Trying Hard to Chew 贪多嚼不烂

Sitting in the large hall with a few hundred other participants, the thought I must have bitten off more than I could chew 贪多嚼不烂 tānduō jiáobulàn crossed my mind. Here I was attending a seminar given totally in Mandarin on emotion 情绪 qíng xù when I did not even know what this word was before I signed up. When I started this blog, I intended to immerse myself into the Chinese speaking world to see what rubs off besides the language. Anyway, I believed that to really learn something, one has to leave familiar ground and extend beyond our comfort zone.

So there I sat, stretching my ears to pick up unfamiliar sounds, words and phrases from 1 p.m. in the afternoon to 9 p.m. at night. At the end, my ears were exhausted and my head was swimming but I was still thinking in English. I could comprehend maybe 80% to 90% of what was conveyed in general (and much less word for word) and which was not good enough for I would not want the doctor who is deciding whether I am sane or not to only understand 90% of what I was saying and guessing the rest!

This team of experts from Taiwan was led by Dr. Xu TianSheng 许添盛 (also Hsu Tien-Sheng due to the way Chinese is pronounced in English). They asked a provocative question – did you invite your depression 忧郁症 yōuyùzhèng, chronic diseases 慢性病 mànxìngbìng and cancer 癌症 áizhèng to be your spokesman? All 5 talks were preceded by a short sketch that impressed upon the audience how little control we have on our emotions. How we let powerful emotions such as panic 恐慌 kǒnghuāng, anxiety 焦虑 jiāolǜ, anger 愤怒 fènnù, self-reproach 自责 zìzé and jealousy 妒忌 dùjì rule us. I was swarmed not only by feelings but also words of feelings! Now I was beginning to feel a little inadequate, 不自量力 bùzìliànglì, of trying to run before I could walk. “没关系” méi guānxi (never mind), I tried to console myself. A missed word or two here and there was not going to trip me.

The speakers told us how we recognize these emotions as negative so we strived to restrain and suppress them. But this misunderstanding slowly and gradually leads to a distortion of our energy that affected both our physical and mental health. And as a result, we became afflicted with diseases. It also resulted in wasting a precious opportunity to reflect on what our body and emotion is trying to tell us. I was beginning to understand what 普悦 pǔyuè meant (see April 5 post on Emotional Utopia) when she told us that she listened to what her cancer was saying to her…

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(to be continued…)

Emotional Utopia 寻找情绪的桃花源

I was intrigued by the newspaper article about 5 speakers from Taiwan coming to give a talk on the subject of emotion 情绪 qíng xù. Their title was 寻找情绪的桃花源 xúnzhǎo qíngxù de táohuāyuán loosely translated as “Seeking our emotional paradise” So I gathered it is about how to control our emotions to create the harmony found in 桃花源 the land of the Peach Blossom (see last post). So on the 8 March, we went for the free introduction to the seminar.

I was surprised that the talk was held in a beautiful old bungalow at a secluded corner of an older section of PJ. We sat on the wooden floor facing a large bowl of pink frangipani freshly plucked from the large tree in the garden. We waited in anticipation, in a tastefully decorated, brightly lighted and well equipped hall.

A cheerful, “short, well-rounded” (in her own words) middle-age lady took the mike and soon arrested the attention of the fifty or so of us seated on the wooden floor. Her name is 普悦 pǔyuè, the founder of Reset Garden 綠色生活 lǜsè shēnghuó (literal: Green Living), She spoke of how emotion can be a wild tornado that swept everything off its path or the calm in the storm lashing all round us. Her enthusiasm and booming laughter were infectious as she made jokes on herself. Then her voice cracked as she spoke of personal feelings, how she was a tempestuous mother and driven wife. All because she let 情绪 emotion ruled her. Do we want to tame the beast? She asked. The crowd was convinced.

Then, she dropped a bomb shell that she has 癌症 áizhèng (cancer). It was deeply shocking for the woman in front of me is so full of life. What this amazing woman said next stayed with me – “I started to really live only when I found I’ve cancer. It taught me to step back, reflect, and value life. It asked me if the life I was living was really the life I wanted. I’m grateful for what it taught me”.

Thankful for having cancer? On my long drive back, my mind were digesting her words mixed with this thought – 江山易改, 本性难移, jiāngshānyìgǎi, běnxìngnányí (it is easy to change rivers and hills but not man’s character). Still, if there is a compelling reason, man can have a paradigm shift. I signed up for the seminar 寻找情绪的桃花源 and hope it can teach me how to make emotion 情绪 an ally in life…

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