Thoughts

Watched Eat Pray Love the other day and I came across a great quote from Liz Gilbert that goes like this,

In the end, I’ve come to believe in something I call “The Physics of the Quest.” A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.

This hit me instantly and I actually rewind many times to hear the quote again, and again, and again, and yet again.

Why is that quote so meaningful? Because it really touched my heart of what I have been doing all these while in my life. I am always the more rebellious one and I always want to do things different from normal and non routine work.

After SPM, which is the O-level equivalent in Malaysia, I was offered a place in school for Arts, which in the end will land me into a university should I studied well and the cost would be lesser and meaning, less burden to my parents. I would’ve chosen to stay at my comfort zone and continue that path or choose another path. I took another path instead.

Which was great! I ended up at Taylor’s College School of Hospitality and Tourism and I got a full scholarship for my diploma studies and ended up with a partial scholarship for my higher diploma studies. I decided to go against my parent’s request to get into university because they couldn’t afford my college but I ended up, fine.

I took a job which pays me the lowest ever for a higher diploma student. I was commanding less than RM 15K annually for 2 years, just because I was a fresh graduate and I did not have a Degree. I held on and worked like crazy and seriously crazy with late nights and what not. I had better offer coming my way but I pushed them aside. In the end, I got increment and things went uphill from then. Till recently, where I felt that the pay and the job scope doesn’t really match.

I was offered a job double my then salary and turned it down, but offered it to my friend instead. He is still doing fine. Why? Because I don’t want to be at the comfort of doing the same thing again and again. I was then managing the company branch already.

Half a year ago, I decided that I should just come out and earn my own living. No more working for anyone at all. No more answering to those budgets and quotas and sales targets of others but of my own. After all, with all the hours that I am putting into my business, it is still the same, just the income is more than what I am getting paid previously, just a little bit more.

I always derail myself from the usual norms and sometimes, I end up with more stress and sometimes, things goes our way and if it doesn’t I would put it that, God has something bigger for me in life.

I am still in the journey of seeking, seeking what’s best and not and seeking the hope that I want a better life for my future generations in what I am doing now. Of all things, seeking Him again was what I begun doing after straying apart from Him.

In my journey, I too met many great teachers. They taught me to live on, they taught me to be strong, one mentor taught me that, as a man, when we make mistakes, we admit it, suck it up and walk tall again. We don’t have to hide, we don’t have to feel shy because we are made for bigger things in life.

Still, the world sucks me in and I get all warped into being too emotional rather than thinking with a free mind.

I was lost but He found me and I am now following His path and journey, still I do get lost from time to time, but He is still there, I know it.

I fell and someone held me up and told me to walk tall and never let anyone push me down again, and if they do, stand up again and walk again.

Whatever happened to me for the past 25 years has been a great lesson. I learned a lot and all the learning experience comes very expensive, financially. Well, not all but most of it.

Physics of The Quest, is it real or abstract? I don’t really know actually. It all seems so real to me.

I guess, I do really need to find a time, a long period of time to keep my mind in a vacuum. I really want to.

Probably Turkana in Kenya would be the best place for me to do so. Make it a holiday. Get away from the World and find myself at peace with nature and God.