Hello everyone, tanyiliang here.

How’s the week going? To be frank, I hope your week’s going better than mine thus far. Hopefully better than mine by miles.

I’ve been contemplating my life. Or rather how I view my passage through life and how I connect to people through my years.

And by connect, I mean at an emotional, interpersonal and even spiritual level.

And in my contemplations, one thing hit me. And that is I see my life as a thread with the people in my life as beads on that thread.

Like jewels adorning a necklace, if you will.

I see a past, and I see a future.
I also learnt that even if the thread frays into strands, one constant remains.
That constant a person is tied to me and that I am tied to that person by the main thread. That main thread is the path of my life. The path laid by both God’s will and my actions.

In my meditations on this long thread stretching through me many things stood out, and I shall mention one here.

I realised that I should dwell on what lay behind me, my past – as it is unchangeable. I learnt that while my past shaped me, it is not the be-all and end-all of who I am.

I learnt that I should take a different approach, namely to take the past and learn from it to shape my present to make my future a reality.

And I learnt to look ahead to the future and keep my focus there.
I learnt to see the past as my toolbox.
A toolbox from which I take the skills and experiences I’ve acquired to build the road leading me from the present to the future.
A toolbox from which I take my past interactions with people, both good and bad and use them to shape my words with the people in my present to build a future.

I say this with much strength, for as I contemplated the possible strands of my future – one point remained clear.

And that point is that as the people who shaped my past fade from life into memory there is a pure purpose behind it.
That purpose is to pave the way for me to shape my future by focusing on those standing before me in the present.

It is life shaping itself, clearing the way. For out of every ending comes new beginnings.

I thought deeper and further on this point, and it became clear to me what my focus should be.
I looked to the future, and in every fray of the thread ahead I saw the strongest woman I have ever known.

I saw God’s hand in my past when her gem was strung on my life-thread in November 2005. I saw His hand tie the knot affixing the gem to the main thread in December of the same year.

I saw the gem as a lens; but one focusing not light but the experiences of my past, which it changed into lessons for the future.

Of course, I am talking about Keisha. We have been together five years and one month come today, January 17 2011, and with no regrets I make one thing clear.

And that she is my future. I have learnt much from her in our shared past, and I know beyond all doubt that I have much more to learn in our shared future.

Keisha has taught me much about many things in our years together. Strength, focus, resolve and above all faith. She, through her life has taught me what it means to never give up. Ever.

I have seen Keisha pick herself up from things that would have knocked others down many, many times over.

Things that would have left others turning their back on God, questioning Him and spurning Him.

Such a woman deserves not only our recognition but our respect, and what I feel for her goes beyond that for me.

She deserves from me someone strong enough to pave the way for her, someone who doesn’t fail.

And looking to the future, I strive to be that person in the present to build a future with her in it.
For my past is filled with failures, times where I have not given her love for me the due it deserves. Times where I have demanded too much from her, misunderstood her.

Times where she has had to forgive me.

I have to learn from my past. For I cannot afford to lose my future. Not when it looks this good, in more ways than one.

This is tanyiliang, signing out.

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