One third of me admire them for being so open in such a public kind of thing, another third of me wonders why they would want to expose themselves like this, and the last 1/3 of me is aching to ask, why does everyone keep writing like that?

One person after the other. It’s like a penyakit yang sedang merabak.

Especially when some of them are doing it so often.

It feels so.. something.. to be the Very Emo Kid, doesn’t it?

Aww, c’mon. Life’s too short to spend it this way. Need a cure for tears and the blues? I’ve got a foolproof way.

See that MSN display name? Click it, change it, quote any line from any of those feel-good songs, like Beautiful Day, or It’s My Life.

Or, see that Blogger Post-It? Click it, type, write about something that’s at least relatively cheerful. It helps take your mind off things, and better yet, it’s like a reminder to yourself. Reminder to not sulk.

Background Chorus: “F+ck you Chooiyen! I am uber sad and Emo and you will never understand me! Nevah!!”

Look, all people go through things like that. Being falsely accussed by someone really dear, being confused about who you are and what people think of you, being one-minute-sad, one-minute-happy, one-minute-VERY-DEPRESSED over that Teenage Crush thing, feeling insecure about what people (or more specifically, your friends) think about you or if they really would “always be there”, not being trusted by people YOU trust, wondering if you’re being what’s expected of you…

I’m beginning to sound lame, but point is, everyone has been through that at one point or another.

Background Chorus: “Surely you’re not saying we cannot be sad because everyone has been sad before?”

I don’t mean that, of course.

Happiness is there. You just need to Cowboy Up and get it.

“Cowboy Up”, because the world ain’t gonna stop and come to you, but you have to COWBOY UP and go get what you want. (Cowboys and lasso-ing stuff, see?)

I know that MSN display name method and that Blogger method may sound like just another name for the Lying To Oneself, Pretending Everything’s Perfectly Fine method.

Well, maybe they are. But what the heck, it works anyway! So why question a fool-proof way to success?

I know it is foolproof, because it’s tried and tested, by me. So if you see I’ve got an exceptionally gay-and-happy nickname on MSN, know that I’m either really exceptionally happy that day, or I’m having the blues.

It’s probably the latter, but Fish It, who cares, I’ve got a sure-fire way to overcome it!

Lately, I’ve been going through a lot of stuff I’ve collected all these years, particularly the poems. Poems found on the net, poems I wrote myself, and poems written by people I know.

And I came accross this poem that I have not read in a very long time. But I remember it was my favourite poem when I was in Form1/2; I liked it so much, I’ve had it committed to memory, and I would recite whenever I felt like it. I even did it when I was in the toilet (dead serious!). Surprisingly, I could still recite the thing after all these years.

I didn’t quite realize it at first, but I guess you could say, this was the poem that made the most of what I am now. Because it has given me a dream, and if nothing else, dreams are really what Makes you. And it’s the greatest dream that I ever had.

What poem so Big-assedly Amazing woh?

Neh, this poem.

The Cold Within

Six men trapped in happenstance
In bleak and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story’s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
The first man held his back
For of the faces around the fire,
He noticed one was black.

The next man looking cross the way
Saw one not of his church,
And couldn’t bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third man sat in tattered clothes;
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store.
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
Did naught except for gain.
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.

The logs held tight in death’s still hands
Was proof of human sin.
They didn’t die from the cold without,
They died from the cold within.

Tell me that’s amazing. Don’t tell me it isn’t.

Perhaps we’ve been playing the role of the selfish rich man or the man who “does naught except for gain” a little too long.

We’re not filthy rich, but we have enough money. And not everyone has enough money.

I remember there were times I was asked for donation from, and I’d donate RM10, and a second after it’s too late, I’d feel the regret. “Wah, four times of this and I could buy CD liaw!” Nah, RM10 to me is a lot of money, simple as that.

By the way, when I mean donation, I’m not talking about Tan Lin’s “Derma untuk sekolah. Derma untuk pusat sukan.” I really meant donation for the really needy.

It was very selfish of me, to think like that. But you know what the saddest thing was? That RM10 was actually among the more ‘generous’ donations. Me, I feel the pinch when I get out that RM10, I don’t deny it, it is my money after all, but I bite my tongue and give. I wish people could ‘bite their toungues and give’, too.

But sometimes, it isn’t all about the money. I remember reading about how there are so many people in so many countries that do not have access to sanitized water. People drink from the same hole they go to clean themselves. They drink from the same place animals drink from and Do Business at.

Some countries have it worse. They don’t even have a place to drink water from. Really young children have to walk hours just to arrive at the place where they can get water, and hours again just to get home. They’ve absolutely no time for school. Besides, they’re too ill to concentrate in school; the water they get aren’t even clean.

We could help them. With just a little money, WaterAid could build latrines and water points. I wrote to them, and they sent me a huge envolope, with FundRaising ideas and guides and Facts and General Resources, even a script for a play we could do to raise awareness among the people around us.

Gosh. Digressed slightly.

Main point was, a certain teacher of ours whom we presented the proposal of an ‘awareness-and-fund raiser’ to, didn’t want to send the donation to them (Them, being countries as far away as, uh, Uganda.) She said it was better to send them to local charity centers.

I remember telling her at one point, that the people lacking sanitized water are more in need of the money. “A child dies every 15 seconds from water-related diseases.”

But she somehow was adament that donating to organizations like WaterAid wasn’t a good idea. And her argument being, “The handling of money to them would be too much of a hassle.” At that point, all I felt like doing was put my hands up to my face and scream into them.

But I was in the bilik guru. So I didn’t.

It was the most frustrating thing. These people are so in need of your donations, so that a water point could be built, so people wouldn’t have to suffer illnesses and die. And with a little extra effort, you would be helping them a LOT more.

And what’s a little extra effort when you’re saving the lives of people who don’t deserve to suffer in the first place?

OMGoodness, I’ve went way off the track. Gawd, I honestly hadn’t planned on writing the above crap.

What I wanted to say was, coming accross that poem has only fed my, uh, desire to go after my one Big Dream. I love that poem. Back in Form 2, I’d sit on my bed and think about the poem and plan things that I would do, and it would be the most satisfying day-dreaming I’d have done. It was so awesome.

I haven’t quite told you my Dream, have I? Haha. You’ll just have to wait.

Here, I’ll leave you with one quote I used to end my English oral presentation last year. (I was talking about charity and doing something about poverty, and perhaps it was getting boring, or perhaps it was because the recess bell was about to ring, but Manwir was looking at her watch instead of me. But I got the marks I wanted anyway.)

It is a powerful sentence, to me at least.

“No one needs to wait a single moment to make a difference.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Hm. Make that three powerful sentences.