openness

I was just reflecting on the Gospel reading for Sunday where Jesus heals the man who is deaf by saying “Ephphatha”, in English, “Be Open”. It is interesting that He uses those words isn’t it?

In the hymn “Amazing Grace”, there is a line that goes, “(I) was blind but now I see”. For me, I feel that oftentimes I am blinded by my own close-mindedness and hence I fail to see all the beauty that’s around me. Sometimes when I’m not as open as I should be, I am deaf to the beautiful music that plays around me all the time.

I think that being here, a foreign land that’s foreign even to the majority of the people here is a great place to let that openness flourish. Everybody is open to diversity because everybody you meet is different. It’s very much like Singapore because of that. I actually am very thankful for being Singaporean because of that. I feel that it has made me a very open person in terms of my views.

I am writing this on September the 11th, 5 years after the horrible tragedy that happened not only in New York, but all over the world. What has changed after that fateful day. The world started to close in on itself. But then again, in another way, the world began opening up. Closed for a while because of fear and suspicion, but after a while open because people began to realise that there’s just so much out there that we tend to pass judgement on without really knowing anything about the history of whatever happened.

This is why history is important, because it helps us understand our world now. Here’s something that I learnt rather recently. Sometimes when we learn about the history of a place that is completely different from the place we hail from, we understand more of our own history and culture. It is often overlooked but it is true. We always think that all we need to know is ourselves but when we learn about other people, we begin to understand aspects of ourselves we have never thought about before.

So let us be open and let other people into our lives for they can affect us more when their in our lives than when they are just on the outside. And when they are in our lives, we can make a difference in their lives too and really, isn’t that all that really matters?

Oh, some word play i just thought of... The more open we are, the closer we get... Food for thought eh?