My life stories - Part 14 (Life moves on)

My life Stories – Part 14 (Life moves on)
Stories from my past memories – childhood, family, friends, growing up, poverty, integrity, dreams come true, finding peace and happiness, Buddhism, Yoga, and now…

It has been more than a year since the last update on my life stories.

The ongoing pandemic affects many people's life globally, including ours, on top of some other issues that we have to deal with for being an international mixed marriage couple living in Malaysia. Maybe there are some people are not being affected very much for certain reasons, while some people are actually benefiting from the pandemic situation, but more or less, many people are being affected significantly, financially, physically, mentally and emotionally.

There are also many long term side-effects deriving from the prolonged pandemic lockdown that affect many people of different ages, affecting their relationships, livelihood, physical and mental health well-being, education, general welfare of the children and old folks, old age or retirement planning/saving, and etc, not to say, those who live under certain harsh conditions such as dealing with violent invasive and abusive human's behavior, failed government policy, discrimination, injustice, poor hygiene management, poverty, hunger and thirst, and etc.

There are some unnecessary difficulties arising in people's life deriving from poor government management that actually impacting people's life even harder than people directly coming in contact with the virus, getting sick from contracting the virus, or even encountering death due to the virus or other reasons. Sickness and death is not that complicated, but failed government policy and management can cause long lasting complication onto people's life.

Our life in Penang Island was mostly spent being at home in our rented apartment, and we only went out for grocery shopping once or twice a month. During certain months from July to October 2020 and between February and April 2021, where swimming activities were allowed, my husband got to swim almost everyday, but then, many kinds of physical sport activities were disallowed again since May until September 2021. My husband was able to swim again only after he had attained the fully vaccinated certification on the third week of September, but then, we'll never know how long this 'freedom of certain activities' will last, since this pandemic will go on for much longer than what people would like it to be.

The governments in the world need to realize that this will be an endemic and start lifting all kinds of movement restrictions under complicated rules and regulations or S.O.P, and let people have their life moves on while learning how to live with the virus that keeps mutating, particularly in countries that have high vaccination rate and/or high natural immunity rate.

Isolation and non-socializing is never an issue for me, as even before the pandemic, I have been living a life of seclusion and renunciation from worldly social cultural interactive activities since many years ago. However, isolation and non-socializing is not suitable for my husband. It was one of the reasons why we had chose to move to Penang Island from Langkawi, so that my husband could add certain social cultural interactive elements into his life, however, the pandemic situation that started not long after we moved, doesn't allow that to be happening.

Apart from being unable to run yoga retreats due to the prolonged lockdown and ongoing worsening pandemic situation in Malaysia, the government policy that deals with 'Non-Malaysians being married to Malaysians, and are residing in Malaysia with the Malaysian spouse' doesn't help at all, but making life more difficult. The non-Malaysian spouse is 'not allowed to work' in Malaysia under the permission to reside in this country via a yearly renewable 'long term social visit pass', unless one has successfully obtained an additional 'permission to work' after gone through a complicated procedure, which many companies are reluctant to get involved with, even if the companies are greatly interested in giving works to the non-Malaysian spouse. This situation also leads to the potential of 'exploitation' or 'bullying' by selfish greedy people as well as 'constantly facing the legal threat of being disapproved, prosecuted, penalized and deportation by the authority.'

During the time when we were running yoga retreats in Langkawi, it's possible for my husband to obtain the 'permission to work' for getting involved with teaching yoga and running yoga retreats with me under our business license which also gave us lots of unnecessary incompetent human being's failed policies generated difficulties to deal with every year, which finally I decided to give up the business in the end of 2019. But then, it's not possible for my husband to do any kind of self-employed freelancing type of work, unless I spend unnecessary money on setting up a respective company to employ my husband, where we have to spend more money on paying monthly rent to be renting an office space that we don't need, in order to have a commercial address to obtain a letter of 'no need of business licensing for that type of work' from the business licensing department, in order to be eligible for submitting the application for obtaining the 'permission to work' from the immigration department. Meanwhile there's no guarantee of work or income being generated from my husband's self-employing work.

In Europe, or in many other advanced countries, the non-European or non-citizen spouse is being treated as a potential economic, cultural and social contributor to the country, where he or she will be able to contribute to the country and the community in many different ways. The non-European/non-citizen spouse shall be treated with equal rights as all Europeans/citizens under certain reasonable conditions.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, my husband has been married to me for more than thirteen years and has been living there for fifteen years, we still need to go through complicated yet confusing procedure for renewing his 'long term social visit pass' every year while living under 'the threat of uncertainty' of not knowing whether he would be eligible for renewing the 'long term social visit pass' in the upcoming year, and more complicated, if we need to obtain the 'permission to work' as well. There are more complicated procedures for applying a so called Permanent Residency that is not really permanent, but only valid for certain years, that has an expiry date, where many 'good behavior' or 'law abiding' people were being rejected even after many years of living there, while some people who had successfully obtained their so called PR, but still have to be facing the uncertainty of 'PR being revoked or non-renewable upon expiry date' under the unstable government policy that changes irrationally and frequently while openly and legally 'discriminating' people by their financial status.

There are some countries in the world are not the place for 'people who want to promote peace, loving kindness, goodness, fairness and general positive improvement for all humanity without discrimination' as well as 'potential enthusiastic multi talented people', such as content creator, artist, journalist, writer and editor, particularly those who are interested in promoting non-discrimination, openness, kindness, peace and harmony among different diversities in the world, due to the existence of discrimination and oppression, or highly restricted freedom of expression, freedom of being and freedom of existence in those countries. Not only that there's very little opportunity for such creativity, artistry and literary kind of work and it's a somewhat low paid work, but, the choices of content are very limited due to the restricted freedom of expression under the existence of power corruption, oppression, defensiveness and 'open' discrimination.

As the citizens of certain countries, some people are glad that they have the opportunity to leave their native country even though there's no perfection to be found in anywhere in this world, but at least, there might be greater freedom of expression and equal rights in some other countries than being in their own native country. Freedom of expression and equal rights are the fundamental elements for promoting the overall well-being of all humanity not just within a country but also globally, unfortunately, it doesn't exist in some countries run by a group of not just narrow but close minded people.

What kind of logic is it, when people love their country and standing up going against corrupted non-functional discriminating authorization, they will be referred as 'being unpatriotic' or even 'criminals', and will be facing 'prosecution' by the authority 'legally'? Nowadays, patriotism is not about standing up for one's country by fighting against other countries that project threats upon one's country, but it's about protecting the overall welfare of the beloved country from being ruined by a corrupted authorization. How can a country or the world grows healthily when it is being occupied and run by majority of people with the mentality of 'Patriotism means being submissive towards the authoritarian government even if they are corrupted and threatening the people in many ways' or 'Disagreement towards the corrupted government and desire to free the beloved country from corruption means being unpatriotic'?

Loving one's country doesn't mean that one should be silenced towards any corruptions within the country. Just as many people still believe that "A family should stay 'united' for 'protecting' the family by not protesting any wrong doings that exist within the family, where all kinds of negative wrongfulness should only be kept secret within the family, swept under the sofa, and shouldn't be known by any others outside the family." Such mentality has been ruining many people's life. Neither by leaving the country that is hopeless for any positive changes, in order to seek a higher quality of life that benefits oneself and others, is being unloving or unfaithful towards one's native country. Just as moving away from a spouse or family that is being physically or mentally abusive or destructive towards oneself constantly, is not being unloving or unfaithful towards anyone, but it's true compassion towards oneself and others.

'Higher quality of life' could mean something very different for a corrupted government run by some selfish money and power greedy human beings, where they perceive 'higher quality of life' as 'a form of luxurious lifestyle that is only affordable to people with higher financial status'. Not just that they openly and legally discriminate people, by labeling and categorizing people into high and low quality, they judge and determine the people's quality by their financial status. They are even very proud to tell the world loudly that they only welcome those who are super wealthy rich, which they refer as 'highest quality' people. Of course, there are people who are super rich as well as being very humble, kind, wise and compassionate at the same time, but humbleness, loving kindness, wisdom and compassion can be present and absent in all beings regardless of the different financial status, or any kinds of social, cultural, racial, religious, spiritual, educational or professional status.

Maybe there are some wealthy rich people love that idea of being 'highly appreciated' and 'pampered' by other people through receiving such welcoming privilege that segregates them from the majority others who are 'not as wealthy rich as themselves', even when they know, and they don't mind that, all these people who would 'discriminate people by their financial status', who would 'welcome' and 'treat' them specially and differently from the others, are only doing so because of their money. There might be some people in this world who would work very hard trying to fit into those 'higher social class'/'higher quality of being'/'higher financial status' category. That's their freedom. There's nothing wrong for being rich, so as there's nothing wrong for not being rich or being contented with simple living.

The world is full of all kinds of madness, particularly when different communities of human beings are being conditioned to believe in certain beliefs since young, where they were being told to believe in certain beliefs and to behave in certain ways according to those beliefs, to have particular values and visions towards building a world that is complying to that particular belief.

There's no perfection can be found in human beings or in any particular place in this world. Just do one's best, and let life and the world being what it is. Any desire of 'I want this' and 'I don't want that', or any expectation towards the world has to be or not to be in certain way, will only resulting in 'pain' or 'disappointment'.

In this present moment, we all are merely tiny little bubbles existing momentarily in a particular space somewhere in the universe, regardless of being and living in one's native country or some other countries somewhere on this planet. There's no attachment towards either goodness or badness in this world. There's no attachment towards any particular place or space in this world. Just do our best to be in peace and harmony within ourselves and with others, wherever we are, and let others being what they are, as they are, even if they intentionally want to be selfish, unkind, discriminating, or destructive.

If there's an opportunity to be at somewhere else that has less impact deriving from the ignorance of human beings, that has more progressive influence than destructive influence, that welcomes more peace and harmony in the surrounding environment, then just go, even if it's not perfect. Life is too precious to be wasted in dealing with ignorance and the consequences of ignorance.

There are beings who don't appreciate peace and harmony in themselves or in the world, either intentionally or unintentionally, that's their freedom. Let them be.

READ MORE