just minishorts.

I woke up rather early today, at around 5.30 a.m., to the sound of a defunct cockerel crowing outside. The insane cock has been doing this absurdly obnoxious business of crowing at the oddest hours, and I've been spending the past few weeks getting used to sleeping with a tight pillow closed over my head just to drown the random 'cock-a-doodle-doos' that disrupt my beauty sleep.

At 5.30, the sun's almost up where I stay, and in the dark you can make out the small prints of words in old, dog-eared diaries. Yes, I'm melancholic like that, making sleepy, noiseless steps in the middle of my room because of a-cock-crowing-at-every-five-minute-interval. So I switched on a light and started cleaning up the junk that's in my study.

I found my old diary with a newspaper cut-out slipped in between the pages. The dateline's Sunday, 9 March 2003, and its an article written by a certain Sylvia See. The article's on (ha!) lost love, and 'how the greatest lessons are those learnt in pain', all that sort of philosophical reflections, condensed in a 2000-word article that recounts the problems Sylvia faced with a guy she eventually drove out of her life because of her inexperienced actions of 'not knowing how to love'.

Actually, that was a digression of sorts. Because I've actually given thought to my journeys in life (not that many, considering the fact that I'm only 24), and the lessons that I've learnt. The conversations I've had with people, the men I've hurt, and the single one that has hurt me the most. I swear I could hear Sheryl Crow lamenting about the deepest first cut while I read this dated article of overtold stories.

We've all been there before. I've got a pretty good memory, so I remember the time when I first read the article over a year ago, I was just reeling from a very bad break up where the guy just walked out on me and 'never looked behind, never called to see if I was okay, never gave me a second chance, never gave me so much as an explanation…'. And I was in tears from the read (which explains the dried spotted splatters on the yellowed newsprint).

More than a year later, older and wiser, hopefully, I was reading it again, at 5-something in the morning, and smiling at the lines Sylvia had written.

Have you seen my quote-of-the-day recently? I got it from one of those daily office-spam that colleagues oh-so-love to pass around for destressing moments. Sylvia's got a more down-to-earth way of putting it, 'Love really does start with loving ourselves. If we feel bitter and cut-up and useless inside, then sure, we'll become clingy and insecure and self-righteous. We have to learn to deal with our pain ourselves and not dump it on our nearest and dearest.'

Have you ever heard this line before, when you quarreled with somebody, 'It's okay. As long as you don't make me sad, then we'll be happy.' ?

I was guilty of saying it too many times before, and then I had a very karmic-luck of hearing it said to myself quite very often. Because it hurt when somebody said it to me, I now know that when I used to say it to somebody, it must have hurt too. Since when did your own happiness depended on another person? At the end of the day, we belong only to ourselves, and we do not have any right to blame other people for the unhappiness we inflict upon ourselves.

When you reflect on ex-conversations, you remember the purpose of deja-vu being put into your lives. Over and over again, we relive arbitrary moments, and come to think about it, it really is like some huge test that God is putting us through, isn't it? You fail here, nevermind, He'll put you through it again, but this time, you're to play a different role. Sometimes, you pass sufficiently, but God probably thinks, you could have done better, so He puts you through a like scenario where you play a like role, just to see if you'll perform better again. If you fail, nevermind, after a while, you'll just resit the paper again. So it happens, over and over and over again. Until you find your niche, until it finally becomes, 'just nice'.

That's the beauty of life, I suppose. The process of growing wiser, and the stages you have to cross to realise you could have done better, and when new opportunities come, the things you do for yourself to make things better. That's a wonder and a miracle in itself.