Being Born

I still remember the first movie that made me actually cry-- it was Armageddon. It sort of marked the starting point when I no longer held back from crying over movies or books. =P I suppose that was one of my emotional development stages-- living away from my parents did break a lot of my reserved habits.

In recent years I noticed that almost all of those tear-jerking scenes had to do with parent-child relationships. (Thinking back, the context in Armageddon happened to be the same.) This is probably yet another mental development stage-- connecting with the parental instinct in me, I suppose? =D

This thought particularly stroke me when I cried harder than I laughed while watching Money No Enough 2 today. It was meant to be touching, but I was quite surprised and paiseh at how readily the tears flowed, heh. The Hokkian insert songs at those points were unexpectedly beautiful too, and the mundane words in the lyrics made them all the more heartfelt to me.

Anyway.. the movie was part of a string of pampering treatments I'm afraid I've been indulging in these few days. =) Thank you so much, family and friends. I thought a birthday was the most unearned-for pampering compared to other celebrations.. =D Some say that on such a day we are really giving thanks for the person having been born, leading to them being part of our lives today. That is a very kind thought, but our parents were the ones doing all the work on that day, no? =P

With my Jap-entertainment knowledge overload, that made me recall reading/watching somewhere that Yamashita Tomohisa received that similar birthday message "Thank you for having been born" from his mother. How noble is that? His friends rightfully commented that he should reply to her with something like "(I'm the one who should) thank you for giving birth to me", but he was apparently too shy to do that in the end.

His senpai Doumoto Tsuyoshi on the other hand really got my respect when he revealed the inspiration behind a song he wrote, that was, the memory of viewing cherry blossoms with his mother; and that just before recording the song, he'd fought off the embarrassment and sent her the message: "I'm glad to have been born as your child (お母さんの子供に生まれて良かったです), thank you."

The birthday person themselves really have more reasons to be thankful about, na. From the Buddhist perspective, being thankful for the precious human birth, too, and taking care not to waste it. *nudges self*


With today comes the reminder of your love
With today comes the reminder of all the lives that make up a part of mine
今日まで全てにありがとう
今日からもどうぞよろしく