Another weekend

Everyone has a story to tell.

There's always a story behind an invention, behind a picture, behind a person's sad smile, behind the laughter of a child, behind a song, behind the feelings we have right now.

Of course! What was I talking about? David Pogue's post on Simplifying Diabetes Shots is one example on how everyday inventions are created from our simple needs. A need to simplify our life. Isn't everything we see, touch, use every day created to make our life easier? However, things that were made for that purpose in turn make our life more complicated more often than not. One thing spawns another, and we can't stop creating "things". It's a vicious cycle. Can't we get them right the first time? A friend once remarked, if we were to live our life without all these modern inventions (think plowing a rice field in the day, sipping hot tea after a long day in the field, then gazing at the sky at midnight), would we be a happier individual today? Perhaps so.

But I digress.

What's so interesting and exciting now is it's up to us to pursue and discover these stories. Come to think of it, isn't that part of our life, if not our mission? To find out life stories, how a person become who he/she is today? How from then on, we move on in life, knowing these people in our midst. Perhaps the more subtly overlooked but even more difficult question is: How do we become the person we are today? What's our story?

I love these stories. A contractor who invented a door latch that only needs a little push to open because he often had his hands full when going to a locked laundry room. A mother who invented a ready-to-mix syringe for her diabetic child because once she had to run to her car to get the right mix of doses, risking her child's life due to the delay. A woman who became famous around the world after her powerful portrait graced the cover of a magazine yet whose name was unknown and lived in obscurity. A child who died in a concentration camp, leaving behind a diary that stunned the world. A grandmother, trying to make ends meet out of cleaning toilets to feed her family. Fascinating, really.

To be honest, I can't even accurately describe my life story. Why I became the person I am today. Life is just one event after another, how do you attach some semblance of meaning to it? Toddlers, teenage years, twenties passed by in a blink of an eye. Time is running fast. We are mere mortals! It's a constant battle.

What will you tell your grandchild? What's your story?