Spring Cleaning

Note to readers: Readers, this post can be messy and might not make sense to you all the time.
It is just me introspecting and trying to put myself into the shoes of others.



Happy Chinese New Year of the Horse!
Traditionally, spring cleaning should be done before the first day of the Lunar New Year, symbolically to get rid of bad luck and make space for new blessings.

Today is the first day of the lunar year but guess what, it's not too late to do some cleaning.
In fact, it's never too late.

I wish I could tell you that I decluttered my closet and my room is spotless.
But it'd be lying.
Well, the only important thing is that I feel better after doing some tidying up, whether or not my room becomes as perfect as a showroom doesn't matter at all.

It's always more important about how you feel inside--the heart, mind and soul.

There is so much negative emotions in me lately, anger mostly.
Melancholy is rather typical but anger is the interesting part--it is rare.

Why am I angry? That's the question.

Before I come to a conclusion, a few thoughts about anger:
They say holding anger is like drinking poison and it only kills you from the inside.
So really, is anger a poison, in other words a bad emotion?
It certainly doesn't feel good to be angry, but it's not necessarily an entirely bad one.
It's what you do about it that determines if anger corrodes you and hurt others around you or drives you to be better.

In a way, anger is a form of passion.
"You only get mad because you care a great deal about the person," my friend's voice rings in my ears.
Yes, we don't get mad at things or people who we don't care.
If anger is love disappointed, it is only because we have expectations unmet.

And if we see it in a larger context, the anger that drives revolutions and drastic changes are in fact passion, the burning fire.
Or the other way to put it, passion is the form of anger expressed in an effective and constructive way.
Recipe to translate that passion into success, direct the energy to the right actions, just the same as what I mentioned above and add "at the right place and right time".

So what makes us most angry?
Different things work for different person but my guess which I think could be universally agreed upon is: unrequited love.
I was taught to learn this answer.

No, I don't have to learn it by experience.
It is written in books, take the example of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.
An emotionally heavy read it is; the whole story is driven by the anger and bitterness of unrequited love.

I learned at a young age that there is nothing like a wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger.
But the bigger lesson I learn is that a heart filled with anger has no room for love, which is the cure for anger.
Which comes first then: anger makes one reject love or the lack of love fills a person with frustration and build walls around his/her?

Too complicated a question for me to look into, which leads me to the final point:
the only person who can put out the fire of rage is no one but yourself.
It really doesn't matter what anyone say or think, even though you might say it matters.
It really doesn't matter how good or what advice is.
It's all about whether you can choose let go.

One of the lessons I learned is that you shouldn't even think of helping a person to go through frustrating moments because the person is simply too busy with the burning rage that he/she couldn't even listen.
This actually kind of piss me off sometimes-- no matter how much you care, it doesn't change the slightest of things. It just doesn't matter, even the best intentions.

Back to the topic of spring cleaning.
What I did to cleanse my soul was I did some yoga at home, took some quiet time and tried meditating.
It helped a bit, even though it only calmed the storms in my head but not really targeting the source of negativity.

Perhaps the problem doesn't lie in what people do or what ridiculous things the world offers on a daily basis.
Even though I hear a part of me saying "you don't have to put up with everything. Just say no, that's enough and move on" whenever I'm angry, maybe the problem is actually mine--my stubbornness.
Maybe I should lower expectations and embrace the world as it is with open arms and open heart.

Maybe I'm the one who should let go of it all.

Love,
N