Quoc’s Web Journal

17,064

Sooo… It’s Saturday evening, November 21, 2009… I just got home from a voluntary additional work day…  I am laying on the cool tiled kitchen floor of my studio… I just cracked open a can of Fancy Feast “Turkey and Giblets Dinner” for my cat…  I am on my stomach with my right cheek hugging the cool tiled floor… I am about 3 inches from my cat watching him eat…  I’ve always been a nerd like that; intrigued by little idiosyncrasies like how cat’s eat… I watched as the mouth and tongue worked in tandem with each other to lap up the food and swallow it down… I never realized that cats don’t have molars; consequently, they don’t chew… They swallow…  I watched as he impatiently bit chunks of the pate meal in his bowl; clearly he wasn’t lapping up his food quickly enough…  If one didn’t know how well I feed this cat, you’d think he’d been starving for days!  LOL… If you take a look at him though, his low hanging belly shows how well fed this cat is…  He glanced over at me just a few time; his focus and attention was on the feast that sat before him…

As he filled his stomach to the point of satiation, leaving just a few morsels left for later to snack on, he turned towards me licking incessantly to the left and right of his face and whiskers to clean off the scraps that were stuck onto him…  He meowed a couple times… I hear his little purring engine rumble… I turn onto my stomach with my head propped up against the refrigerator door; the door is a very poor choice for a pillow…  He climbs on top of my belly and waits for me to pet him… He knows me too well, that I wouldn’t be able to resist stroking his soft thick coat of fur; that my will would buckle under his loving and inviting purrs and his little wimpering meows communicating to me how much he appreciates what I am doing for him… He doesn’t like looking at my in close proximity for any lengthy period of time…  As a matter of fact, most of the time, when he is sitting on my belly/chest while I pet him, he is turned away… I try to block his tails swaying back and forth… His fuzzy medium haired tail smacks my face as he continues to enjoy the long slow strokes up and down his back…

BK tells me when he is ready to be pet and when he is done… With a final couple purrs and a curt little meow, he jumps off me and with a very proud swagger, walks away from me… LOL… I can’t help but love my cat…

I had a little moment spending this time with my cat…  It started as my request for an additional Staff Member for work to support my program was challenged with a request for further justification as to why I needed another Staff… Goodness, the fact that I am working on Saturday and that it’s my 7th day in a row at work; doesn’t that say something about the amount of work this program calls for to be run successfully?  Sigh…  I drove home huffing and puffing with indignation and confusion as to why my request was turned down… Suffice it to say, I talked myself down from the angry emotional ledge…

Furthermore, halfway home, I found myself wondering why my mind is still at work when I am NOT AT WORK!!!  Yes, part of the reason why I am spending time at work is because I care about the work I do and the program I manage; furthermore, I do indeed enjoy the work I do!!!  I get paid to be of service and build amazing karma points!!!  The work I do enhances the quality of life for those touched by my teachings… I am very very humbled and honored to get to have the job I have…  I kept reminding myself that the other part of being a good Manager and a role model of an employee is to not bring work home with me; to remind myself that life is not about work, work, work… That “working” on taking care of myself is just as important as it will help me recuperate and rejuvenate for the new day that welcomes me at work…  I worked very hard constantly redirecting myself away from work each time my mind started weaving back to thinking about work…  I thought about going home to my cat and cleaning up my home some more and making a warm and loving home that is at least as inviting as coming home to a comfy hotel room…  I thought of being greeted by my cat… I thought of the wonderful meal I was gonna get to enjoy with friends tonight at a fancy restaurant in Downtown Los Angeles… I thought about the wonderful drive I was taking home in the crisp cool evening air outside of the car and how nice it felt on my legs as it was met with the constant warm breeze blowing from the car heater…  A PERFECT COMBINATION…

So, what does this have anything to do with the title of today’s blog?  Back to me laying on the kitchen floor as my cat walked away… I thought about what my cat needed for him to be happy…  I imagined myself in his thick coat of fluffy fur… BK needs the following to be happy:

- a home that is familiar enough for him to feel safe, but spacious enough for him to explore and quench is innate curiosity

- delicious and tasty food that fills his belly

- someone (in my cat’s case, anyone) that is very loving and provides him with lots of attention and care and appreciation… verbally, physically and emotionally

- plenty of opportunities to play and explore the the world he lives in no matter how small it is… He manages to find new ways to appreciate and play with in the mundane and familiar home he’s lived in for the past 6 months

- and of course sleepy time… For him to sleep so soundly, he must have deep serenity (soundness of mind)…

My cat teaches me the lesson of wanting the things I have and appreciating those things that I own today; rather than taking them for granted and continuing to yearn and want more and more and sit on the perch of entitlement…  When I look at a glass half filled with water… Do I see it as:

- Half empty

- Half full of water

- Half full of sustaining water and half full of life giving air

Depending on how I see things is directly proportional to my level of happiness…  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh… It’s nice to find a moment in my incredibly rich and busy life to pause and do what I’ve loved for sooo long, blog in this journal… For 9 years now, I have maintained this blog… With a busier life and my sister introducing me to facebook matched with the convenience of accessing facebook and status updates on my blackberry, I have become more and more removed from blogging… It’s not that I don’t have time to sit down and blog eventhough I know there is a degree of truth to how much more busy my life has become; rather, the priorities have finally changed…

Those very dreams that I had of living a life rich enough that I wouldn’t have time to document it on a daily basis is here… My life is filled with miracles happening constantly and I have chosen to say yes to almost every moment I have been dealt and blessed with…  The desire to travel more often on the job is now coming true as my job is allowing me to do more and more traveling and mixing up the bag of routine of being stuck in the office all the time… Getting to live up my name as “To Unify and oversee a country” by teaching people counseling skills in communicating with others in a non-judgemental, culturally sensitive way and providing health education and harm reduction approaches via motivational interviewing techniques and application of transtheoretical models of behavior change does indeed allow me to help make this world a better place one training at a time… I am in a place where I stand more proud and comfortable than ever as a healthy, HIV positive, Gay, Asian-American, sober man who has sooo much to contribute to the world is by this very statement a miracle in the making…

These are but a few thoughts that freely flow out of me as I sit here momentarily in pause of the pursuit of happiness to acknowledge how truly blessed and happy I am…  I wish you all the continued opportunity to explore and navigate life and grow with each passing day…  I wish you all happy thanksgivings and hope that you have many thanks for the blessings we have in life…

Many thanksgivings for my blessed life,

Quoc Lam

quoclam@gmail.com