I guess this blog was meant to be my once-in-a-blue-moon rambling space. And again this fluff head is finally back! Off we go with the random ramble. Buckle up!
I’ve been living in constant fear over the past couple of years. Fear over death, fear over failure and fear over things that might not be happening at all. It all started during my 29th birthday a moment that made me realize that I’m a year away from becoming 30 and yet to achieve anything significant in life.
I’m yet to figure out what I want to become in life.
Yet to have a child.
Yet to earn a master’s degree.
Yet to own a house.
And a thousand other YETs, which I think I should’ve earned or have by the time I’m 30.
So what is it about 30 that I fear so much? Why should I earn those
I still remember clearly the moment I free-fall from 7-meters cliff above water and splashed right through it fearlessly. Unknowingly that amidst the adrenaline cocktail, a gigantic bruise was about to cover my thigh.
Then why and what has been changing ever since? I grow old that’s all!
………But is it really?
Does age really define what is to become of me?
Yes, indeed as I grow older, there are things that make me more grounded in reality than the naive dreams I used to have.
Should I blame the life experiences piling up over the course of time?
How at some point I realize that death is closer than I think after my Dad passed away. Or how priorities in life suddenly took a turn when my Mom’s cancer surfaced. And suddenly the objective of going to the office is no longer about achieving a career goal but more to make ends meet.
Then I forgot.
I forgot how to dream without heavily calculating the potential risk my choices are about to make. What makes it worse, instead of re-calculating another way that fit best for my situation I stopped… calculating and moving.
Yes, priorities and dreams shift over time. They always do. I guess it’s true how Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi argue in their book, about how teleology triumphs over etiology. People are actually not driven by past causes but move towards goals that they themselves set. Which also I think is nicely captured in one of Matt Haig’s masterpieces.
They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrow.
Anxious People, Matt Haig
We are bound to make mistakes. Choosing the path that we think we shouldn’t take. But we are not our past.
Because ain’t life is all about taking a big leap of faith? There are no choices without consequences, no matter how trivial they may seem.
Also, life is so not bounded by the insignificant value of your birth year. It doesn’t matter whether you’re unemployed, single, have no child, have no house, triple-digit income, or even have a C-level career like what the social media or what other nonsense people said you should have by the time you’re you now. Life doesn’t serve that way!
Life is a simple relativity theory. It’s personal and incomparable. It doesn’t do justice to how I live all this time. Again it’s not all thunderstorms if I have the guts to not drown in my sorrow and simply shift my perspective a little bit to the right by 1-degree angle.
Amidst the mourn over my mom’s cancer, I’ve found the strongest bond with my sister and my mom. We’ve never really spend that much time being together before.
Amidst people’s prejudice over me not having a child must have to do with me prioritizing my career over building a family, I’ve found solace in the truest people who understand me completely – I can go long with this, but let’s just keep it for another ramble 😉
And of all the things I’ve had in life, I’ve found a partner that stubbornly and relentlessly will try to make me laugh in even my darkest day.
What is life without a few bruises and scratches and pain. Because even the universe is made from a Chaotic Cosmic Inflation, who am I to seek perfection in life.
Life is not all bad. Life is beautiful in fact.
And no. It’s never too late.
Hippity Hoppity Doo 