14 May 2009 – Appalachian Trail in mind

Just got back to SIN yesterday and off to Kuching this afternoon. Somehow thoughts from the AT hike surfaced again and remembering my favourite day, day 85 when my second daughter May HALD paid me a surprise visit. Of course the parting was not easy but my thoughts then and now…

Partings are part and parcel of life. Unless you are a Buddhist monk, we all have some attachments. How to detach and keep the balance with the changes of equilibrium from day to day is a life-long lesson. Traveling is more than seeing the sights, it is an awareness and change in the ideas of living. Change is constant and inevitable but growth is intenational.

Intellectuals say that experience is the best teacher. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. But what is experience if we do not learn from it? Many confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress! When one reaches the 60th year of life does the mind plays game with the soul to make sure that it is still alive? The soul is there but is there a spirit?? And the circle of life goes on…

Between ourselves the best thing of all is a combination of the surprising and the beautiful – Ludwig van Beethoven