Today marked the day that I have completed one and a half years of my college life, and I recall that just around after half an hour after the paper ended, sitting there on a bus back to Kent Ridge reflecting the horrible monstrosity that had befallen upon me, I thought to myself So what's next? There and then, I found out I really had no idea. I think it was easy for anyone to want freedom when it was taken away, but once it's served back before him, one may not necessarily know what to do with that much desired freedom. For example, I had been relishing in the idea of watching videos on the Internet about things that I took interest in, but once I had actually the time to do all those things, I realised that I had no clear specifics as to what exactly I wanted to watch. The fantasy always tastes better than does the reality. Indulging in reverie is always better than indulging in the activity itself.
So I went on TED, for whatever reasons-- I had no idea-- but guess it didn't matter since now I had a hellot of time to kill anyway, and I managed to come across some talks that sort of changed my overall idea of living. Here's the thing, there are so many things happening around us that we can participate in, unfortunately, somehow, due to some inertial force of our habit or something, we tend to fixed ourselves to the things that we are familiar with. There's this sense of comfort that we revel in-- a sense of safety, or even an urge for self-protection and self-preservation-- that we get in sticking with things or ideals that we've been holding onto for as long as we can remember. However, if we don't continue to stretch our own boundaries, our perception about living are going to turn inevitably and unnecessarily parochial.
Parochial thinking can be odious and dangerous when we end up not realising there's so much more to life and living, more things in which we can indulge, and perhaps more importantly, more things that we should worry about. Parochial thinking makes us do things irrationally, which may hurt us in the long run. Hope I'm not being preachy here (good god, I hate being preachy), but if you managed to read this post till here, and to stick by it, I guess you don't hate me so much for sounding what I'm sounding now.
So here's my story. In every teenage life, there's always that phase where we want to get a clear identity of who we are in a group, a clique, a community, what have you. In search of that identity, we then to keep it, in one way or another, one dimensional, because otherwise it may become too complex and uncertain, and we ended up not having that thing by which we want to be known as. I was once obsessed to be the class clown. Funny? No. The bad thing about this way of thinking is that we inexorably fixated, and sometimes even against our own better judgment, with that trait we oh-so try to claim. When I felt that I wasn't making a fool of myself, and oftentimes such feeling is pretty much self-imposed, there's that paranoia that I'm not meeting that benchmark that I set for myself. Does this behaviour make any sense? No. Because it's irrational. We often place much importance to things which we either love, or think we can't live without, to an extent that it becomes (almost) self-destructive. I'm a scorpio, so it's a given for me. We forget that we should never feel the need to have a specific identity because we, as determined by our genomes-- by our very own nature-- are complex beings. To water down ourselves to something else is not gonna do us any good. But it's hard, and often such acceptance or realisation doesn't hit us until maturity hits, and maturity is often illusive, too illusive.
This would sound rather juvenile, but picture this. You're in this cold room together with a hundred or so of your peers. In front of you, a couple of booklets, and a question paper. After whispering prayers to the gods of hope, luck and the bell curve, you hear the invigilator says You can start now. You take long, deep breaths. Three questions, choose two. You're flipping through the pages. Your eyes darted around the four corners of the page, parsing every sentence, trying to link this mess before you with something that you've spent the past two weeks studying. Nothing. Nothing pops to mind. Everything is iffy, and fifteen minutes later you realise you're still at square one, if not square negative one because now you're so flabbergasted by the whole quagmire. You turn your head to your side, the brother next to you is scribing something on the paper, rather furiously, with his eyes piercing through both the question paper and the answer booklet with an intensity which you wish you had at that moment.
Then it dawned on me, I was alone. There was nothing and no one to help me but myself. Nobody. I knew at the back of my head that this two and a half hours may alter the course of my life pretty drastically, not like in the 'I want a get an A, otherwise I'm a worthless lowlife' kinda way, but really, there were important things at stake here. I am one of those people who are forced to grow up at a very early age. I can elaborate and dwell on that, but pretty much it's none of anyone else's business. But trust me, it's pretty traumatic and dramatic, more so than your usual growing up story. I'm one of those kids that are so well brought up, that being bad or reckless is not something that comes easy. Most kids do bad things, and get scolded. End of story. Clean and simple. Me? I'm one of those kids who know that my parents will not justly reprimand me, so the thought of having to see their disappointed faces, as subtle and poorly hidden as their expressions will be, makes me kick myself in the tail. And perhaps undeservingly so. I have to punish me because no one else does.
This is another point that I think most people are rather misled. Often people assume that being bad is easy, that being good is hard. I think this is misconceived. When was the last time you wanted to wear something which you knew made you look like an a-hole-- but you like-- something that you knew would make people talk, but decided to wear it? When was the last time you went to buy a book, or a thing you knew you didn't need, or a cup of bubble tea that cost three to four times its inferior substitute without feeling the guilt of squandering your (parents') money. I'm sure you've done all those things before, but did and could you do it without a smidge of guilt? And when was the last time you decided not to do things that you wanted to do for reasons that are not quite you? Being bad is harder than it seems.
So back to that cold execution chamber, I mean, examination room, I had my reasons for suddenly realising there and then that I was screwing up. After around half an hour of being stuck in square (negative) one, what I was doing was yelling at myself in my head Calvin Magnus, just goddamn write something. What you write now it's not gonna be worse or better than that which you're gonna write five minutes from now. Just start. Now. The problem here is that why didn't I feel it like two weeks, one week, three days before, where there was still time to change things? Why didn't I have the fixation or obsession with this thing which clearly can and will change my life-- the thing that really, as a matter of fact, matters? Why were my reverie, my mind and my aspirations diverted to something else?
This is irrational. And I've been so for the longest time. It's easy to say that irrationality is part and parcel of what passion entails. Passion is irrational, or at least it makes us behave irrationally. This is pretty much so because I've been sort of dwelling within that inertial boundary of comfort, that I made excuses for my studies because why? Because I dance. Dance was the main dish, and school is just the sauce that I can do without. So, so-to-speak it was almost tantamount to me indoctrinating myself, creating a reality based on that parochial ideology. And as a result I fell so hard for it-- dance, of course-- perhaps too hard. Some people will argue with me that you do not dispute your sacrifices that you've made for your passion. Otherwise it's not your passion. However, I think it's ok to love something so much, but you cannot let your love blind you from other things that are happening in life. I cannot let myself to be so. In other words, that passion cannot make me one dimensional, well at least not anymore. I once was enthralled with the idea of reading law in university. My parents wanted me to do engineering, but I went against their wishes, and chose what I wanted to do-- and I worked hard for it. I cannot now relinquish that tight grip that I've worked hard to establish just because I found a new love for something else. Yeah, yeah I know, when I chose to enter law school, I knew no shit about the law or how boring it could be, but nonetheless, there was something in me that was drawn to it, and I have to revisit that feeling.
Two and a half years from now, upon graduation, I would not be dancing anymore. Correction, I would not be able to dance anymore. It's not something that I want to happen, but at the end of it, it's something that's unavoidable. Yeah, this should therefore give me the drive to make the most of the time I now have to revel in that passion, knowing that my dance days are numbered. But that's exactly the reason why I can't let it take over me. It's not who I am. I'm not one of the people who trod in the path of those who end up making it their living. I wasn't born in that situation. And it's unwise for me to even try to make it more than it is, especially at the expense of other things which make my life my life. It's easy, fun and exciting to throw yourself into something that you love. It's hard to contain yourself within a boundary that you draw for yourself. I mean, where and how do you draw the line? Where and how do you start?
This change in perception is important for me because I want to stave off the fear of not knowing what I will become when I graduate. I always imagine myself upon graduation, I put on that black blazer, the black tie, the black court shoes, waking up at 8 a.m. to go to the firm I'm working for; my superior hands over this stack of files for me to read and analyse, asks me to pass up a 3000-word memorandum at the end of the week; and I then go What? How?-- plus the stupid expression. We think that upon graduation we will be reasonably equipped to do the job that we are prepared for, but at the rate that I'm going right now, it's not gonna happen. The mentality of studying just to pass the exams is stupid. I have to internalise, as much as my human capacity and drive allows, to internalise the idea behind what I'm tasked to do. I want to be ready at the end of it all.
So, like I said at the beginning, what's next? No, I'm not suddenly gonna throw my passion off the window, and change my life 180 degrees. That's never going to happen. I think the change that's happening to me now is that within this short-lived period in which I can do what I love, I would do it to make me happy. Right now, being happy is to know that I'm not jeopardising my future squandering an opportunity that I've worked my tail off for the past years. Being happy is to do things that I want to do, simply because I want to do it, and to not do things, simply because I don't want to do it. I do not want to do something for the reasons that are not quite me. I have to be a good enough reason for my decisions. I may disappoint others in the course of doing so, but here's the thing, I can disappoint others either way, so let me disappoint in the way that allows me to be happy. It's selfish, but ain't that the point about living?
I mean, whom do you live for?
