"Die! I'll kill you! You...lousy SCUM!" I raged as I unsheathed my sword and decapitated it with a broad downward sweeping arch. To finish it off, I lunged to impale the "heart" in the torso. It was just an innocent snowman, but to me it represented something diabolical, and I was venting a deep anger and frustration on the seven-foot monstrosity. My eyes were bloodshot and tears streamed down my face as I pummeled the snowman mercilessly; grunting and heaving, I did not stop until I had reduced it to a pile of mush. The Japanese imitation sword I used was something my dad had bought me from an army PX store (for display only). It was rendered useless. Though the snowman was originally soft snow when it was created, rain and gradual melting had turned it into mostly ice. The blade contorted under the abuse, but I didn't relent; I flipped it backward and used the blunt handle to continue whacking until I was exhausted. Totally spent and unable to stand upright, I collapsed and cried like a baby. Tossing the blade, I continued pounding the ground with my fist crying "Why! Why God? Why Me?" My life felt like it was over.
 

Despite the ruckus, the school I was at in Elgin, Illinois was strangely quiet now that most of the other collegiates had gone home for Christmas break. I was surprised that nobody came out to look at the violent debacle I had created. I supposed that if anybody did see me, they knew better than to accost a crazed man wielding a sword - not that I really cared. At the moment I could have been surrounded by a crowd of people and yet feel completely and despairingly alone.
 

Coming to my senses and wary of who might see me in such disarray, I picked myself up. I stumbled to my favorite place for solace - a little peninsula that jutted out into the Fox River. There was a quiet little stream next to it that ran through the campus and forked off the river. On other days, I used to sit there, enjoying watching bits of debris being carried along by the current. But on that day I sulked and imagined the life of everyone else "flowing happily and gaily by" as mine was stuck in the mud. Blaming God for everything, I pondered the chain of events that had left me here and wondered what I should have done differently.
 

Her name was Cyndi; she was a "free-spirited" art major. We hit it off shortly after entering my junior year at Judson College, and I had transferred there from the University of Hawaii in Hilo. One might ask, "Why the heck did you leave tropical paradise to go to that land-locked Midwestern tundra?" and I would have to confess that much of it was because I was trying to get my act back together. I had not really applied myself when I was going to school in Hawaii, and after two years of poor academics and uncertain of my career, I left. Judson College was a small, Christian liberal arts college, and I felt that I needed the spiritual sanctuary that it provided as well as the individual attention. What's more, the head of the department, Mr. Baney, took a liking to me and gave me more responsibilities than I ever imagined.
 

With encouragement from Mr. Baney, from my then girlfriend Cyndi and my family, my self-confidence grew and my grades improved dramatically. It made a world of difference when I had people who believed in my abilities. I found that I had a natural knack for computers, something that Mr. Baney had seen all along. He got me an internship at Fermi National Labs, and put me in charge of a team to develop financial games for the Museum of Science and Industry's Money Center.
 

The Money Center was located on prime real estate in a Museum that hosted thousands of guests per year. It was the first exhibit to the left of the main entrance, and visitors had to walk through it to get to the Omnimax theatre and space exhibit in back. Mr. Baney was able to negotiate a contract with the Illinois Council on Economic Education to allow us to develop the educational games running on the computers therein. This project would be our legacy, even though years later we found that it would be replaced with a gift shop. More importantly, it was an accomplishment that future employers could spot on our resume and say "Impressive".
 

Imbued with zeal by the gravity of our work, I became a workaholic. Trying to make the project "perfect" for the masses, I drove my team of developers and artists to the brink of delirium. Subconsciously, I expected everybody to perform at the same level I did - to sacrifice social life, family life, and spiritual nourishment for work. The person I pushed hardest was Cyndi, probably because she was closest to me. Her work was never good enough and I kept pushing her to raise it to the "next level". I remember a day when she encapsulated the moment by sketching a drawing of me with a chain around my neck, locked to the computer. Funny thing was, the very thing that originally brought Cyndi and me closer together, the project, was the very thing that drove us apart.
 

A lot of things started falling apart due to my drive to succeed at whatever the cost. I lost contact with friends and family since I had put them secondary to the success of the project. The deadline for installation loomed large and ominous and seemed like an overwhelming endeavor. Sometimes, overcome with anxiety and deprived of sleep, we'd turn to Mr. Baney for inspiration. He'd give us a knowing smile, sip his cup of java, and state exuberantly "No Pain, No Gain" - a motto that was emblazoned on a wood plaque above the computer lab. We pressed on.
 

The project was nearly completed halfway through our senior year. It had taken its toll on the whole project team: we had become grumpy, critical, and irritated with each other. Cyndi said she needed some space to prevent burnout, and got my approval to do charity work at an old folk's home with a mutual friend of ours. I didn't mind; it allowed me to focus more without her need for attention, and she truly seemed to enjoy interacting with the elderly. The end was in sight and we were all going to make it intact, or so I thought.
 

That winter, Chapel had started as usual, and almost everyone else had gone except for me. I had long given up going to weekly chapel in order to squeeze in a little more work time. This particular day I finished a critical piece early and decided to drop in and surprise Cyndi whom always went. Slipping into the back of the church, I spotted her halfway up the farthest section of pews. She was singing next to our mutual friend Greg with a joyous smile on her face. Jumping in next to her I said "Hi! I finished early and I thought I'd drop in...." The change in her expression told me everything. It was as if I had caught her hand in the cookie jar. Her relationship with Greg had taken a deeper turn sometime whilst I had my head buried in the project and they were working at the nursing home. She was stiff and unresponsive the entire duration of the service. I was devastated. I had thought we were actually going to get married some day.
 

Over the next few weeks, discussions turned to arguments as she began explaining the nature of her new relationship to me, and why we were not compatible. I begged her to reconsider; selfishly, it was mainly due to my desire to hang on to the one human relationship I thought I had remaining. She did not budge, and my relentlessness only drove her farther away. I grew to detest them both.
 

One day Greg thought it would be a nice gesture to build Cyndi a large snowman in front of her dormitory. She was absolutely ecstatic over his labor of love, but to me it was an icon to be despised. While I was busy loading up the car with equipment for the installation site, they were off on Christmas break enjoying each other's company and having a wonderful time. That snowman symbolized something I could no longer be a part of.
 

It had to be destroyed.
 

That's how I found myself in a lonely pity party at the end of a peninsula. I blamed God for taking everyone away from me, for alienating me from the rest of society. What good was this milestone accomplishment if nobody was around to appreciate it? I had made such sacrifice, and for what? I was angry and dejected for quite some time. I hadn't realized what a "Prima Donna" I had become. The world only revolved around me; nobody else's life mattered.
 

They say that hindsight is always 20/20. It was hard to see beyond the moment on the peninsula - that life would get much better. After many years of wrestling with my singleness, God plopped my future wife into my life when I least expected it; she came after I had resolved that God intended me to be contentedly single. Kathy turned out to be more than I imagined I could want in a woman. She and I shared many of the same convictions, interests, kindred humor, and ease of rapport like no other. Retracing my roots, I shared my favorite contemplative spot with her and eventually got married in that rustic chapel on campus. Had I married Cyndi, I would have missed out on the best thing to happen in my life; that would have been an even greater loss.
 

One could always ask why a supposed "all-powerful" God would allow us to go through such hardships. Why not just bless us with the perfect person and let us get on with life? I know now that if I hadn't experienced that hardship, that I would have missed out on some of life's most important lessons: the consequence of being a workaholic, the true value of friendships and family, the isolation of selfishness, and not to take loved ones for granted.
 

One more thing - "Never buy a sword from the Army PX store if you're planning to kill a snowman."
 

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Brief Bio
Jonathan Tun is a third generation Asian American (Chinese and Japanese descent) born in Chicago, Illinois (1963).