I meant to post about several things since I last wrote, namely Up and certain adventures that I've had with my life. But the real thing that started me posting today is something that I learnt at this talk I went to yesterday. The speakers took an example apparently commonly used in business school: they filled a jar with big stones, then little ones, and then sand. It was apparently a metaphor for how to get your life in order - if you don't put in the big stones first, then there'd be no space for them when you need to get to them in the end.

Yet I think that this model fails to take into account the little things that become big things. Like in Up, where wanting to go to Paradise Falls was always a crucial part of the main characters' lives. I did cringe everytime they broke their Paradise Falls fund to do something else. But that doesn't invalidate the things that were important to them at that point in time, whether it was wanting to have a baby, or getting a job, or any number of other stuff. What happens when a little stone becomes a big stone?

And what happens when the big stones you have inside are simple too big to accommodate anything else? I've always wanted to live abroad. But when I think about my family, I just can't do it. Freedom and family don't always go hand in hand, and there has to be a trade-off. What happens when the stones that I have right now are more important to me? Going out with my friends may be a small stone, but when you recast the stone as friendship, it is a big one. Dressing up with my colleagues and winning the best dressed award at the company dinner and dance may be a small stone, but the fact that it makes my job that much more likeable? Is a big stone. And without that dinner and dance, I would never have learnt how to wear a kimono and have so much fun actually wearing one.

What about trading one stone for another? I don't know whether it's just me, but I am shy to take that step from friendship to love. I know that if I don't take that step, I will never know what could have been. Yet... would this be like the last time when I gave up one opportunity only to find that the other opportunity had not been there at all?

In the end my fear is that I will become another Elsie - someone who was vibrant and bright and brimming with ideas, who had a lot of adventures with her life and enjoyed it, who gavanised those she held dear to reach for the stars, but never went on that great adventure herself. I hold my loved ones dear, but I am afraid I would like to be a little selfish. I want to go for that great adventure too. Will anyone align the stars for me and bring me there?