It’s easy to pay lip-service to a word like gratitude, isn’t it? To find a hundred reasons every day to be grateful isn’t a difficult or time-consuming task. It merely requires us to look around at where we live and notice the comforts, the roof over our heads, the people in our lives that love... Continue Reading →
The Things That Used to Matter
When I was eight years old, I wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid. Remember those dolls from the 1980s? They had soft squishy bodies with protruding belly buttons, hard plastic heads sprouting hair, and if you turned an unclothed one over, a name scrawled on the little butt cheek. The Cabbage Patch Kid community represented a... Continue Reading →
Is There Life After Work?
It’s strange to watch your parents age. I’m not around my mom and dad too often, just a once-per-year visit home for a few weeks to check in and enjoy each others’ company for a bit of time. To be reminded of the beautiful, natural fallibility of the people we love is a cyclical and... Continue Reading →
The Underside
I used to think life was a chaotic and complicated mess of events and emotions that both fascinated and bewildered me. It’s kind of like being on a roller coaster ride and having no idea when that next loop or fall is coming and feeling somewhat out of control. Or like a beautiful piece of... Continue Reading →
How Travelling Can Make You a More Grateful Person
It’s been five years since I experienced a Canadian fall. If not for a certain special somebody I would have been long gone, back to Asia, before autumn equinox. Before the temperature dropped, the leaves started to change, and proper close-toed shoes and jackets became necessary. I usually dread the idea of staying past August... Continue Reading →
The Upside of Divorce
Sixteen years ago I walked into this little house in Toronto's Beaches neighbourhood after meeting my mother-in-law to-be for the first time. She frightened me to be completely honest, because she was confident, outspoken, and the mother of the man I loved. I was quiet, shy, and had an ego about as squash-able as a... Continue Reading →
“The world begins where the road ends”: Realizations after a travelling for a year
Travelling abroad is an exciting venture into the unknown. It has exquisite appeal for the adventure junkies, the global philanderers, the foodies, the culture curious, those who just want to check out what’s happening on the other side of the world, those who wish to take a long hiatus from what’s happening on their familiar... Continue Reading →
A year-long goodbye
In Hinduism, when a person dies, a year-long mourning period takes effect in which the family does not participate in any celebrations. On the one-year anniversary, Shradda is recognized with a memorial service, in which closure is brought to formal mourning with traditions similar to many other religions: the reading of scriptures and of course,... Continue Reading →