Today is my 33rd birthday.
Officially 33. A beautiful number. A new journey begins.
A Strange Dream
I had a strange dream last night.
I was sleeping in bed with my wife when suddenly I was transported to the roof of a house. It was a flat roof, only about the size of our 10-square-meter bedroom. There was no railing, and the ground seemed incredibly far below. The only way up was through a small square opening in one corner of the roof. It seemed to be the way to the roof of my own house.
It became quite frightening when I realized that I could fall at any moment, from a height of several dozen meters.
I suddenly woke up.
It was raining heavily outside. My wife and my daughter were still lying beside me.
Then, all of a sudden, I had the feeling that someday, when I go to work, I will have to be far away from my daughter. I thought I would miss her terribly.
I felt a little emotional.
It was 3:50 in the morning, and the rain continued until it was fully light.
A Quiet Birthday Morning
Around 7 a.m., I woke up and received a birthday wish from my wife.
I didn’t feel much, though. It was probably still just an ordinary day, like any other.
After 8 a.m., I drove my wife and daughter to school. Today was the Mid-Autumn Festival, so I thought my daughter would probably have a lot of fun at school.
My wife and I went together to buy ten sparrows to release as part of a Buddhist practice.
Every time I watched them fly up into the trees and heard them chirping, I felt very happy. They didn’t even seem to want to fly away completely. They stayed there, singing for a long time.
The weather at the park was cool that morning. Listening to the birds singing, everything felt incredibly peaceful.
My wife and I went for coffee at Highlands Coffee, a new café that had just opened beside the lake in the park. The surroundings were beautiful.
The café was quite spacious. It wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t crowded either. The drinks were good, and the cake smelled wonderful.
We talked about the future, and about everything that had happened to us.
One scam had caused both of us to lose all the money we had saved and left us with more than one billion VND in debt.
That’s an enormous amount of money. We might even have had to sell our house.
Fortunately, that hasn’t happened.
As people say, as long as you are alive, you still have a chance to rebuild.
Five Years to Pay It All Back
If I can find a good job soon and our daughter can start school, I hope we can pay off all our debt within five years.
It’s an ambitious goal, but perhaps we can do it.
Even so, I still can’t get rid of this vague feeling about the future. I don’t know where everything is going.
At 33, finding a stable job isn’t easy.
But I definitely don’t want to work in a factory, spending 12 hours a day working without any real opportunity to grow over the next five years. That would close off too many possible paths for the future.
Maybe I will have to go somewhere far away for a while.
An Ordinary Day
At 10 a.m., I went home to pick up my older brother and his wife. They had brought their car in for maintenance and stopped by. Perhaps they also wanted to go out and do something.
Life in the countryside can be stressful too, and everyone needs to get out somewhere sometimes to clear their head.
They stayed until 3 p.m.
No one knew it was my birthday today.
And that’s actually a good thing.
I just wanted to spend a peaceful day with my wife and children. That was enough.
My cousin recently had a baby boy by C-section.
The husband and wife couldn’t agree on the baby’s birth date and their work situation, and apparently they had also spoken rather disrespectfully to both sets of parents.
Everything became so complicated.
It was supposed to be such a happy and simple thing.
Words Have Power
Suddenly, I thought about something Jesus said in the Bible: people are not made unclean by what they eat, but by what comes out of their mouths.
That is really true.
Words have tremendous power.
My Daughter’s First Mid-Autumn Festival
At 4 p.m., I went to pick up my daughter.
The school was holding a Mid-Autumn Festival celebration for the children. It was crowded and lively.
I left my wife there to enjoy the festival with our daughter, then walked around the lake for some fresh air before going home.
I registered the domain startingat33.com to start writing this journal.
That was the beginning.
I hadn’t even finished setting up the website when my wife called.
I had to get back on the motorbike and go pick them up again.
My daughter had received two bags of candy and a traditional star-shaped lantern.
She seemed very happy.
My 33rd birthday, and my little daughter’s first Mid-Autumn Festival.
I think it will be a memorable one.
A Simple Evening
We had a simple dinner.
Then I took my wife and daughter out to enjoy the Mid-Autumn Festival.
It was already 8:30 p.m., and we didn’t make it in time to see the lion dance. My wife kept complaining that we should have left earlier.
But honestly, I didn’t really want to watch the lion dance that much.
I just wanted to ride around with my wife and daughter, enjoy the evening breeze, and take part in a little bit of the festival.
Anyway, being around a crowd of people was fun too.
My older daughter is also celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival in the countryside with her grandparents.
I’ll see her again in two days.
She seems to have gained some weight lately. Her face is so round now.
I wonder if she misses her parents while she’s away.
I’m sure she’s having fun at the Mid-Autumn Festival too.
A New Beginning
At 10:30 p.m., my wife and daughter were both asleep.
I took the opportunity to write a few more lines for the website.
I tried to recite the Shurangama Mantra once.
It’s been more than three years.
No one knows that I have been reciting this mantra since my family went through that difficult time. Even after all these years, I still haven’t memorized the whole thing.
I keep feeling that when I finally memorize the entire Shurangama Mantra, some kind of happiness will come into my life.
Let’s wait and see.
It’s almost there.
Happy 33rd birthday to me.
