"The dog it was that died"

Late last night, I finished reading "The Painted Veil" by W. Somerset Maugham.
The novel was filled with so many beautiful statements that I would love to quote, however I will only focus on one quote from the book.
I can't put my finger on what caught my heart when I read this particular line, but I imagine, it evoked many thoughts of which I would like to share.
Just before I carry on, I would like to point out that you need not have read the novel in order to understand this blog, so do not panic!
Just to give you the general idea of the plot; the novel focuses on a married couple, Walter and Kitty, who move to Hong Kong due to the nature of Walter's work as a bacteriologist. Kitty has never loved Walter, but she was desperate to get married before her sister. so she accepted his proposal, being well aware that he bored her and that she did not find him attractive in the slightest. Walter loved Kitty though, so much so that he turned a blind eye to the fact that she didn't love him and he was content with being able to love her.
Everything changes when Walter discovers that Kitty has been having an affair and he exacts a very weird revenge.
In order to spite Kitty, Walter has her move with him to an area 600 miles away from Hong Kong, an area suffering from a terrible cholera outbreak.

During their stay in Mei-Tan-Fu, Kitty discovers just how worthless her life used to be, and how shallow she once was. Kitty also begins to understand love and gains an insight into just how deeply she would have hurt Walter due to her infidelity.
Kitty is aware that the initial reason for Walter insisting that she follow him to such a dangerous area, is because he hoped she might die from cholera, however over time it is clear that he no longer wishes her any harm, but greatly despises himself for loving someone whom he very well knew-could never love him.

Walter dies from cholera, but with his last breath, he utters a quote to Kitty as she begs him to forgive her.
Walter says "The dog it was that died." Just as the character Kitty was confused by this statement, so was I. I thought to myself, what a cryptic way to say goodbye?!
Kitty later asks another character known as Waddington, the meaning of Walter's final words, and she is told that it is the final line from Goldsmith's Elegy.
Kitty's curiosity of Walter's final words seemed to end at that point, but mine didn't.
I wanted to understand what Walter was trying to communicate in his final moment, so I decided to look up Oliver Goldsmith's "Elegy on the death of a mad dog."

Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man,
Of whom the world might say
That still a godly race he ran,
Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad,
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wondering neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light,
That showed the rogues they lied:
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.
-- Oliver Goldsmith

Upon reading this poem, my heart broke many times for Walter, yet, I understood the significance of the last line also being his last line in the novel.
An outsider would have been unaware of the way in which Kitty had hurt Walter, because the knowledge of the betrayal had been kept between themselves and the man with whom she had been unfaithful.
People may have thought her a good wife for following Walter to such a dangerous region, yet they knew not of the underlying reason as to why she had gone.
Walter saw Kitty as the good man in the poem and himself as the mad dog, and just as we know nothing of the reason the good man and the mad dog fall out, outsiders would have known nothing of Walter's reasons for insisting that Kitty follow him to Mei-Tan-Fu.
There was a certainty in Kitty's view that she would surely die from being amidst the cholera epidemic, but lo and behold, it was the "mad dog" Walter who died instead.

I didn't intend to write a literature essay, I just wanted to give sufficient insight into my reasoning for making the next statement:
In all things, no matter how difficult, learn to forgive. Not for the sake of the wrongdoer, but for your own sake.I say this because just like Kitty, I don't believe that Walter died from cholera, I believe that he died of a broken heart and the soul devouring hatred he bore for himself for having loved and received no love in return.
I always remember the "Lord's prayer" in which one asks God to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."
If you don't believe in a God, that's fine. You don't need to forgive others in the hopes that God may forgive you for your own sin, but just forgive anyway in order that you might have a lighter heart.
I know forgiving someone who has hurt you greatly is a hard task, but one must remember that to not forgive is to enslave yourself to a negative emotion. In order to be free, you would need to release yourself from the shackles of your negative emotions.

I haven't forgiven a few people for the major wrongs they've done me, however, after reading W.somerset Maugham's wonderfully written book and also Oliver Goldsmith's thought inspiring poem- I have decided that I don't want to be the mad dog. I want to be free and I want the same for anybody reading this.

Lets all agree to forgive, we don't have to find the wrongdoer in order to tell them because they may not care for our forgiveness or even consider that they have done anything wrong. We just need to say it in our hearts and let go of it all.

I hope somehow that this touches somebody somewhere in the world.

x-Cocoa-x

Too busy...

I've just experienced something that I feel, must be shared with the masses.
I think its something that we have all done to someone or have had done to us, but it is still something that needs to be addressed.
Let me start off by saying what happened and then I will state my thoughts.
I sent quite a long text message to a guy and after many hours, the reply I received was "I will reply when I have time to." What would you say to this? Would you say "fair enough, they're obviously busy, so might as well wait until they're less busy in order to get my reponse." To be honest that is the answer I would give to someone who presented me with this issue too.

Hold up though....There's something else

What if this person has a twitter page, and after texting you saying "I'll reply when I have time to" they're happily tweeting away as if they don't have a care in the world?!
What would you say then? Because now, you'd have to view the text message in a brand new context.
I've had many guys text me and call me and ask when we'd meet up and I've replied hundreds of times "I'm really busy right now, but I'll let you know when my workload eases up."
We must have all done it at some point, without thinking as to why we're always busy when its a particular person that requires our attention.

You want to know what I think??

I think nobody is ever "too busy" it just depends on who is asking for our time.
If you're a guy or a girl that keeps getting told by someone else that theyre too busy, please just get the picture. They're not too busy. They're just too busy to talk or meet up with you.
Its not something you should take to heart (although it is easier said than done) you have to view the situation from an objective perspective.
Do you value yourself?
OK...so if you had a fantastic antique piece that you know is worth an incomprehendable amount of money, would you chase people down to buy it off you or would you sell it for less than it's worth? I hope your answer to that was "no."

Now apply that logic...

If you know what you're worth and what you deserve, why chase people down to make them spend time with you? A person that deserves you would be capable of seeing your qualities, you shouldn't have to spell it out to them.
You shouldn't ever be anyone's pass time. Kahlil Gibran states in his book "The Prophet" that "You should never seek your friend with time to kill...seek them with time to live." What I think he means by this is that your friend should actively want to see you to have fun, not as a distraction or to while away time.

"Everything has its beauty...But not everybody sees it."
Remember this statement.
Many guys have waited indefinitely for a female to want them, sometimes she never does or finally she comes round to the idea but never gives it her all.
Same with females waiting for a guy who wouldn't wait for them.

Moral of this blog is this...
We are all priceless in they eyes of God...if a person is blind to your worth or too busy to notice it, then you're better off without them.

Ciao
x-Cocoa-x

Not like it was love...

It’s over now.
Not like anything truly began
I just know that it’s definitely over.
A race that’s finished, without ever being ran.
It has left a mark on me though
This thing that wasn’t anything exact.
A tiny argument that changed into a war
Over opinions disguised as fact.

When something dies so soon
Before it could even begin
It is fair to say that trying to revive it
Is a battle which you’re unlikely to win.
It is best to move on, and not write poems
That makes me look like a lovesick punk.
It is better to get over the moment
In which your heart truly sunk.

It’s not like it was love
It’s not like I’m left heartbroken.
There’s just this niggling feeling
That many things were left unspoken.
Life goes on though, could probably forget this by next week
Can’t ignore the reality though,
that; while I wrote this, a tear rolled down my cheek

Nothing

If life, in all its complexity, were to cease-there would be nothing.
I would rather the heartbreak than nothing.
I would rather the tears, than nothing.
I would rather the deception, the broken dreams, the feeling of lacking any worth-than nothing.
I would rather wishing for the world to stop than nothing.
Because throughout the multitude of painful moments, there is still something, something deep down that insists on living through all this...
I would rather something, than nothing.
Cocoa K

Like a virgin...

My first ever blog...
as the title would depict; I do feel like a fumbling, confused virgin-trying to find her way around all this stuff.
I definitely have stuff I want to write about so its not like I'm stuck for words or anything, I just feel a bit funny about having jumped on this 'bandwagon' of blogging.
I'm not blogging because I have an inside scoop on celebrity news or because I'm a hip hop whizkid...I think I'm blogging because I have a big gob, and would jump at any opportunity to air my views.
Twitter was my cathartic tool of choice, until I became disgruntled with my 140 character limit.

So what do I want to talk about...
well...
its actually about friendship and pride...

I have-no-had a friend whom I would have described as a 'best friend' until we fell out.
As with most conflicts, we were both accountable for blame in our own ways, but due to explosive anger (on my part) and deep hurt (on both our parts) we failed to sort the situation out while it could still be resolved.
Our friendship was one in which both parties could divulge information and secrets without the fear of judgement from the other. Obviously as with most unions in life, there is usually a leader or a more dominant individual and I guess that individual is me.
I protected this said friend, as if she were my sister and everyone who knew us, was aware of how deeply I cared about her.
Anyway, an incident took place which led me to accuse her via text message of not playing her role as a friend and I informed her that I would delete all our means of communication, which I did.
I remember that I texted her some pretty harsh things in the body of the text mentioned above and I also remember that in my fit of rage, I deleted her response without reading it.
She had always told me that it would hurt her greatly if we were ever to fall out and due to the hurt I felt at her alleged failure in her duties of friendship- I attempted to reciprocate the same hurt by severing our friendship.

Anger passes....

When anger passed, guess what? Yes, I began to miss her companionship and the comfort of being able to start a story knowing that she knew the history of all the individuals that would be mentioned. I let another three months pass, forcing myself to ignore the evident signs that I missed her.
Last week, it dawned on me that my birthday was drawing ever closer, and I decided it would be a good idea to reconcile by emailing her to ask her to be part of whatever I decided on for my birthday.
At the back of my mind, I expected that everything would go back to normal...that is until her reply came.
She basically said she no longer held a grudge about the argument, but she would prefer to "keep to herself" from now as she had adopted "a new mindset."
The reply hit me hard because, I can't remember a time before this incident that I'd been the one to make the first move in terms of a reconciliation, so the fact that I was able to put my pride/ego to the side in order to do so-should prove how much I wanted to amend the situation. For this reason, I can honestly say that my pride/ego has definitely been bruised.
I never thought her reply would be something along the lines of her being fine by herself, because since our friendship began, she had always needed me, for advice, for a shoulder to cry on as the older sister figure who would literally fight her battles.
Not being needed, is a hard pill to swallow, however I noticed that at some point everybody needs to fight their own battles and listen to their own inner voice as opposed to constantly asking for advice.
I don't regret making the first move, because it needed to be done and I guess now, its time to let go and accept what anger has the power of undoing.

In the same way that I feel like a virgin with this whole blogging thing; I also feel like a virgin, because I put my ego at the mercy of rejection and an outcome which I failed to consider became the very outcome that presented itself.
they say "you always remember your first time", and I guess I will always remember my first blog and the first time a little piece of my heart broke because of a girl.