What I Learned from Fasting for 21 Days

Almost every year since I've accepted Christ into my life, I participate in a 21-day fast and prayer organised by my church that occurs before Easter. It's a time when I surrender what's important to me—what seems to be fueling me from day to day—to consciously make time for God. The whole point is to learn how to rely on God more than the things that seem to keep us going (like food and coffee, etc).

Here's how my fast looked like this year:

• I did a version of a 7AM - 7PM fast. Instead of 7AM, i would begin my fast at around 8 or 9AM, depending on when I've eaten breakfast, then breaking fast at 7PM. I didn't have any food or water within these hours.
• For the rest of the day, I also refrained from drinking coffee and eating desserts. 
• I also had the choice to fast non-food items that were equally as important to me, so I fasted social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) and Netflix.

disclaimer: I choose my type of fasting based on what I did the year before—usually one level harder, to make sure that it's not something I'm accustomed to, or rather, something easy. Because then I would just end up relying on myself.

So, here's what i learned from fasting for 21 days:

1. I don't actually like reading the books I have
   This was one of the things I realised really early on during my fast. Since I couldn't watch shows on Netflix, I had to find other things to do, so the first place I looked was in my bookshelf, and I powered through my comics really quickly. Then it dawned upon me: I had been buying books out of guilt.
   
   Specifically, the guilt of having to be "the literature graduate". I collected a number of literary classics and canons with the thought of I should be reading this, but because I wasn't 100% interested in them in the first place, they were just left in my bookshelves. I promised myself to start buying books that I would love to finish at least once.



2. I haven't been using my time wisely
   Sundays felt like a complete void. I couldn't hang out with friends because it would mean spending time together eating something, and I couldn't watch movies on Netflix to pass the time either. I realised I had been spending a lot of time just being idle or distracted.
   
   Weeknights were the same too—I had been spending hours every night just scrolling past things I barely cared about, just because it was a thing to do.



3. I've been trying to numb myself
   This one comes as no surprise to me. I know that I've always used any forms of media as an excuse to numb myself from thinking or feeling stuff. Without these distractions, I was forced to face whatever was on my mind and in my heart. I tried to take more time to reflect, to pray, to think and feel deeply.



4. I've forgotten how to deal with boredom
   Here's my choice of poison when it comes to dealing with boredom: binge-eating and binge-watching series. When I ran out of interesting books to read and became extremely bored, everything became uninteresting. Painting, drawing, writing—it all felt too difficult of a task to even start.
   
   I was so used to passively feeding myself with information, that I've forgotten how to churn them out. I realised that so many of us are living like this, and creativity found it hard to flow because we didn't allow for ourselves to do "harder things".



5. Why do I even post on social media?
   This became practically the thought that plagued me over the 21 days. I realised people were posting about their lives all the time because everything has become so disposable and quickly forgotten. Nothing lasts on social media, and nothing seems to be treasured, even though we continue to fill our collections with things that seem to reserve a special place in our devices.
   
   I suddenly realised that I had been, like most people, posting on social media because everyone else was on it. I didn't have a solid reason to be on it for so many hours on end. I'm not an influencer with a job on social media. To my own disappointment, neither am I sharing particularly inspiring messages with the world as I've set out to. I was just... there.

Fasting taught me about time. Prayer taught me about being quiet with God. Being still. Doing the fast and prayer this year has changed my perspective on social media and books quite a bit. I'm happy to report to you (and myself) that though I still find myself scrolling through Instagram mindlessly these days, I have been reading a lot more than I did last year, and I'm making it a point to record the number of books I've bought and read too. (It's at around 15 books now!)

What are your thoughts on fasting? Would you ever give it a go?

Words - Guardian: The Lonely and Great God

after finishing Coffee Prince and Pasta, i kept coming back to the beautiful words in Guardian: The Lonely and Great God or in short, Goblin / Dokkaebi.

they came mostly in the form of Kim Shin's monologues. even though he was always described to be a lowly warrior, i love that his character has a background in literature. i guess immortality really gave him time to brush up on how he articulated his thoughts and feelings.

(of course, beyond the world of Goblin, we'd also have to give credits to Kim Sook for writing amazing lines! i found out very recently that she also wrote The Descendants of the Sun—another crazy hit of a Korean drama.)


here's my favourite:

Life is walking up to me. Death is walking up to me.
From life to death, you walk up to me tirelessly.
Then I say something like this:
“I’m not in sorrow. This is good enough. It has to be."

the moment the Goblin realised that Eun Tak is really his bride, he panicked and thought about how he still wanted to live. out of the massive confusion, he realised that his will to live has shifted from a sheer desire of survival to the fact that he has fallen in love with this girl, who was full of hope.

this was what he thought when he saw her walking towards him. it was a deep revelation that he made continually to himself. it's tragically beautiful, because Eun Tak represents literally both life and death in this situation — on one hand becoming his sole reason to live, and on the other becoming the only end to his eternal punishment.

it's my favourite, because as the Goblin realised that he was caught in this place, he found the best in her joy, both in wanting to live and die for her.


and then there's this:

One day after a hundred years, when the weather is good enough,
I hope I will be able to tell [you, you are my] first love.
I ask above for permission. 

(But) not today.
It’s too nice out. I want to take a walk with you.
It’s nice talking a walk with you.
The weather stinks today. I’ll need to pick you up later.
It’s nice picking you up.
Tomorrow. One more day. Just one more day…
It’s nice looking at you.
What about today?

it started with truth. a very solemn truth that he told himself, hoping that he could tell Eun Tak one day. but as he faced Eun Tak in reality, he started to make up excuses that are made up of smaller truths. because it really was nice doing all these things with her. it was too soon for her to pull the sword out of his chest, for everything to end.

and with every excuse, he revealed his fondness towards her. it's nice, it's nice, it's nice. the repetition of these words reflected how much he wanted to spend all his days ('not today', 'one more day') with her. he never did get tired of repeating himself.

also, this:

Every moment I spent with you… shined.
Because the weather was good,
because the weather was bad,
and because the weather was good enough.
I loved every moment of it.
Even now, you shine brilliantly.

this is the best summary of Ji Eun Tak's character.

it sounds awfully cheesy, but if you watched the whole series, you'd understand why this made such an impact on the Goblin. i like that he used the word 'shined' because that's what she did. it's not like she didn't get sad or didn't feel pain, but every time she did, she was resilient. it was painful, but with a lot of strength and determination, she knew she would be able to get back up again. nothing was quite impossible for Ji Eun Tak.

for a normal series, her character might be deemed too perfect but in this fantasy genre, i think it tipped the scales just right. she was what we all—the audience as well as the characters—needed. a shock of hope that always comes through at the darkest hour.

i also loved that the Goblin often contrasted her with seemingly mundane, everyday happenings. the weather is a common topic that repeats in many of his lines with her. along with his immortality, he's come to appreciate the smallest changes in life, even something as boring as the weather.

lastly:

I’m saying this because today is just about right.
I’m saying this because you’re still shining.
I’m saying this because you were that first love.
On another day that’s just about right,
will you be my bride?

there are a lot of parallel lines written in this series. the couples often mirror one another (this is a lot more obvious between the Goblin couple) with their words, highlighting the fact that they were always paying attention to what they said to one another.

i love this as part of the ending because the Goblin repeated his own words from the past to form sentences with new meanings. from the poem about the weather being 'just right', to 'shining' Eun Tak, to his 'first love', he segues into 'another day' where he makes his proposal to her, for her to marry him, all while tracing back the tiniest elements in their time together.

all in all, this series is an exceptionally beautiful one. if you love fantasy, a good forbidden kind of love story, and you don't mind the extremely slow pacing in certain episodes, i would highly recommend this! honestly i've found so little to nitpick, aside from the pacing, haha. if you want to know more about what i thought, you can read my full review on this series here! (fair warning: spoilers ahead.)

Things Only Happen Once.

I had a revelation recently. Something that you may have already had the privilege of realising far earlier than I have, but I will share my thoughts nonetheless.

It is that things only happen exactly once.

If you think carefully about it, every breath you take is unique.
Every time you think about something, you think about it a little bit differently.
Every time you spend time doing something that is routine, there is bound to be something that is different from the last time you did it.

Can you feel the weight of it yet?

No?

Well, let me explain.

This phenomenon is known more commonly as Time. Every second that passes by is literally unable to return to us. Time is something we can never expect to get returns from. All of us are at the mercy of Time, blooming as we become adults, decaying as we grow old—whichever it is. We are not God; we cannot exist beyond Time, hence we must live through it, on a straight path, only moving forward and physically unable to move backward in Time.

This means that every time you get something done, it will be done in that exact manner once.

You will breathe a certain way, smell a certain fragrance, hear certain sounds, see certain sights, and complete that task in a very specific way.

The next time you write an essay, you might hold the pencil at a very slightly different angle. Slight, but different nonetheless. The next time you go swimming, your swimsuit will catch on a different part of your body. A varying number of hairs will fall from your head each day. You will taste exactly that amount of tastes in that day—no more, no less, and it continues to change each day.

Change is the only constant.
It's true.

But something that is truer than that, is that times are always changing.

Can you feel the weight of it yet?

Yes?

Then perhaps it's time to reflect on each moment. To never take things for granted to as far as we can remember, for we are human and we forget. To always remember to live in the present, fully, without a doubt. To continuously remind ourselves to do exactly that. To know that every moment, though different, is beautiful and made beautiful in its own time.

Things only happen once.

Watch as they go.
Feel as they come.
Try to hold on, but let go as they pass.