*...a purposeful life...

Today, and a few months backward

Short, random story. This is how I write when my thinker self kicks in and introspectively psychologizes my world. The intellectuals will like this piece. The rest won't understand. It doesn't really end in anything. Maybe next time a better one.

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I like you older. Because although older does not equate to better, like the way men would liken themselves to a bottle of fine, aged wine, older means that we have had more time spent together. Finding out about things, in that relentless journey called Life.

I sometimes wonder what has happened to us, Zero.

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I have always tried to live my Life as free as possible, detaching myself from all the protocol. All the rules and regulations, all the unneeded and unnecessary clutter that makes our life just impossible to live out, to have time for ourselves, and the ones we cherish the most. Because when I get older I don’t want to look back and lament the time spent doing up reports, attending countless meetings when I could be out spending a day in the sun. Maybe not everyone thinks like me, and I’m glad for that, because we do need people like them to maintain the systems, but I’ve always longed to meet someone who lives like me, happy for the system and living peaceably in it, yet wanting to live another way, as free from systems as possible. I’m not those who want to speak out or repeal the existing system, I’m actually glad for it. And a part of me wanted someone to chide me, someone stronger, to tell me what to do, to guide me when I’m living on the edge, or living in two different worlds – That’s how it seems to me at times. Increasingly it is becoming difficult to live this way, and while some fall out after sometime, most adapt to the system till it becomes ingrained in themselves, until they become the system and the system becomes them. And the system has no need for anomalies like me, so until it spots me, I will be low-profile, not wanting a ripple effect, just wanting to be happy. Actually wanting everyone to be happy, but some people do not see happiness as a desire for their lives, so.

//

And when we grow up, we realize that we see relationships in a different way. I just wanted to give. Like you. But you also realize that you want to claim something back. Maybe after all this is over, to claim a part of yourself, back. Having given it away, you are longer fully yourself, I am no longer fully me. In a scary way it is like something inside you has died, and maybe, it was supposed to happen to me. God wanted it to happen, God doesn’t make mistakes. When you pray and ask God who’s the best one for you, because you do not want to make a wrong decision for the rest of your life, and God answers your prayer, as HE ALWAYS DOES, and you decide there and then, "Not God’s will, but my will be done.”

And years later you wonder if you’ve blown it and all those meaningless times you spent sharing intimately with another person counts for nothing. Because in choosing to live free, you inevitably blow up the system. It’s like being environmentally friendly because everyone around you is, and you don’t want to spend the extra cash on wasting the environment without really meaning to be friendly, just wanting to do so for a materialistic or selfish reason. It’s like being a cell leader with low morals so that you can survive in this world – not for material gain, but because you really have big dreams and you want to be successful one day; but you enjoy the low-morals-situation so much that you wonder if everything you’ve ever done for Christ is a façade, and that slipping into another life just seems so easy, so easy… … And sometimes you think, living simply and happily; living and dying in a Hdb flat and taking public transport every day isn’t so bad after all, compared to what lies ahead.

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When you realize that truth is relative – or perhaps you have known it all along, in the system, that the system is only a guide to life that must be taken with a pinch of salt, because you’ve done things that in another system would have brought you death in a pigs’ cage, but in these times it becomes accepted without a blink of an eye – and horribly, you realize that you do not feel guilt for those thoughts, or those actions, just a mere disappointment, when the system tells you to drown in your sorrows – the way the old system should be. Now the new one tells you to drown your sorrows and it’s a scary thing when you don’t drink that much but you can name every beer available in the island and the countries they come from.

//

And after many moons you realize why you feel the way you do. It’s not about her always blaming you every day, that the phrase ‘it’s your fault’ rings in your ears every day until you either vow to slap the next girl who says that to you, or you stoically endure until you really believe it is.

I’m not afraid of my feelings. I used to be, because from an early age, I saw how people suffered from it. Not only people but animals, societies, and … everything. How you can be changed by a book. How you can be changed by a kiss, or the sight of your beloved. How the SPCA has so many unwanted pets not because of a single night of passion but because someone had strong feelings that dissipated shortly after. But I would rather embrace my feelings than hide them, because I know that God is trying to tell me something. It’s all about obedience and trust, isn’t it. I’ve seen many lives play out their sad stories before me, and when I have the chance to decide what I want for my own, I hope I can make a better one. A better decision comes with time, and experience. To know what lies in your heart. And that it why I’m not afraid of my feelings.