As the end of the year comes around, one looks back at how much has passed, and how quickly. It is as though one has turned another corner in life, like many before it. Before one can flip the page to the next chapter, it is inevitable that one has to close the page on a previous one. And perhaps, that is what December is.
At this time last year, I was about to embark on an internship. And now, that same internship is a faded memory, a yellowed news photograph sitting atop a pile of books, a few news clippings carefully pressed into an old file. I go through that file sometimes, and I laugh at all the silly things I had to do to get some of those stories. What was I thinking, I say to myself. And then I laugh again.
Once in a while, I take a journey down memory lane, the product of a lively mind that enjoys a leisurely stroll through verdant green lawns filled with life's moments, recollecting sights, smells and sounds according to how I remember them. I slow down as I relive the little joys of those days, the displays of mirth that coloured my days with laughter, the tacky jokes cracked over lunch that made the girls cringe, their annoyed protestations that I now sorely miss.
However, as with many things in life, I recognise that these are all but phases, points in time, and I am happy that they happened, but I also accept that they are past, and in those fleeting moments, I feel a palpable sense of loss.
In some of those moments I truly lived, in some of those moments I wished time to stop. But although time stops for no one, I am not perturbed. I know that I will have more of these moments, and every day is a gift, a blessing, a new lease to discover new things. Things to hold dear, things to hold near, things to reminisce about over cups of tea.
And I am reminded that the next time I look back on this month, I would have graduated from university. I would be in a different place yet again, and this year would become yet another trail in the garden of the mind, one that I can wander off into on a lazy afternoon, another rabbit hole to run into, to explore till its end, where the recollection stops.
And I know that I'm getting older. The legs don't run as fast as they used to, I sleep a bit more than I used to, and I have more trouble keeping the weight off. I'm also starting to get used to the fact that I don't look like a student anymore, because no one mistakes me for one these days. The first question people pose to me now is inevitably "where do you work, and how long have you been there", when it used to be "are you still studying? what course?" I've become so used to it that when a Caucasian girl told me recently that she thought I was 15, I got so happy a grin broke out from ear to ear and I could not wipe that stupid grin off my face for the better part of ten minutes after that. The joy of being deluded, if only for awhile.
And when I see my younger friends laugh and joke about their freshman year, I'm reminded of what it was like when I was one myself. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't wish to be a freshman again because I'm in a better place now, but their innocence and naivete does get to me at times.
How they laugh at simple things, how they make the silliest mistakes that would be funny as hell if they weren't so bothered about it, like forgetting not to print lecture slides as handouts, and landing up with 80 pages of single slide printouts, jamming the whole printing queue in school and earning the ire of just about everyone in the lab.
The peers my age, everyone's changing so fast. The topics we converse about have changed. They have started talking about jobs, about investments, about where they want to be in 10 years, married, with kids, a car and a nice flat. I miss the days when we would talk about games, soccer, girls, but I accept that my friends have grown up and so have I. Now they talk about girlfriend trouble, office politics, about old classmates that have gone different ways. Sometimes, the gloominess and angst of their lives gets to me. I don't know, is it age that brings forth their cynicism? Perhaps it's the uncertainty of youth, where the world is at your feet, but you have not found your place in it. Perhaps, your destiny is already fixed, and you don't like where you see yourself going.
Perhaps, it is all of these, or none, but it really is little of my concern. Maybe it is all just a show of hubris, a facade to mask the fact that we are all really scared little children that have been forced to grow up against our will, and that some of us have done it better than others, as some always will.
It's really so scary, being grown up. You know that you're about to enter a phase in your life where it will be more of the same, every day, a lifetime of work and commitments. And you wonder if you've lived enough, you wonder if you can still live.
You wonder if you've done enough, you wonder if that's it. You look at your dreams, and you wonder why they are still dreams. You wonder if they'll ever be anything, but dreams. You wonder if it's too late for them. Actually, you know it's already too late for some of them. You've always known. You wonder why you were once told that you could do anything you set your mind to, when you know that its not true. It doesn't look like it will happen.
Right now, some people tell me that I'm so many things, but I don't know what I am. And because of that, I don't know what to be. I don't know where I'm supposed to be, and because of that when I look in front of me, its nothing but a thick fog of uncertainty, into which I stumble, feel my way around, but I am no more sure of where I'm going in its midst than I was before. I ask the walls around me, is that it? And then I feel silly for talking. I ask my friends, but they have no answers for me, because they are looking for some themselves.
And you look at where you're expected to be in a few years, a husband, a spouse, welcoming a new little life into this world, and you get scared, because that's so far away from where you are now. You don't see yourself in it.
I'm not ready, I'm not done living for me. I'm not ready to settle, because I haven't found me.
All throughout history, people have asked about what life is. They want certainty. They want to know many things. They want to know if whatever will be, will be. Life, it's really funny. It's more than you could ever imagine, but it's also simpler than you think. As you live, you find that you change. Your dreams change. Everything that you thought important, they change. Some things become less important, others more so. But some things don't change. There is one thing that I ask myself often.
If I were 80, and about to die, what would I hope that I would be able to do.
The simplicity of that answer often surprises me. I would play my favourite songs on the piano. I would write letters and address them to all the people who matter. I would meet up with long-lost friends, to close those chapters of my life. I would eat my favourite foods. I would revisit the places that mean something to me.
If I'm lucky enough to have a wife and kids, I would tell them that I love them, and I would ask that they love themselves, and those around them. I would ask that they forgive their father for being imperfect, because there is a certain beauty and dignity in being fallible, in being just simply, human. I would ask that they never forget to laugh and smile, because life isn't ever really that hard when you do.
I would ask that someone takes a last photograph of me, with my family, smiling, happy that I was given a gift, the gift of living, of having witnessed life's ups and downs, and I would give thanks that I'd made it thus far. And I would ask that when people think of me, they remember me that way.
I would then make peace with myself, have a good laugh at the life I've had, and go.
And suddenly, I realise that everything I'm doing, it's just the journey on the way to getting there. When I'm 80, I will not remember all of the little things that I used to lose sleep over, all the silly little distractions that were really potholes on the road to self-discovery. I might then realise, that at the end of that road, maybe I've always known who I was all along, it was just about making sure.