“As a snowflake falls, it tumbles through many different environments,”
an Australian science writer named Karl Kruszelnicki explains.
“So the snowflake that you see on the ground is deeply affected
by the different temperatures, humidities, velocities, turbulences, etc,
that it has experienced on the way.”
Snowflakes start off all alike;
their different shapes are owed to their different lives.
Life has a funny way of turning its back on us, or so it seems.
We plan, we scheme, we devise. We pen down grand plans, draw detailed blueprints and roll out scrolls of flowcharts. After all, what's life without purpose? And what better way to pursue purpose than to manifest it in the form of meticulously thought out plans?
Hence, new year resolutions, I presume.
Last year at this time, I planned and hoped for many things. Amidst a list of things, I wanted to get my driving's license, finish an Olympic distance triathlon and marathon, travel to India to a mission hospital with one of my pastors, and pick up oil painting. I also resolved to eat more ice-cream.
I accomplished none of the above. Final year in medical school proved too busy for driving lessons, I experienced my first sports injury just before race season started, I ended up travelling to Smokey Mountain in Philippines instead, picked up pilates and ate more healthily.
Life, seems bent on ruining our most well-thought plans. And perhaps, God has His reasons, for this constant gust of wind determined to throw our feet off this tightrope seems to be the very thing which helps us to continually cling onto Him as our lifeline. And that, in itself, is most precious indeed.
This year, I resolve not to make any more new year resolutions. (Irony intended.)
Instead, I would like to reflect upon how I have changed in the past year, and my prayer for the new year ahead. After all, we, like snowflakes, seem to constantly change along our journey through space and time. Buffeted by strong winds and carved out by varying experiences, we morph and change in ways we least expect, for nothing in our most meticulous planning can predict how the air currents might be. We plan, only in vain. For we can never control how we turn out exactly, can never plan our full course. Yet, in the end, all snowflakes melt into the ground.
I am learning, that in the same way, perhaps, as long as our lives are guided by a constant force, we need not bother to plan our lives in such exhausting detail. Because we can trust, that no matter how bad the winds and how cold the currents may be, Gravity promises our descent and return to where we came from. At the most sublime point of our greatest beauty, having travelled through life's long journey from above, and having been refined by harsh environments, we then perish and melt into God again.
So this year, I'm not going to say what races I must join, what places I must go, what things I want to accomplish. Rather, I want to say I'm ready to follow the gravity of my life, to be more grounded in God, and to come that much closer to folding into Him.
Planning is inevitable. It is a merit, most times. But I want to plan in a way that gives respect to time, space, and the most important force of my life.
This year will be rough, I know. There will be great transitions. If all goes well, I will begin the gruelling life of a junior doctor and my skin might hardly see daylight. But I know, the harsher the winds, the more beautifully one surely will evolve to become, as long as one trusts the force that carries one on his journey.
This year, some highlights included:
- receiving my new bike, Faith.
- being humbled and experiencing emotional and spiritual growth through my hamstring injury
- my reinforced calling to the poor and needy through a visit to Smokey Mountain
- the completion (finally!) of A Taste of Rainbow
- a nomination for an award, which took me many weeks to have the peace to go through with the application
- enjoying medical school in a way I never thought possible
- my learning to forgive people, and realising I need to learn to forgive more.
- realising that God is teaching me to let Him drive
- believing that perhaps, romantic love really does exist if we give it a chance, and isn't such a sham if we let God do the picking.
Next year, my prayer is to:
- learn forgiveness, because I have been forgiven. (I discovered that my sensitive nature also translates into nursing old bruises for long periods.)
- rekindle my love for my patients, because stress and sleep deprivation can take a huge toll on one's basic bedside manners.
- continue to love God and know Him more. (This doesn't mean doing more projects, but instead, means learning to be more gentle and patient, which I am often not.)
- and perhaps, to let someone else love me, too.
There're many things we can't predict, but there's one thing we can:
That no matter how bitter the weather and how frosty the environment, God will make something beautiful out of our experiences, as long we let Him.
a photo given to me by a friend in Canada, of a tree in his backyard.
To all you readers, thank you for walking through 2010 with me.
Thank you for all your emails, text messages, and comments, which have been great encouragements in my journey towards God.
I hope that in some small way, this space, too,
has blessed you and brought you closer to
::where we came from::
and where we will eventually return to.
Blessed New Year to you.
"For the final truth about snowflakes is that they become more individual as they fall—
that, buffeted by wind and time,
they are translated, as if by magic,
into ever more strange and complex patterns,
until, at last, like us, they touch earth.
Then, like us, they melt. "
- The New Yorker, by Adam Gopnik
