Healing Story from J. （2025 March）

The Story of the Broken Sunglasses: A moment of peace and tranquility!

Can I pause to appreciate the beauty around me? There was a time when I was overwhelmed by a flood of emotions: frustration, anger, panic, fear, restlessness... My mind was far from calm. The emotional torment was just as destructive as physical pain. In search of inner peace, I tried running every night, and also participated in different types of mindfulness activities in various places.

After arriving in Vancouver, life was quieter than in Hong Kong, with less external noise. I thought I had found inner peace, but it wasn’t until January 19, 2025, when I attended a mindfulness session led by Venus, that I discovered true inner peace: it turns out that peace isn’t about placing yourself in a world devoid of noise, but about cultivating an inner calm that remains unaffected by the changes of the external world. No matter what happens outside, I can still feel at peace.

After the mindfulness session on January 19, I felt an unprecedented sense of comfort and ease. I wasn’t yet ready to go home, so I went with a friend to wander along the riverbank opposite the New Westminster Skytrain and the River Market. Upon entering the market, I took my sunglasses and placed them into the small case. Unfortunately, the glasses didn’t fit securely in the blue denim case, and I unintentionally loosened my grip. In an instant, the glasses fell to the ground, one of the arms snapped, and the glasses broke into two parts. These sunglasses had been with me for ten years, worth nearly 3,000 Hong Kong dollars, and now they were ruined.

I picked up the broken sunglasses, quietly placing them back into their small case, which now seemed to transform from a simple storage box into a coffin. There should have been feelings of pain, regret, anger (toward myself), but none of these emotions surfaced. Not even sadness from the loss emerged. I simply accepted the situation with calmness: I had lost the glasses, the financial loss, and the emotional connection built over ten years... In the long span of time, the bond I had formed with the sunglasses was severed in an instant, marked by the sound of them breaking.

The hardest thing to accept in life is the permanent loss of something emotional. Grief, for me, is a heavy word. I don’t know why, but when many people around me discussed the popular Hong Kong movie "The Last Dance," I was often asked, "Have you seen it?" I even asked my friends if they had watched it, curious about their thoughts, yet I was too afraid to watch it myself. I was truly afraid because I am someone who is terrified of permanent loss, afraid of the insecurity and confusion that follow emotional rupture. I find it difficult to bear such immense and heavy emotions, so I have always used avoidance to cope with feelings I don’t want to face.

The point is simple: just one mindfulness session allowed me to experience peace and tranquility, and it also taught me how to face permanent loss. It’s easy to understand the objective truth, but accepting and embracing our negative emotions is incredibly difficult.

I once read a small story in a Bible devotional: Someone asked what peace is. Someone pointed to a beautiful landscape painting, where the central lake was calm, surrounded by mountains, radiating serenity. The person said, "This is peace!" But the wise one replied, "Peace is found in another picture that seems less peaceful: the sky is filled with thunder and lightning, and a waterfall plunges straight down. Below the waterfall, there is a small tree, and on a branch of that tree rests a little frog at peace."

Some people spend their whole lives immersed in religion, trying to understand emotions and life and death. Venus’s mindfulness sessions are extraordinary, and I am grateful to her for providing me with a unique mindfulness experience that allowed me to embark on a journey of peace and tranquility. After searching for it in the crowd for so long, I realized that the peace I sought was always within reach.

來自活動參加者J參加靜觀活動後的體驗 （2025 年3月）

破碎太陽眼鏡的故事:

眾裡尋他千百度 — 一刻寧靜與平安！

我可以靜下來欣賞一下身邊的美好嗎？曾經有段時間，我被排山倒海的情緒所困擾，內心充滿各種情緒：鬱悶、憤怒、驚慌、害怕、躁動……內心無法平靜。那種心靈折磨對人的摧殘，不被物理痛苦少。為了尋求內心平靜，我嘗試每晚跑步，亦會在不同地方，參與不同形式的靜觀活動。 

來到溫哥華後，生活比香港寧靜，少了外面的喧鬧，以為已經獲得心靈平靜，但直到2025年1月19日，第一次參加由Venus帶領的靜觀活動，才發現真正的內心平靜：原來不是將自己放置在無雜音的世界，而是內心獨立於外在世界的變化，無論外面世界發什麼事，我依然感到平安。 

 1月19日靜觀活動後，内心感到前所未有的舒適愜意。尚未有歸家意願的我，和朋友一起去了New Westminster skytrain對開的河邊沿岸及岸邊River Market閒逛。甫踏入Market時，我收下太陽眼鏡，放進眼鏡盒內，可惜整個眼鏡未完全安枕於藍色牛仔布料製的小盒子裡，兩根拿著眼鏡的手指卻不為意鬆開了，一剎那，眼鏡掉到地上，其中一邊支架斷開了，眼鏡分成兩部分。這副陪伴我十年，價值港幣接近3千元的眼鏡爛了。視線帶動手腳，我彎腰拾起軀體分離的太陽眼鏡殘肢，默默放進屬於他的小盒子内，盒子彷佛由寢室變成了棺木。理應出現的心痛、可惜、後悔、（對自己）憤怒，卻一絲一毫都沒有出現，連因失去而產生的悲傷也沒有，我就這樣平靜接受剛剛發生的事實：失去了眼鏡、經濟損失、十年的陪伴與感情… 在漫長的光陰裡，與太陽眼鏡建立的情感，「啪」一聲隨著他的逝去，斷了。

人生在世，最難接受的是情感是「永久失去」。哀傷，對我來說是個很沉重的字。不知為何，當身邊很多人在討論，熱門電影「破·地獄」，時常被問：「你看了沒？」；甚至，自己亦問朋友有沒有看？好奇對方的觀後感，卻不敢看。著實不敢看，因為我是個很怕「永久失去」的人，害怕情感斷裂後的不安與徬徨，亦難以承受過於龐大和沉重的情緒，所以一直用逃避來處理所有不願面對的情感。

說了很多，想帶出道理很簡單：一次平常的靜觀活動，讓我體會到寧靜與平安，更讓我學習如何面對永久失去。客觀道理總是容易明白，但接納及擁抱自己的負面情緒，是多麼艱難。 

曾經看過一篇聖經靈修小故事： 有人問什麼是平安？有人指著面前一幅非常漂亮的風景畫，畫中央的湖面波平如鏡，四周被群山環繞，洋溢著平靜。那人表示這就是平安！智者卻回答說：「平安是另一幅看似不平靜的畫：天有閃雷，面對前面萬丈瀑布奔流直下，在瀑布下方那棵小樹上，躺在樹枝上休息的小青蛙擁有了平安。」 

有人窮其一生浸沉在宗教裡只為參透情感與生死。Venus的靜觀活動，是不平常的，謝謝她帶給我一場與別不同的靜觀體驗，體會到寧靜與平安之旅。眾裡尋他千百度，那想要的東西原來可以垂手可得。