A Mind Without Limits

-To a friend

Hey we’re really talented.

We are both gifted in so many things that many bloggers are and aren’t. We can draw like Igor and Andre, we can design and think like Luxirare, we have the romantic imagination of The Cherry Blossom Girl, the edge of Fashion Toast, and write as eloquently and with passion as Style Bubble.

And the best thing about it is that it’s the three of us! You, me and God!

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So what are you gonna do with your gifts and your talents?

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I used to think that spiritual attacks meant demonized girls with man voices and levitating abilities. Granted they still exist but the ordinary ones are not as evident as the paranormal. I'm starting to notice the ordinary ones, the small ones that make me feel very defeated on the inside and manifest themselves as a spiritual paralysis.

They often come as a small nudge but washes me with feelings of guilt. Today I was doing devos and suddenly my brother popped into my head. I still remember the time he told me that more than a decade ago there was one time growing up I refused to play with him and wanted to play by myself.. and he went to my mom and cried. At that moment, though this was a memory that was told to me and not one that I conjured up myself, I felt so guilty. I thought perhaps my brother and I aren't really close was because that memory was a pivotal point in which we grew apart. And perhaps I had hurt him a lot as the older sibling. There have been several times in which I would feel guilty for this and it was only this morning that I realized it was a spiritual attack.

I've been getting a lot of them lately particularly in regards to my weight and body image although physically nothing has changed. Weight wise I'm still the same, if not. reduced (or got tanned) because three individuals have said I lost weight. But I only fluctuate between the same five pounds- never more and never less.

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This week has been unbelievable. Last week I was out almost every night and I thought I had the following week to rest because I had nothing planned.. turns out my sched is and will be packed till Sunday:

Sunday (past): lunch with friend, wedding photography studio, dinner with entire family and business partners (cousins from SF are here)

Monday: dinner with family and business partners

Tuesday: saw Jeannie from NYC!

Wednesday: reunion with old old old HK 'friends'/classmates

Thursday: saw movie with Agnes

Friday (tomorrow): dinner with Angie

Saturday: half day of work, dim sum with my nieces and cousin/husband

Sunday: church, lunch and dessert with friend, family dinner

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Sam, remember, faith without action is dead. I've fasted over it, prayed about it and realized that if this is God's blessing to me, I need to start doing something. These talents, these skill sets, these gifts need to be taken advantage of.

I've been waiting to 'fat fai' (hard to explain... releasing power aka your talent?) but realized in order to do that, I have to stop waiting.

I realized that I'm really gifted. Aren't we all? But I've been looking to what others have to measure the strength of which I have been given. I never realized that what I want to be and who I look up to, are people who have basically used their talent to the fullest potential. I realized that my gifts are rich and numerous in ways that I am glad I'm not an accountant or working at a law firm. I always saw what I have was quite ordinary when in fact the people I look up to took the ordinary and made it extraordinary.

That's what I want to do. Take what I have as plain, as insignificant, as small or as unpolished as it is and make it extraordinary.

You know what I realized this week (yes I know it's bad stylistic writing to repeat the same word but hey the apostle Paul and Jesus did it!), I discovered that I can be the most creative when I am the most restricted in my present environment. When you confine me in an office space, a cubicle or just an atmosphere that does not allow or encourage creative freedom or imagination, my mind goes haywire. And to rebel against that, I daydream a lot more. I daydream enough that it is evident to some who have complained to me that my mind is not in the room- it exists elsewhere. I keep a notebook on my desk. It's a simple, ordinary lined notebook that came with my office supplies. I keep it right in front of me with a ballpoint pen and whenever I get hit with a word or an idea or a concept, I quickly jot it down. It's not full of beautiful sketches or meticulously drawn out pictures. Instead, it's a few scrawls of incoherent words that stuck out to me, or a rigid stick figure or a few geometric shape configurations. It is the only physical and visible evidence of my mind wandering.

I think my imagination gets stronger when it sees physical limits. And when people tell me to get used to a routine, my mind fights harder and digs deeper so it can't be touched or controlled by words.

Now what I really have to start doing is extracting and distilling the good ideas from the not-so-coherent ones and make them into tangible concepts.

NEXT WEEK- next week Sam will start. Darn it. I can't get it out of my head.