RETROSPECTIVELY, ON A HINDSIGHT


Yup, it's my birthday again. Haven't had a chance to think on it much, on my life so far and where I find myself right now. Maybe it's just me but I feel that the more advanced I get in years, the less I want to think about my life. I mean, I'm already living it, what more is there to do about it? I just find it becoming quite tiresome to mark this day with the utmost profundity every single time. The thing is, it's still just another day. Maybe I'm growing on an inch of pragmatism... finally and thankfully!

But there is something I wrote on my birthday in 2005 (which I spent in Bintan, Malaysia with some very, very good friends and had some great, great fun, if I may add) that I would like to read back on again and again. I just want to see if, through the years, I remain on the same page.

Some people take stock of their lives every time the year turns new. I do it on my birthday. Nothing as searching as ‘How far have I gone?’ or ‘Where to, now?’ Nothing as profound as ‘What does all these mean?’ or ‘What purpose does it serve?’ Just something I pick up here and there, like Leah’s question. (She asked me if I was happy.)

Yes, I'd like to think that I am. that I often am. But it’s never absolute and of course, it was hardly made to be that way. For one thing, it doesn’t feed on itself, no matter how hard we try to do everything right. We cope, we move with the groove, and to dare think as far as tomorrow is enough arrogance to make the gods indignant. There are reasons why we are called ‘man.’ There are reasons why we are mortal. There are reasons why we count the days, but only in terms of the minutes and the hours. There are reasons why we live our lives in search of these reasons. In the meantime, we fill each miniscule space and the passing of time with plans, from the most restrained to the most outrageous, a riff-raff of emotions we may not even have a name for and an assortment of something or the other which we clutter our lives with. We regal this and that with certain levels of importance, spelling out our eccentricities rather than the truths and realities we purport to believe. Yes, they are eccentricities, don’t you think, when we consider how individual we are, no matter how much we come together, no matter how much we care, or love, or die for each other.

And why do we do the things we do? Perhaps, because there is nothing else. We are given what we have in the space we are allotted and we are expected to make do. Imagine your life to be an 18-hour flight in an economy-sized seat on a plane, with your individual multi-media screen, your oxygen mask and life vest, your footrest, your pillow, your blanket, your tablet, your earphones, your toiletries, your meals and your hand-carry luggage compartment. You are given a set of instructions which guide how you behave, you can only ask for what is available, you are confined to your space, and there is no way out until the trip is over. In the meantime, you fuss about the person in front of you who has reclined his chair too far back and your space is cramped, the food isn’t warm enough, you couldn’t get your screen on a more comfortable angle, and your heart hangs by a thread every time the plane slips and slides. You fuss about every single thing that catches your fancy and for reasons that are essential to you and you alone. When you get off the plane, five steps onto the tarmac, your name would have been forgotten. Somebody stands in wait to take your place and you leave not a mark, not a scratch. In life, it is often in retrospect that we are made to realize that our greatest stakes are no great shakes.

In the same way, I don’t expect anybody to understand this, much less agree with me. By all means, call it illogical, ridiculous, defeatist or pointless, and maybe it is. Hell, it’s 3 in the morning and I’m running on double espresso.

Am I happy anyway? Let’s put it this way. It’s been a 41-year long flight (eherrm! I know you're doing your math but could you just get back on focus here??!!!), of overcoming struggles and picking up serendipities along the way, of finding some 15 minutes behind gathering clouds and knowing that beyond all these is still a vast sky. In its vastness, there have been times when I have found myself alone. I sometimes think that the others haven't caught up with me yet, only to find out that I've been straining to catch up with them.

If I ever find myself unhappy, I hold on to the knowledge that there are times I have been and I’ve known what it’s like, so let me be grateful enough to recognize it when it stares me in the face and sober enough not to mistake it for something else. I hold on to the hope that there is enough room to be happy still, so let me not be too greedy to grab at anything and everything that happens to cross my path. And I hold on to the here and now to make of it what I want, so for this minute, let me keep still and see if I can exercise some discernment on my life's 'henceforth.'

Because, in spite of everything that’s been shoved down my throat and everything I've thankfully swallowed, in spite of the assembly-line boxes in whose labels I’ve been made to live up to, some of which have helped me become a contributing, functioning member of the social order, in spite of all the good, in spite of all the bad, and in spite of all the in-between, this is still, and will always be, my life.

I will know no other.

Three years since and it would be a consolation for everything I've been through if I could say that yes, I believe I'm still on the same page.