viewfromthecliff

What is love ?

2004-08-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

Have your loved one ever asked you this : Do you love me ?

Ahhh ... yes , of course, I do love you, love you sooooo much ... why ???

Really ???

Ahhh ... wow, what a question !!! ... hey, by the way, before I answer you that question, can you first "define" what love is ??? ... then I'll tell you if I love you ...

Find a way out, you think, right ??? ... lucky you :-) ...

But, like always, she comes prepared, and you get her solemn recital of 1 Corinthians 13 :

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Ahhh ... wow, what a mouthful !!!

Love is an elusive subject ... the more you say about it, the more you feel you can't say it all ... the more you want to grasp it, the more you feel you can't grasp it all ...

Maybe we should try this, just 4 little words ... love is the feeling of familiarity and closeness, and trust and acceptance ...

Love means you can do silly, foolish or even stupid things in front of your loved one ... you are as free as can be, free to be yourself and free to express yourself fully 'cause you know the trust and acceptance is there in the relationship, emanating from your other half ...

I somehow find this very amusing ... all along, I have been asking this love question from a 'from-me-to-you' perspective -- Do I love you ??? ... now, it turns out that the question should instead be answered in a 'from-you-to-me' manner ... I can only know about love when it comes from you with all the familiarity and closeness, and all the trust and acceptance you are sharing with me ...

And shouldn't this answer the whole thing -- 'cause like flipping the coin, you know you love her when you are sharing all the familiarity and closeness, and all the trust and acceptance with her ...

When I think about it a bit more, I think this is exactly what our kids are doing ... they always do silly, foolish or even stupid things in front of us 'cause they know we love them ... and they are happy kids 'cause they feel all the familiarity and closeness, and all the trust and acceptance from us ...

We should all learn this from our kids, to make us a happier and more lovable person :-) ...

I was wrong ...

2004-07-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

I was wrong on June 27 when I wrote about that railroad station scene in The Hours ... I said :

Watch the tears rolling down her face, and the tears rolling down Stephen Dillane's face, who played Leonard Woolf, Virginia's husband in the movie, and you will know how heavy life can be, and what sacrifice, hence love, is ...

I was wrong with the word 'sacrifice' ... there shouldn't be any sacrifice in love ... that idea - that it is a sacrifice - shouldn't pop up at all ... if you feel like you are making a sacrifice for others, love is already debased ...

That is why after Leonard agreed to move back to London, he simply said, "I am a bit hungry ... let's go home and eat ..."

It is life; it is love, as simple, as natural and as free flowing as that ...

It is not I-am-going-back-to-London-just-because-of-you-and-it-is-my-sacrifice-to-you ...

Is it in movies only ?

2004-07-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

You watch Fiddler on the Roof and you see people driven away from where they lived ...

You watch The Pianist and you see people building walls ...

Oh yeah, they only happened in the past ... and you only see them in movies ...

Really ???

From Nicole to Virginia ...

2004-07-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

From the movie to the book ... from The Hours to A Room of One's Own ...

From Nicole to Virginia ... that is, Viriginia Woolf ...

When she was asked to speak about Woman and Fiction, Viriginia wrote A Room of One's Own in 1928 ... and she said : A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction ...

Really ??? ... you need money and a room of one's own to write fiction ??? ... keep turning the pages and you will see a very different world ... a world in which women was locked up, beaten and flung about the room ... yes, Viriginia gives us one of the greatest feminist polemics of the century ...

No question about it -- we are living in a much better world now ... but it has been a long way, taken a long time ... and among us, there are still the many unfortunate ones living under discrimination ...

And don't forget this, that Viriginia said, "Opinions that one now pastes in a book labelled cock-a-doodle-dum and keeps for reading to select audiences on summer nights once drew tears, I can assure you" ...

So, think carefully what you are doing now, think carefully what you are saying now ... years later, it could land on those cock-a-doodle-dum books but drawing tears now ...

Nicole Kidman

2004-06-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

I am not a Nicole Kidman fan ...

She is so beautiful, so gorgeous ... but sometimes when I look at her pictures, or, more exactly, her pose for pictures, somehow I got the feeling that something hollow is there, maybe in her eyes; that something unreal, something out of reach, something out of touch, is there ...

I am not a Nicole Kidman fan until the movie The Hours ...

I couldn't even recognize that is Nicole in the movie playing Virginia Woolf ... the intensity, the look -- not hollow any more, but staring right at the heaviness of life ... everything is so 'un-Nicole' ...

Watch that scene at the railroad station when she uttered the line You can't find peace by avoiding life ...

Watch the tears rolling down her face, and the tears rolling down Stephen Dillane's face, who played Leonard Woolf, Virginia's husband in the movie, and you will know how heavy life can be, and what sacrifice, hence love, is ...

Then I am hooked ...

Get the movie and watch it yourself ... see if you'll get hooked too ...

Why bad things happen ?

2004-06-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

Good things happen; bad things happen ... when good things happen, we sit on the top of the world and never ask why ... but when bad things happen, we want to know why ...

But can we answer all the why's ??? ... some think we can -- that there is a grand design, a masterful scheme behind; that the deity has complete sovereignty over us to make us humbled in front of it with all the sufferings ...

Is this so ???

No one can really tell ... no one can really put it into a scientific test and establish an irrefutable causal relationship 'cause deity is not subject to proof ...

Hence comes the argument of faith and the cliché Leap of Faith ... but what do you mean by Faith ??? ... and Leap ???

We don't, and probably will never, know all the things ... chance and luck still plays a large part in our daily lives ... maybe there are indeed things that we cannot speak about for not knowing them, not understanding them ...

Maybe the best answer is from Wittgenstein: What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence ...

Dom & Lon

2004-06-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

I want to say thanks to two guys ...

Dom, for being my friend for so long ... we can almost create a series called Breakfasts with Dom ... Dom has a PhD in physics but our chat is more than just about atoms or E=MC2 ... we talk about religion, consciousness and many other things too ... thanks to Dom, I am introduced to a much bigger world ...

Lon ... I haven't seen a guy like Lon before who is so passionate about the religion he is following ... he is out there to change lives, to bring hope to people, to help people ... thanks to Lon, I now see a Christian who is more Christian, of more action than mere words ... wow, a Christian can be like this !!!

Truthfully down deep from the bottom of my heart, I respect you guys, Dom and Lon, though I don't agree with all that you guys say ... well, great minds think alike ... only alike, not identical, not in mirror images :) ... it would be boring if everyone thinks identical ... don't you guys think so !!!

Why the name viewfromthecliff ?

2004-06-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

Well, want to sound different ... so first thought of Differentview but it is already taken so no choice but to pick another one ........

I am not an outdoor guy, never like walking trails, going to mountains ... plus, I've been living in Hong Kong for most of my life ... such a small place with so many people ... not much chance to really see a mountain, let alone a cliff ...

I then came to Toronto ... once, I drove around the city, wanted to find Scarborough Bluffs ... I drove down Brimley and got there ... wow, already so many people, not my cup of tea ... so I took the way back but I made a wrong turn at Midland -- hey, who cares ??? ... kept driving and I came to a park, next to the Scarborough Pumping Station ...

You can see Lake Ontario from there ... wanted to see more, walked a bit further, a bit closer ... wow, there is then the steep slope -- it is right above the Bluffs -- not a big cliff, but the slope is indeed very steep ...

But you also get a breathtaking view of Lake Ontario ...

Only if you walk a bit further, a bit closer ... only if you overcome your vertigo fear ... only if you dare the comfort, rock the status quo ...

Oh, by the way, my name is Cliff ....................

Everything has a beginning .........

2004-06-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Hmm ... never did it before ... actually never thought of publishing anything before ... thanks to technology and here I am having a first taste of letting people know who I am, what I think ... maybe this is the first step to come to the global village ...