prayers and dreams
I think, everyone deserves to have dreams. But dreams will remain as dreams if we do not work to acheive our dreams. This I learnt it through the hard way back in P6. Speaking of which, cousin T is taking his PSLE this year. I wish him all the best.
I think, no matter how old we are, we deserve to have the rights to pursue our dreams. If anyone asks me, I would tell them frankly that I have many dreams that I want to pursue. But I need to be patient. For there will be a right time for the right opportunity.
With adequate planning, my next step would be to pursue a Masters degree. Not hopefully, but definitely. Am I being too overconfident? I think not. If I can work myself from anonimity in a neighbourhood school to TJ and then Honours in NUS, what is impossible? If it is a sin to dream, then I would say that a bigger sin is to not do anything to achieve the dream and blame everyone else for our failures, when it is obviously our fault if we haven't done our best. When it is obviously our fault when we refuse to accept failures and bounce back from them.
Food for thought as I was reading a book from McCabe.
People often complain of 'distractions' during prayer. Theor mind goes wandering off on to other things. This is nearly always due to praying for something you do not really want; you just think it would be proper and respectable and 'religious' to want it. So you pray high-mindedly for big but distant things like peace... or you pray that your aunt will get better from flu- when you do not care about such things; perhaps you ought to, but you don't. And your prayer is rapidly invaded by distractions arising from what you really do want- promotion at work... If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted.
Never mind if your prayer seems 'selfish' or childish. If you will be honest in prayer, acknowledging that you are not very altruistic, that you do worry about your own interests, if you will just try to be, and admit to being, as you are, the Holy Spirit will lead you into a deeper understanding of who you are and what you really want. For prayer is not only a matter of asking, it turns out to be about learning as well, about growing up, about discovering yourself. When you lay your true desires before God, you begin to see them in better perspective. Quite often you find that they are not, after all, the things you really wanted. If you bring these desires out into the light, but the divine light of the Lord, you begin to see them as important but not the most important thing to you. And so through the practice of praying, God will often lead you nearer and nearer to realising that in the end what you wantmost of all is God himself.
Not saying that this is only relevant to believers of Christ. But in many ways, it is true that we need to look within ourselves in an honest way to learn and to grow up. There are many things that we do not like in ourselves. Having the courage to know ourselves will make us stronger and yet more humble as we are more aware of our weaknesses and vulnerability as humans.
It is only through such self-awareness and knowledge that we have the courage to overcome our failures to achieve what we dreamt to be.
I think, no matter how old we are, we deserve to have the rights to pursue our dreams. If anyone asks me, I would tell them frankly that I have many dreams that I want to pursue. But I need to be patient. For there will be a right time for the right opportunity.
With adequate planning, my next step would be to pursue a Masters degree. Not hopefully, but definitely. Am I being too overconfident? I think not. If I can work myself from anonimity in a neighbourhood school to TJ and then Honours in NUS, what is impossible? If it is a sin to dream, then I would say that a bigger sin is to not do anything to achieve the dream and blame everyone else for our failures, when it is obviously our fault if we haven't done our best. When it is obviously our fault when we refuse to accept failures and bounce back from them.
Food for thought as I was reading a book from McCabe.
People often complain of 'distractions' during prayer. Theor mind goes wandering off on to other things. This is nearly always due to praying for something you do not really want; you just think it would be proper and respectable and 'religious' to want it. So you pray high-mindedly for big but distant things like peace... or you pray that your aunt will get better from flu- when you do not care about such things; perhaps you ought to, but you don't. And your prayer is rapidly invaded by distractions arising from what you really do want- promotion at work... If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted.
Never mind if your prayer seems 'selfish' or childish. If you will be honest in prayer, acknowledging that you are not very altruistic, that you do worry about your own interests, if you will just try to be, and admit to being, as you are, the Holy Spirit will lead you into a deeper understanding of who you are and what you really want. For prayer is not only a matter of asking, it turns out to be about learning as well, about growing up, about discovering yourself. When you lay your true desires before God, you begin to see them in better perspective. Quite often you find that they are not, after all, the things you really wanted. If you bring these desires out into the light, but the divine light of the Lord, you begin to see them as important but not the most important thing to you. And so through the practice of praying, God will often lead you nearer and nearer to realising that in the end what you wantmost of all is God himself.
Not saying that this is only relevant to believers of Christ. But in many ways, it is true that we need to look within ourselves in an honest way to learn and to grow up. There are many things that we do not like in ourselves. Having the courage to know ourselves will make us stronger and yet more humble as we are more aware of our weaknesses and vulnerability as humans.
It is only through such self-awareness and knowledge that we have the courage to overcome our failures to achieve what we dreamt to be.
posted by The neo-Geographer at Monday, September 22, 2008
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