Quoc’s Web Journal

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So, I have been in pain in the past couple weeks…  Allow me to explain this emotional pain I have been experiencing…  I recently was gifted with an individual who sought me out as a spiritual guide…  I just willingly agreed to help him with hopes that he would receive the same opportunity at a different life as I have…  What I learned is that I can’t want “sobriety” for another person more than they want it; it simply doesn’t work that way.

I have been re-visiting my character defects of needing the person I am helping to validate me as someone who does have something to offer in helping save a life…  The truth is that I am not powerful enough to carry another person; I am only powerful enough to carry a message via my experience with hopes that the other individual will take to that and try what has worked for me and countless others…  The gift of getting to help another person is the guarantee that I get to stay sober as a result of helping another; not get them sober!

So, the past few days, this individual has verbally resolved to do whatever it takes to grow spiritually; his actions however told of a different story.  He has demonstrated lack of respect for the power of an insidious disease which wants nothing to do with spirituality as it finds spirituality poisonous and toxic!  I have been experiencing pain as a result of racking my brain in trying to get him to do what I am doing to grow spiritually… 

In calling my great-spiritual guide for help, he shared with me the following:  First and foremost to give thanks for the gift of this individual to teach me and show me the defect of characters I get to work on letting go:

1) Control = trying to control this individual when I don’t get to be controlling and make this person do anything!  I am powerless over that…  All I get is a healthy perspective of the power of this disease that separates me from a connection to spirituality and also the consequences of lack of gratitude for the help that others who have more spiritual maturity give to those in need of help.  What I get to do is pray to God to release control of that individual and just make myself available to assist him if and when he wants the solution to that very thing blocking him from the sunlight of the spirit… I ask God to help me “accept that all those in my life belong to our Higher Power and that person I am trying to help is not my personal responsibility to TEACH, CARE FOR, CORRECT OR CONTROL!  The ONLY responsibility I have to all other people is that which my Higher Power dictates for me!!!”

“THAT RESPONSIBILITY IS TO RELEASE THEM; TO LOVE THEM AND HOLD A POSITIVE FOCUS FOR THEIR HIGHEST GOOD!!!  I ask God to take full and complete care of them.”  What I get to do is model what it is to be a spiritually fit mature and wonderful man named Quoc with hopes that will be attractive enough for them to want what my Higher Power has graced me with.

2) Need for validation…  I shared with my great-spiritual guide that this person’s lack of action and follow through makes me feel ineffective and a bad spiritual guide in turn.  He shared with me that this issue is not about the person I am helping; rather, it’s all about me and my need this person’s “success” to give me validation that I am a good spiritual guide and have something to offer.  I get to ask God to remove this need to seek outside validation in turn for internalized pride and to seek that self-validation from within and from being a good role model and carrying the message despite the successes or failures of any around me.  I get to carry the message and remember that God does not do to me or do for me; GOD SHINES THROUGH ME…  God gets to shine through other people if they choose to let God shine through them.  When I am trying to reflect that light shining from others, it’s but a mere fascade and light from them and not God radiating from within myself!

I had such a powerful moment in hearing these things… So God, I give thanks that you brought this person in my life to help me identify my defects of needing to control and to need validation from others.  I ask that you remove the desire to control others and want of validation of others in return for PRIDE for the work that I have done in growing spiritually within myself… I ask that you remove my need to control other people and do what I think is best for them.  Please do not remove this person from my life until that person has taught me what I am here to learn from them!

The other unresolved parts of my life are this deep sense “grief” revisited for the loss of my Mom…  Mom’s 4 year anniversary of her passing is coming up on the 26th of June… I can’t believe it’s been 4 years already!!!  I can’t help but yearn and want to lay and sit back lazily on that couch in Bellflower and watch TV while the sweet delicious aroma of home cooked chinese/vietnamese food permeates the home… I would hear the clang of Mom’s cooking utensils against her oversized cast iron wok…  You can hear the sizzle of hot water and oil as it hits the hot metal as delicious vegetables and meats are instantly cooked as hot water, oil and food meat the searing hot wok…  These are the things I miss… My birthday is coming up in August…  I want to wake up to Mom surprising me with my annual bowl of soup filled with a chicken leg and noodles for long life and scallions to keep me clever…  I miss the smell of oil of olay that mom puts on her face and skin walking around the house after taking a shower… I miss the especially clean aroma that Mom gets the laundry (especially the bedsheets and pillowcases)… I can never reproduce what she created…  Sigh…

Then, I sit her feeling like a big tub of lard from many months of lack of exercise while continuing to pay month after month of my gym membership…  My stomach has finally umbrella’d over all my pants… This includes my fat pants!!!  It’s tragic to think that someone like me who stands 5′5 has gone from a waist size of less than 28″ over six years ago would surpass 32″ at present day!  I feel and look as unhealthy as ever…  Instead of challenging that self-disgust with action, I meet these self-deprocating thoughts and feelings by stuffing myself with more food matched with apathy…

In the last month, I just realized that I have also been stuffing my feelings by aimlessly spending money without regard to my income matching the expense… Goodness knows I still have thousands to pay off from my car repairs made back in January is it?  It is going to take incredible frugal spending for me to financially break even by December of this year…. This didn’t include the surprising additional thousand dollars I spent this past month.  I mean, WOW!!!  I really was spending as discreetly as possible but giving myself a chance to have a little fun in the past month…. How easy money is spent by me…  Sigh…  And this is without any other expenses from vices such as smoking cigarettes or eating out too often!!!  I am just bumfuzzled as to how quickly money bleeds out from my own pocketbook at any given moment…

So, here I sit concluding this blog so that I may commence upon a goal to assess my current financial standing and how to adjust my budget to pay off all debt as quickly as possible so that I incur the minimal amount of interest from the loans on my credit cards… I also am trying to incorporate what Suzie Orman suggested as an 8 month emergency cushion… I always thought it was 3 months… 8 months of emergency funds is indeed a much more realistic and safe cushion to fall back on if I should get in trouble and lose my job… Goodness forbid that happen aye?

Would be nice to make more money… I know my value is worth more than twice or triple what I am currently earning.  Now, how do I get creative in realizing that internal feeling of worth?

Before I go on babbling some more… Let’s stop and get my current budget in order and on-track to being balanced…  I still continue to share gratitude for your continued love and support… I know some of you who read it, but the remainder of the 100 or so blog hits from you folks every other week, I still am totally clueless…

Ciao,

Quoc

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I am finding that many of the men that I meet are deeply profound…  Then there are equally as many men who are sooo shallow that I can barely wade in…  Of course since I live in LA, there are just as many who are just plain ol’ profoundly shallow!!!

Of course there would be those sparse few who have that lovely balance of naivete and curiosity for life, but enough experience to make them wise in decision making…

SUFFICE IT TO SAY, life is in full swing with me… I have been grappling with changing the whole nature of this blog as I have recently discovered that what I have been writing has been breaching a time honored tenet and tradition of a spiritual group I belong to… Again, I don’t even know why I am being so cryptic about it when I have been so blatantly open in past entries for many years…

So how does one undo so many years of a time honored tradition of not “promoting” the very spiritual program I am living by sharing my personal experiences?  Expecially when these experiences good and bad hopefully will help inspire or motivate another person to become a better person?  Goodness knows I have been down many paths that don’t work and can share those with you so that you need not go through what I went through.  Guess I get to pray on this as well as ask those who have a lot more time in the group than I do for their guidance…

This is not the main reason why I haven’t blogged folks…  Between, weddings, sailing, helping others, work work work, and just having an incredibly full life I find myself too exhausted to blog as therapeutic as I know it is for me… Sigh…  What is a boy to do!!!

Last blurb is that I have been suffering from some mild grade of circumstantial depression…  Perhaps it’s stress from a lot of work and new responsibilities… Perhaps it’s because I am about a month away from a very important sober anniversary of not having shoved any mind altering substance into my body…  Perhaps it’s because it’ll be 4 years since Mom died this upcoming week…  Perhaps it’s because I have been “slowly” purging my life of the very clutter that is keeping other people away from my home…  IS THERE SUCH A THING AS EXPERIENCING A THIRD LIFE CRISIS?

Well, either way, I wouldn’t have been able to do all this without your unconditional love, support, thoughts and prayers…  May your journey be as interesting as mine is going…

You may reach me via e-mail at quoclam@gmail.com.  I have a blackberry now and able to receive messages and reply very quickly.  I find most correspondences from viewers here asking me about different points of interests like directions to the Hollywood sign… Again, who knows what purpose this blog site serves… Heck, I have been doing this for so long, it’s just become a rather regular part of my life to share those highlights with you…

I strongly support you in finding me in my new hobby and “addiction” facebook…  JUST LOOK UP “QUOC LAM” and friend me.  I think there are few enough Quoc Lam’s on facebook for you to easily find me.  Don’t take it personally if you do request to be a friend and I ask “who the heck” you are as I do truly have over 600 friends I have actually met and know personally!  Very very cool!

Until I check in again… Don’t forget to pause in the pursuit of happiness just to be happy!  See you here, on facebook via e-mail or heaven forbid I get to see you the way that we used to… IN PERSON!!!

Always in love & service,

Quoc