Thursday, 17 July 2025

Author: Harry Henry Julin

Love’s Wounds and Healing

I have here not one story but a few short ones gathered from individuals that I came to know over the years on the sidelines of going about my journalistic jobs. They’re like pieces of a quilt, showing us different sides of love, heartbreak, and moving on. Each one gives

The Cynic

Timo worked as a guide-interpreter for a British army battalion stationed near Serian Town during the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation from 1963 to 1966. In 1963, I was in Primary 4 at our village’s mission school, and by 1966, I was a Form 1 student boarding at Serian Government Secondary School. During

The Grasshopper and the Ant

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune.“ Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was a prominent British politician, writer, and statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, first in 1868 and then from 1874 to 1880. WHEN I was a child growing up in our remote rural village from

The Famine

Father’s words cut through the room like a knife. “No rice? Seriously?” His disbelief mirrored the worry etched on all our faces. “Go check it out for yourself!” Mother’s response was a mix of resignation and determination. Father flung open our rice jar, the last hope in the grim situation,

Two Better Than One

When asked by a friend why he wanted to get married, a young man gave a simple answer. “Two is better than one,” he said. Lijah (sometimes shortened to Ijah) felt incomplete on his own. To him, having a partner, particularly a spouse, made a lot of sense. “I’ve got

Survival in Three Words

HIS name was Niba Gibap. It wasn’t his real name, just a nickname his friends gave him that stuck for life. Niba loved school. Back in the early 1950s, he was called Raham, short for Abraham. Unfortunately, his parents were too poor to afford notebooks and pencils. One of his

The Soul’s Internal Struggles

‘The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882); an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet whose writings explored themes of individualism,

Lily of the Pond

‘Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.’ – Helen Keller (1880-1968); an American author, lecturer, and activist. She was deaf and blind at the age of 19 months due to an illness, yet

Tomorrow Might Not Come

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1861). He was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. DURING my childhood, I knew a man who

The Calculative Farmer

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at