Ukiyo (n): Japanese word which means living in the moment, detached from the bothers of life
Dear Hurt,
Your arrows don’t hit me anymore,
You see, I have a shield now,
The kind that protects me from every blow,
So, I look you in the eye and say “not today!”
Your words don’t bog me down nowadays,
You see, I choose what I want to hear,
And I have started living in the present; now, I want to be here,
So, I look you in the eye and say, “not today!”
Your plans don’t come to fruition in my life,
You see, I know you have tried hard to bring me down,
But, I have a game plan with a fire that can incinerate all you have,
So, “not today!”
Love,
Ukiyo
Footnotes:
Have you heard of ‘hurt hate’? It is hate to the degree of ‘n’ that consumes you when you are hurt. You might not be the wrongdoer but still you are more affected than the one who wronged you. I had a difficult lesson on ‘hurt hate’ in the past couple of weeks. Last week, I moved to Rome, Italy–a big move indeed and definitely out of my comfort zone. The week before my move, I had a period of introspection and I realized that I had bits and pieces of hurt stuck in several crevices of my heart. It was like tar and the more I tried scrapping it off, the more damage I caused. That is when the Lord reminded me that purification is only through fire; all the impurities had to be melted off. But don’t fret, you are not alone in that fire.
It was struggle to come out of it as the more I tried to forgive, the more they hurt me. Harder when the hurt is from close family members. As for me, I was hurt that my close family members, the ones who preached so much about love and care to me, did not celebrate my success or even care to say ‘bon voyage’ or ‘all the best’ before my travel. It hurt even more because I celebrated every small and big thing they achieved. Entitled much? Yes, indeed. This was bitter truth that the Lord convicted in my time of prayer. For a week I complained, cribbed and cried about it, and even told my husband that I was going to cut off all ties with them; I was angry and annoyed. “She did not bother to call me, why should I?”–this was what I kept saying. But Lo and Behold! I heard the still faint voice– “I showed up even when you never called Me, Oshin!”
Convicted, I had to step up and rectify the problem. This required a ton load of humility, and trust me, it wasn’t pretty. I took up the phone and made that difficult call. I felt the tar melting off; I felt lighter. There is a certain joy after you do the difficult things that God asks you to do. Doing it is hard, but that is where your faith springs to action.
As I was scrolling through Pinterest (sometimes mindlessly), I came across the term ‘ukiyo’ and thought, “our faith could do with some ukiyo”. We excessively and obsessively cling onto things of the past that prevent us from enjoying our present. We might have gone astray in the past but today we walk in the hope of the Lord. I often feared that past patterns would repeat in my life, and at the slightest whiff of a toxic cycle, I trembled. This fear overpowered my faith in Christ at some point. But I was constantly reminded by my prayer partner that “HE that is in me is greater than he that is in the world.” She used to text me a short and simple reminder which read:
HE > he
The uppercase letters surely emphasized on the magnality of God which surpasses every force of the world or the enemy. So, here is my two cents for you– “Unhook yourself from the hurts of the past for it is bait for more hurt; instead, hook yourself to God for He does not allow your foot to slip– the One who watches over you will not slumber (Psalm 121:3).”