the accident

Dear Sumire,

Hello to you, readers. I’m gonna rant and rave over a few things, because the day before yesterday was just another hard and unlucky day for me. But that very day, I learnt a few lesson in life, be patient and to be able to move on.

It started off with a bad morning. While I was working on the key arts of a new movie poster, my laptop continuously gave me nasty problems. And I was so frustrated with the whole morning. My Adobe’s Photoshop keeps freezing from time to time and hangs in the midway of an important task. Then I thought, “Why don't I save my progress every now and then?” Then things got worse, the software hangs when I save the file. And I have to redo the design over again, from scratch. The whole situation repeats itself, numerous times.

I thought to myself, “Things won’t get anywhere worst than this.”

And I was dead wrong. In the evening, around 4.45p.m, I rammed into the side of a Kia Spectra. The driver was fine, but obviously, his car is not. Looking at the damages of his car and mine, I know I wouldn't be able to pay for any of the damages. So I suggested that we lodge a police report, and claim the damages from the insurance company. Mr. Nara is a very nice man. He talked to me calmly, and agreed to my suggestions.

All the while during the time in police station, I kept apologizing to Mr. Nara and his daughter. I wished I had been more careful on the road and avoid all these troublesome problems. I called my dad to tell him about the mess I’d just did, and he said to me in a disappointed voice, “It’s an accident. No one ask for it. Just be careful next time.”

My crashed headlight.

He was right. No point crying over spilled milk. Just do the best you can to handle the situation.

When I was at the police station, I saw many cars in a very much wrecked form; some looked like a crumbled piece of paper. Looking at those, I can’t imagine if the driver or his passengers survived the crash. It made me realize how lucky I was. The sight of those cars reminds me of my own car when I survived a major crash with my dad, with the car flipping downhill at Pagoh more than a year ago. Back then I promised myself to live my life properly, fully.

The car i saw at the Police Station.

Now I wonder, “What happened to that promise I made to myself?”

The truth is, I totally forgot about it.

The truth is we all forgot. We forgot what is important in life. We’re not living the fullest out of our short time on the earthly plane. If you’re catching up with the news in Facebook, there’s this guy who made a countdown of 45 minutes before committing suicide. That guy made me sick. He threw away his valuable time of his life out the window just because he think he can’t live without some girl who ditch him. And guess what? A sick bunch of people even called him hero, and dedicate a Facebook fanpage for him, like he’s some kind of a martyr. The next thing we know, maybe we’ll celebrate robbers like Robin Hood in the future.

If you will, I suggest you guys read this book by Mitch Albom titled ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’. It’s a good book to reflect on life, while facing death as an everyday routine. It’s definitely not a book about throwing your life into the wastebin, but about squeezing every single drop of life left in your soul, even when your body is giving up on life. The book talk about how we forgot about the most important things in life, and got all tangled up with other peoples’ dream. Dream that our society and culture had set for us; big cars, big houses, big paycheck, Gucci bags, skinny jeans, high heels and the list goes on and on. He concluded that these worldly belongings are not things they would make us happy. Maybe for a moment. This kind of happiness never lasted too long. Say, if you’re going to die today, I bet you’d be thinking the same as Morrie; the paycheck, the heels, the Gucci, they just don’t matter anymore.

I don’t know how I could drag on from one thing to another. I hope you’re not bored away by my rants. I just want to pass Morrie’s message on.

“Love always win”
“Love your friends and family”
“Forgive others, forgive yourself”

jin