Au Revoir 2015

To the love of my life, Mickey, Tam and Adik Comot...
My darlings, your Wan Nyah is only an old spinster,
a bookworm, an introvert, a bit weird, a bit
eccentric, but one thing for sure is that, she
loves you three massively, genuinely!

It will be a new year day after tomorrow. Many people make new resolutions at the beginning of a new year. Not me, I am terrible at making resolutions and do not particularly see the need for it. Every year I know there are things I need to improve in my life. As time goes by you accommodate and you adjust to fit changes in your life. Sometimes there are things I achieved sometimes there are none. Well, even if you achieved nothing much, in terms of aspects of your life that you need to improve, of course, there are things you learned in a year.

So, what have I learned in 2015?

◾ Life is about making choices. This has always been one of my motto life and I always remind myself the importance of deciding where your life is heading. You choose. You might make a bad choice. It is okay. It is a lesson, an experience. Do not blame fate. Move on make your decision. You are responsible for your life, nobody else does.

◾ My reading is still very inadequate. In 2015 I read about 12 books. Those 12 books I have written a little bit about them in this blog. Of course there are also books that I started reading halfway and then I left them at that stage, due to my rather inorganised reading habit. In 2016 I aim to read 30 books. The reason is that, I think I bought that many books in a year. I am retired now, I should definitely read more. Reading makes me feel young, vibrant and energetic and is a pleasure too.

◾ Taking good care of yourself is very important. Your body is the vehicle that is carrying you your whole life. There are things you should take care to ensure that you are healthy in body, mind and spirit. Generally I do take care about nutrition and about mental health but I have to admit that I did not exercise enough in 2015. I was aiming to bring down down my weight to 65 kg. I managed that sometime in March or April 2015. Partly due to the fact that I had physiotherapy sessions twice a week all the while. However the session ended because my operated was more or less okay by early 2015. Now my weight is back to 68kg. ha ha ha. I need to be more focused about losing weight as it is important to my blood pressure and to my general health. Exercise is not only for losing weight but is also has many other benefits to us. Well, nobody is going to regulate things for me, so the choice is mine.

◾ Being grateful is very important. There are always things to be grateful for. Once you realised that there are good things in your life, however small and despite your difficulties, you can use that as a base to choose habits, behaviours and attitudes that promote positive achievements in other areas of your life. This was particularly true while I was undergoing physiotherapy for my operated right leg.

◾ It is okay for a retiree not to be doing anything in particular. That " anything" to most people, refers to earning extra income through various means, for example doing some businesses. It can also mean having activities to fill up your time. I am aware that in this difficult time, I have to be thrifty and learn to manage with what little pension money I have to survive for me and my three furry kids. People are different. Some people very much need the connection with other people or with a crowd or else they cannot function and would find retirement terribly boring. Not me. I have strong introvert traits and though I love to be with friends and family at times, I also crave solitude at other times. It is okay to very sociable and it is also okay to be an introvert like me. The important thing is for you to accept yourself completely and unconditionally.

◾ It is okay to be different. I am single and I live alone and to most people in my community I am eccentric. The old spinster with the cats, who doesn't talk much to the neighbours.  Truthfully, in my opinion, in Asian society, a woman is never considered really successful unless she is married. Some neighbours asked me, if I am not scared of dying alone. Of course, I am a little scared, I am just human. The thing is, I am not sure, even if I am married and I have kids, that I will not die alone. I am determined to take care of myself and to be independent till the last day of my life. That being said of course, you never really know what will happen to you in future. Have some money allocated for some emergencies, that is the best you can do.

◾ A simple sustainable life is good and meaningful. I realised that even I have too many things at home that my tiny house is a little cluttered. Hmmm.... in my younger days I did a little too much of those mindless buying. Things that I like because they were unique, beautiful or different, but which I did not necessarily need. That habit has very much lessened nowadays. I still hoard books however. Books are okay as long as I have space for them. After all, I have one or two nephews and nieces who are also bookworms like me and I can always pass my books to them.

◾ Happiness is choice, in the sense that you choose attitudes, behaviour and habits that facilitate happiness as the outcome. That being said, happiness means different things to different people of course. I am inclined to believe, happiness is how you are progressing along the journey. The destination, even though it is good to arrive at something, is not of paramount importance to me.


◾ I also learned for the most part of 2015 that most of our politicians are hopeless. They are indifferent to what happens to the country and to the people of Malaysia. They are oblivious or rather they pretend not to notice, the dire state the country is heading towards. They couldn't care less if Malaysia becomes a banana republic as long as they maintain their positions in the government.

(for a definition of a banana republic, please refer to my previous post entitled Food for Thought 5)