Love. They sort of go together don't they? Can there be trust without love? I don't think anybody can trust someone that they dislike can they? That would be interesting! Anyway, back to the topic.

If there's no trust and no love and an unpleasant incident happens, it will be so easy to forget the incident and to walk away from it. It leaves only a faint temporary mark in your life. A rude salesperson, an arrogant person, impolite man on the train. All they are capable of doing is to instill a flicker of anger that soon passes away.

But what if it is someone you love dearly, someone important in your life? The difficulty of forgetting and walking away from the incident just multiplied by an infinite times. Let's take my dog for example. I love her dearly and she's my darling. I trust that Star loves me and will not harm me (but I don't have such high hopes that she will protect me if another dog tries to attack me! Haha). If Star one day bites me badly, man, imagine how hurt I will be.

People say forgive and forget. I believe that certain things can never be forgotten, things that I don't think I can ever forget. Thus I say forgive but not necessarily forget. In fact, we remember things. To remember is to RE-MEMBER: piecing together all the broken pieces in your life. However, remembering doesn't mean you bring it up again and again. It's one thing to forgive but remember and another thing to forgive, remember and constantly revisit the issue. I hope that one day I can really learn to forgive yet remember, and remember only. How nice it will be if all those past hurts and broken trust never taints my memory and future judgments/thoughts. never leave me with doubts and never cause me to have to constantly try and figure things out because I don't know what to trust anymore. Hopefully one day, the process of remembering hurts from the past brings back nothing, no hurt, no anger, nothing but pure forgiveness.

Let's throw in one last quote to end this post, one that I once heard from Pastor Tim Khoo:

"True forgiveness is not forgetting to remember, but remembering to forget."