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November 17, 2009

Heartening @anwaribrahim and @najibrazak can be civil over teh tarik. Why not all the rest, all the time? #hopemy

KUALA LUMPUR: Reporters and members of parliament (MPs) were caught off guard by the sight of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim happily chatting away over a cup of teh tarik in the MPs lounge in parliament yesterday evening.
via theedgemalaysia.com

My hope is that Malaysia will grow up.

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Filed under  //   Anwar Ibrahim   hope   Malaysia   Najib Razak   parliament   politics   teh tarik  

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November 15, 2009

"I can give you nothing because you want nothing."

"I can give you nothing because you want nothing." 

This was what my wife said, the other day. It was over something mundane - about passing food to someone who couldn't make up their mind about what they wanted. And yet these words struck me profoundly. 

How do you give something to someone who doesn't want it? You can't. You might leave it at their feet, but it will go to waste. They have no place in their mind for it. 

Likewise freedom, likewise hope. How do you give these gifts to someone who has no hunger for them? 

Fed on a steady diet of life's junk food, the pursuers of purely material, temporal riches have no hunger for something beyond, and so have no capacity to receive it. 

Individually and collectively, we've got to cultivate a hunger for freedom, justice and hope. Lest we starve to death on a diet of cash and concrete. 

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Filed under  //   #hopemy   hope   life   Malaysia   Project Hope   society  

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November 12, 2009

Hope costs a lot. But it's a cinch to pay, compared to despair.

What does hope mean to me? Hope is unbounded space. Hope is unmeasured time. Hope is the original human frame of mind. Hope is the God-given, human-preserved right to imagine a future of my own design, and to do everything in my power to realise that imagination. 

Hope is scary. An unbounded imagination can lead to drastic conclusions. It can lead to a bigger outcome than I'd ever dared dream. And that means doing things I've never done. It means becoming someone I've never been before. Hope means a lot of unknown things, and that is scary. 

Yet, the opposite of hope is even scarier. To deny hope is to deny growth. To deny growth is not just to maintain the status quo. To deny growth is to embrace decay. The opposite of hope means that I'm content to sit in my box without windows, without light. To sit in the dark with my fellow blind men till we hunger and thirst and devour each other. A nation without hope is a nation on the path of self-destruction. 

Can we afford to dream big dreams? To imagine a nation that our forebears prophesied, but some now claim is impossible? Can we afford hope? We can't afford not to. 

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Filed under  //   #hopemy   hope   Malaysia   politics  

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November 8, 2009

Enough despair. Tweet your HOPE for Malaysia! [updated]

I want to talk to you about hope - if you're a Malaysian or interested in Malaysia. I'm involved in The Hope Project, which is an artistic effort aimed at raising the temperature of hope among Malaysians and Malaysia-lovers. 

The project involves: 

- A book of writings and photography. 
- A custom-designed tee shirt (I’ve seen the initial sketches - it’s wild). 
- A web site with video interviews (professionally done). 

All these are in production. The website will be up in due course, followed by the book and tee in selected venues. I’ll be tweeting about these at http://twitter.com/alphalim 

Help, I need somebody! 

Where I would like to ask for your help is in the matter of writings on hope: Please tweet your take on hope. Answer one or two or three of these questions: 

- What is "hope" to you? 
- What do you hope for? 
- What will you do to make that hope a reality? 

Please tweet with the hashtag #hopemy and it will be picked up. It may be included either in the book, the website or both; with credit to your Twitter username. [Legalese: By tweeting thus, you agree that your tweet may be used in The Hope Project.] 

There's enough negativity around. Let's do what we can to raise HOPE among Malaysians! We owe it to our children's children. 

Tweet #hopemy!

(If you are not on Twitter, please feel free to leave your contribution as a comment below.) 

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Filed under  //   #hopemy   faith   hope   Malaysia   optimism   Project Hope   society  

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November 1, 2009

What would you do if you were going to die and why aren't you doing it?

When my mom was stricken with cancer, when it was advanced, we often had in the back of our minds, "Might as well do such and such and don't hold back - who knows how long we have with her?" 

One of the things she wanted to do, but never did, was to visit our relatives in Australia. Granted, my mother was not one for travel, and plain procrastination was one reason we've never gone to Sydney, but another factor was the cost. The bottom line. 

However, when you're faced with death, money becomes less of an object. Inconvenience becomes less of an object. "What would people think?" becomes less of an object. When you're faced with death. 

Sadly, it was too late. 

My mom said that when she recovered, she would go on a holiday with my dad. She did not recover, so instead of going down under, she went up and over. Still, it's a comfort to me, to know that at the end, her values became clearer. Or, rather, it became easier to decide. After all, when one particular shot of chemo costs ten thousand bucks, what's a round trip to Australia? Child's play. 

Yes, it's possible to waste money by spending it out of turn. But it's also possible to waste money by not spending it when the time calls for it. The nature of money is to be spent. We should spend it on worthwhile things. The same goes for time. Time must be spent wisely. Perhaps infinitely more so than money. 

When we're faced with possible death, we're willing to "let go" and "just do it". After all, you don't know how many days you have left. 

Here's the thing - we're all going to die. We may not be sick or serving in a war zone, but even if it's going to be peacefully, in bed, many decades hence - we're all dying. And we don't really know what tomorrow's going to bring. Sure, it'll probably be the usual routine, but no one knows for sure, really. So, if we're all dying anyway, why aren't we living today to the full? 

Hope, to me, is sparked by the fact of death. Today is full of potential waiting for our actions to make them manifest. While we live, we can - so we should - answer the quiet, persistent call that whispers so loudly deep within us. 

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Filed under  //   ambition   carpe diem   death   hope   life   money   Mother   time  

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