Tuesday, October 13, 2009

An idea of life

Time has a strange way of getting around without us knowing it.

Autumn, 2009 now.

School still deluges us as usual. It feels like a load off my back now that I've stepped down. A female manager sure makes things different. The block now has a feminine atmosphere to it. Even the noticeboards bloom flowers and glitter. Well, it's no longer my concern. No longer my time to patrol the block, to tend to every lost resident, to look up at the block banner with a glow of satisfaction. It's strange how things get back to normal. An intricate feel of normalcy. The memories stay as memories, fleeting and ephemeral as they always have been. We simply wrap ourselves around our given roles in society, like flower buds around stalks. And a flower only lasts as long as its petals open.

I am trying out new things. Special Events Director of FastForward Society gets me writing proposals and liaising with the corporate world. Being FOC chair also had me planning an amazing race event with Renling for a corporate client. And it's strange how these working executives appear: Poised, calm, capable... yet inflexible, single-minded, dull. Experience does a strange deal of numbing down our minds. We think knowledge empowers us, that our experiences has strengthened us, bringing out our potential, fulfilling our capacities.

I don't know if i'll ever fall into this complacency trap. I can only hope to retain a modicum of wisdom as i grow older. Because, truly, the more i learn, the less i know. I feel an immense sense of humility and gratitude towards life. Towards my friends. Towards knowledge. Yet it's all too easy to take it all for granted, to get cynical, to fall into disillusionment.

There's a season for everything, even for pain, sorrow, misery. Life changes, towards death, rebirth, and new life. We have to tread it step by step, observing the harmony of things, feeling as we should be, living as we must.

That's my idea of life.

Meanwhile, I'm still an individual in society, doing tutorials and labs, playing sports and games, holding meetings and discussions. Sometimes the mundaneness of it all gets to me.

And sometimes it doesn't.