Saturday, July 22, 2006

melancholy

One of my friends is having a family crisis, and is moving away. It's the right thing to do, for loyalty and family, but I will miss her so much!!

伤离别离别虽然在眼前
说再见再见不会太遥远
若有缘有缘就能期待明天
你和我重逢在灿烂的季节
-- 祝福 - 张学友

(Sorrow over parting which is before our eyes
Say goodbye, and our next meeting will not be too far off
If we are fortunate, we can wait for tomorrow
You and I will meet again in the spectacular season
-- "Blessing", Jackie Cheung
)

...

This decision came as a shock, as I knew things were bad but I didn't realize the extent. Last week she skipped an outing that she committed to, and I crankily asked her to give us more warning next time. Now that I fully empathize with her situation, I see that I was a callous, horrible human being.

Two other friends are going through traumatic ER health ordeals involving either themselves or their family.

I know life throws us sometimes good cards and sometimes bad ones, and I try not to take it too seriously when either one happens. But it's still saddening watching my friends go through these tough times.

My dad likes to say, "Some people's lives are like cosine (x) -- starts at 1 and then goes to 0. Other people's lives are like sine (x) -- starts at 0 and then goes to 1. But when you take the integral from 0 to 2 pi, it comes out to 0 for everyone."

This may be a melancholy weekend.

(details in this post changed for privacy protection)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was an experience of your life :)

Anonymous said...

may they have the courage and spirit to overcome these tough times! :)

Anonymous said...

I like the trignometry analogy!!!:)

Unknown said...

I firmly believe that one cannot be callous and horrible through ignorance.

My sympathy goes out to them.

Anonymous said...

"If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;

If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same..."

Anonymous said...

I one time made a very curt comment to a man sitting next to me on an airplane because he had this huge parka on and kept bumping into me.

I really thought he was being inconsiderate.

About 30 minutes later he could not breathe and doctors on the airplane were paged.

I stood there with no seat to sit in as 2 doctors worked on him.

Turns out he was freezing cold from the chemotherapy he was recieving and taking a trip to see the Pacific ocean in Mexico for the last time.

I have forever felt like a complete jackass for that comment.

That moment sticks with me...

I wonder how many other times I have made some smart ass comment not having any insight to the full story.

The desire, once in a while, out of frustration to fire off comments still arises.

But now it is a more filtered output :-)

That experience has tempered me.



David :-~