Jacky's Corner

  A friend and I recently had an interesting conversation about birthdays. Someone we know had apparently started keeping track of the people who remembered her birthday, the people who called, and those who gave her gifts. At first, I thought, “Isn't that a little too transactional?” If I have the means to give someone a gift, why should I stop simply because they didn't give me one? Sometimes people have money. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they remember. Sometimes life gets in the way. But then another thought came up.What happens when it isn't just one birthday? What if I consistently remember yours, choose something thoughtful, call you and make an effort, while year after year you barely acknowledge mine? At what point does generosity stop feeling like generosity and start feeling like something I am doing in a relationship that isn't really meeting me halfway? I don't think friendship needs a perfect 50/50 balance. People go through different seasons. O...

  On Tuesday, I went for my swimming lesson and something rather interesting happened. I have been making progress with swimming, and this week I was particularly happy with myself. I had gone three times and was feeling quite proud of the progress I was making. But as I approached the deep end, I noticed something. Normally, when the water is clear, I can see the bottom of the pool getting farther and farther away from me. And strangely, that is when my heart starts pounding. This time, the water was hazy. I could barely see the bottom.And I didn't care. I went further into the deep end without thinking too much about how far down I was. I already knew how deep the pool was. Nothing about the pool had changed. What had changed was my ability to see exactly where I was. It made me wonder how often knowing the details of something actually feeds our anxiety. Sometimes, when I know exactly how long something will take, how difficult it will be, how much energy it will require or how ...

I recently started watching a new anime, The Ogre’s Bride , expecting nothing more than a little weekend entertainment. Instead, I found myself thinking about influence. There is a character whose upbringing made me particularly curious. She was constantly treated as the special one. She was praised, prioritized and given almost everything she wanted, while her sister often came second. Over time, something interesting happened. What began as privilege became expectation. She came to believe that good things were naturally meant for her. Then her sister received something beautiful, and suddenly it felt unfair. Not because she had been denied something she was entitled to, but because her understanding of the world had been shaped around always being first. It made me think about how much of us is influenced by what surrounds us. Take three children. One grows up being protected from every difficulty. Another grows up experiencing ordinary hardship and learning, “I can fall and get bac...

There is a school of thought that says when an emotion arises, we should simply give it space. Let anger be anger. Let sadness be sadness. Don't fight it, don't feed it, and don't immediately act on it. In time, the emotion will naturally lose its grip and pass. Then there is another perspective: if we don't deal with our emotions, they don't necessarily disappear. They may simply go underground, waiting for another opportunity to resurface. So, which is it? Perhaps the answer is neither extreme. Giving an emotion space does not have to mean ignoring it. It means allowing yourself to experience it without immediately reacting to it. If anger comes up, you can acknowledge, “I am angry right now,” without sending the angry message, starting the argument, or saying something you will regret later. Take a walk. Breathe. Sit with it. Let the intensity settle. But once you are calm, it can also be useful to ask: Why am I angry? Sometimes the answer is surprisingly sim...