Overwhelming Distance

"Jauh di mata dekat di hati (far from our sight, close to our hearts)"

My life is starting to take its toll. I'm starting to feel bored of the same everyday routines and I long for my sweet escape far away in my home country, back in Malaysia, where the weather is more bearable than the scorching heat-laden days and nights at Adelaide.

But distance fails my journey.

Malaysia is just too far away, and getting there takes time, money, and energy. Sure, I will be able to afford all those some day, but for now, I just have to live with this overwhelming distance between me and my home country that I love so much.

When I think about it, distances are always present in our everyday lives.And consequently, distances can have whether a good or bad effect on our lives, depends on how we look at it.

I used to have a friend I know, who was in a long distance relationship. He was here and his girlfriend was in Malaysia. In the end things did not go well and they broke up.

But I also have other friends who are in the same situation like he was, but they turned out fine. Goes to show that if you are willing to work it out mutually, then the negative effects of distance can be minimised and all problems can be worked through.

Sometimes distance can bring good benefits to a relationship. It keeps people from getting bored, and like a person close to me once said, "every meeting was like a first date", ironically enough as they already had more that 50 first dates, and they are actually living on the same piece of land in the same continent and in the same country.

But looking at a bigger scope than just boyfriends and girlfriends, distance is also beneficial to ones' livestyle.

For instance, how many people who come and live overseas do not know how to cook? Eventually, however rich we are, eventually we will learn how to cook a meal or two on our own, because we really can't live on just Hungry Jacks for four years anyway. Living away from home brings that realisation that we have to carry ourselves on our own feet no matter how hard things get, because otherwise no one will want to care for us, so we have to do it ourselves.

Aside from that, living away from home also brings about trust and reliability from our parents to us. We live far away, and though we are not living under their noses all the time, they trust us that we wouldn't go against their trust by indulging in lewd and illicit activities. Although this does not apply to everyone living overseas, a right state f mind will always live by this trust that our parents bestowed upon us.

There goes an old saying, that absense make the heart grow fonder. This is especially true, because with absense, our hearts start to miss the person we love, and I don't think I need to emphasize more about that.

And a beautiful thing about distance is that while there is physical distance present, mentally and emotionally, distance might not matter as much. Anyone far away can be close to our hearts, only the physical distance promotes the challenges in meeting one another.

It's like God being close to our hearts even though we cannot see God, but we can feel God. We can feel God watching over us and blessing us with the everyday bounties of life. Who knows how far physically God is away from us, but we know for a fact in our lives that God is watching over us, all the time.

So as an endnote, I would like to finish with the following summary.

Distance is not as bad as we think it is. It depends on how we think about it, how we take it and how we handle it. It will be hard to handle physical distance, because we tend to appreciate most the physical presence of any person towards us, but remember the ironic saying that distance will finally bring us together. And with that I end this note.