Anything Considered

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.

GILDA RADNER (1946-1989)

I came across this quote while blogsurfing today, and it hits the mark for me. My life may not have been defined by hardship, but I certainly have felt reality fall short of my dreams - even the small and simple ones.

Sometimes, I wonder whether my friend was right in telling me that there is no place for idealists in this world. Dreaming brings about expectations which reality hardly ever meets. It makes us feel disenchanted and frustrated.

Yet, the slightest glimmer of hope can make me jump with two open arms. It keeps me fighting on, and believing that life is well worth fighting for.

The goal is to live a full, productive life even with all that ambiguity. No matter what hap- pens, whether the cancer never flares up again or whether you die, the important thing is that the days that you have had you will have lived.

GILDA RADNER (1946-1989)

It has been a long week. I feel worn out.

Flattery gets people nowhere.

It's been so long since we took the time
to share words from deep inside us
We're in our own world spinning our wheels
but you know how I feel

Since the first time I took your hand
My love for you has just been growing
You always seem to understand
You know how I am

I'm gonna love you til the end
I'm gonna be your very true friend
I wanna share your ups and downs
I'm gonna be around

When you're alone cause I'm away
Don't be sad don't be afraid
I'm gonna turn my thoughts to you
like I always do

MLTR, I'm gonna be around

I wandered around
The streets of this town
Trying to find sense of it all.
The rain on my face,
It covers the trace
Of all the tears I had to waste.
Why must we hide emotions?
Why must we never break down and cry?

All that I need is to cry for help.
Somebody please hear me cry for help.
All I can do is cry for help.

RICK ASTLEY, Cry for Help

Cassius:
Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Julius Caesar Act 1, Scene 2

It is interesting how I sometimes remember the most trivial things. In a dream I had a few nights ago, snippets of my past sent and received smses flashed through my mind. I don't even have those messages now. But somehow, I could remember them. I don't know why.

Hindsight and memories of past experience are often used as aids to help us journey onward. And yet, for all the help it has rendered, there have been times when I found myself misguided. Different pockets of selective memories lead to different conclusions. I certainly cannot choose what I wish to recall.

If the past is partial and this past is our guide, then are we truly masters of our fate?

I am the kind of person who finds it hard to accomplish something that I cannot envision being accomplished. If I don't see it happening, I would not have the self-assurance to make it happen. And yet, there are specific times in my life when the impossible - the things which I could not envision and could not believe in - happened. Sometimes people get more than what they pray for - in a good way.

There are still many things in life that I do not see possible for myself. Important things, of course. And though I have the will to seek out the goal, I cannot, and there is no mastery in complication. But maybe, in some unforesable way that neither hindsight nor foresight predicts, it will happen. And I will be a very happy underling.

On Thursday, 3rd July 2008, 2300 hrs, I boarded the train at Orchard MRT Station to head home. By the time I realised the train was too empty, I heard that familiar mechanical voice say, "City Hall Interchange."

Welcome to my life.

Introspection has been a habit of the past few days, and many, varied thoughts flow through my mind. I feel as if I am standing at the twilight of a major phase in life, and that as I prepare to take my baby steps into the next, a plethora of the voices of past experience compete to guide me in the path I shall take. But I cannnot hear these voices clearly; they are my thoughts, and my mind is like a pond of murky water.

However, I am convinced of one thing; namely, that the decision I make to study overseas is a necessary one. I sense that over the past few years, I have far too readily surrendered choice and thought to people other than myself. I have been in a coccoon of sorts, and the decisions I have made thus far were to strengthen this coccoon, to allow me to dwell in it for a longer time. Living overseas frees me from these bonds, and though it may not be the biggest move of my life, the choice to do so is certainly one on a personal journey I have to take.

This is not to say that what I leave behind is meaningless to me. In truth, the people who matter most - my family and close friends - and my beliefs and past experiences are the things which, for me, form a stable base from which I can begin to do everything else. Besides, I would not be able to bear losing relationships with the people who are important to me.

It is a strange problem to have to reconcile newness with the old. But necessity is the mother of invention, and God willing, I will make it through the next bit of life and come out well.