Golden hour train ride

Blur are the buildings zipping past the train,
Blur is the grass, the trees.
Bright is the sunlight blinking through the peaks
Tracing my nose and my cheeks.
Slow are the cars on the roads down below
Moving so slow I can hardly see.
Gold is the sky so pleasing to the eye
So mesmerising that a glance cannot suffice.
Cold is the train, it's making me freeze
Too cold to ride with ease.

Silent hum

I open my eyes.

This is my world now. This is my reality. Small, dingy bedroom. Thin, coarse sheets. The world, colour graded just a little bit too cold, a little bit too grey. Sunlight that never seemed to penetrate through that layer of cloud.

I walked along the gravel path, every footstep a reluctant one. And every step I took seemed to make the load on my back become heavier and heavier. The people chattering around me seemed surreal, faint voices on a radio turned way down.

What have I become? I was once full of life, of hope. The world was my oyster, I had it all figured out. Train rides used to be exciting, a start to the far places I would travel in life; now it was dreaded, a carriage dragging me to places I wished not to go.  Have I merely grown up? Or has this cruel world broken my spirit?

The rustle of a newspaper, the low rumbling of a train. The monotonous tapping of computer keyboards. The blare of a car horn, the ring of a cash register.

This is my world now. This is my reality.
The silent hum of life.

Days of Future Never to Materialize

Are you holding onto something that you need to let go of?                       
What's stopping you?

When you asked me this it was like a bullet pierced through my conscience. This is a question that I can relate to and to an extent, have been simultaneously thinking about and running away from. To answer your question is to stand under the glaring spotlight of reality when I preferred the vague outlines in the muted backstage light. Yet I think, it is time to face the music. 

I am holding on to a dream. A dream that was once surreal, then real, then crushed, then buried, only to resurface recently to haunt me once again. This dream goes by the name of Minerva.

Aside from being the name of the goddess of wisdom, Minerva is the name of a school I really, really wanted to go to. When I heard about it, I thought to myself, this is it, this is where I belong. I stopped searching then because I knew I had found The School. I mean, can you point me to a school that is more me than Minerva? 7 countries all over the world in 4 years, experiencing different cultures, living in a community of diverse, inspired, enthusiastic individuals, while broadening my mind and studying any topic of my choosing. You might as well have named the school Celine for its "screw societal norms, I will carve my own path and I will achieve greatness" kind of mindset. 

Sadly, reality is harsh. I wonder if this was the defining moment of the end of my childhood. As children, we dream, and the world is our oyster. The future was so uncertain but that was what was exciting about it; the world was still full of possibilities. A force so unstoppable, so sure that we were going to take the future into our stride. We could be whatever we want to be, do whatever we wanted to do. We couldn't wait to grow up to conquer the world.

I think I became an adult when I realised that that was not true at all. Children dream dreams of grandeur but adults, upon coming to terms with their increasingly familiar new friend Reality, are more ready to come to terms with mediocrity. I think this is why, when I was younger and heard stories about people working a job different from their childhood ambition, I would be very devastated. Why didn't these people fight harder to chase their dreams? I would be indignant and swore that this would never happen to me. But now I am older and wiser and I understand. And I never thought this would happen to me but I am a victim of such a predicament too. Having a dream but not being able to fulfill it due to financial constraints, parental objection, Reality. 

Eighteen year old me would have shook her head at Twenty year old me. But I would not rebuke Eighteen year old me for being deluded or unrealistic or delusional. No, she just has the hope and the spirit that has since been trashed and broken. Yes, my spirit is broken.

Minerva is really a dream I need to let go of. The sooner I forget it, the sooner I move on, the better it will be for me. I am doing okay here. I have many things going on for me. I have forged many meaningful friendships and am actively serving in several capacities. I am not living the dream but I'm doing okay. Just that a part of me still wonders what it would be like to go to San Francisco. Just that everytime I am forced to study, memorize, regurgitate, I feel like puking and I feel like I am doing myself a disservice for putting myself through this. Just that sometimes I feel utterly mediocre where I am now and I dream of Minerva all over again.  

And what's stopping me from letting go of Minerva? I think the appropriate question to construe, in light of all that I have just written is what's stopping me from chasing Minerva like a Mr Bean chasing that patch of sunlight across the whole country. I know Minerva will define my future career, probably the rest of my life. It will bring me to where no law school can hope to bring me. It will give me a platform to climb so much higher. Where Minerva will bring me, is probably beyond my dreams. When they say that the human mind is irrational, I would be inclined to agree. What here has so much gravitational pull that makes me so so reluctant to leave? 

But really. What's stopping me from letting go of Minerva? It's many things. It's the fear that, if I stay here I will drown in this cesspool of mediocrity. So even the hope of being able to attend, even if its a 5% chance is enough to keep me holding on. it's the knowledge that, if I don't do this now I will never get another chance to experience something similar ever again, and the days of my would-be Future would never materialize. I could rationally reason out the pros of staying here too, which I have done so and continue doing so to reassure myself. But the nights where I relax my facade and the defences I have built to keep myself afloat and there I know, that a part of me will always beat for Minerva. 

I really do need to bid farewell to this dream of mine soon, so that I can truly focus on my life here and make the best of it. I am excited but apprehensive at the plans that God might have in store for me in the next, say five years. I hope that the future is still as unpredictable and exciting as I imagined it to be a few years ago. I even hope that the future could be beyond what I can imagine. 

After all, I am but a child, I will always be a child. Children dream.

"Why platypus?"

The Platypus

          When the creator fashioned the place that we now know as earth, he saw into the future and saw how his prized creation, humankind, had progressed. Finding that much of humankind had lost its sense of morality and wisdom, the creator decided to make the rest of his creation to serve as reminders for the rightful conduct of man.

          Seeing that there was going to be much betrayal and deception in the world, the creator made canines. This creature was to serve as a reminder that man should always be loyal to his fellow friend, just as a dog is unwaveringly loyal to his master. Blue whales, grizzly bears and gorillas that roamed the earth taught arrogant, seemingly omnipotent humans that there were still others which were stronger and more powerful than them.  An abundance of ants he also made to remind man that there was no replacement for diligence and teamwork.

          But there was one more issue that the creator saw. Man—he had a tendency to categorize. Man classified and grouped up everything that he came across in his life. A pencil is a type of stationery, Congo is in the continent of Africa, and cycling is a form of sport. In fact, there was even a field of study dedicated to classifying living matter: taxonomy. Categorizing in itself was not a problem, for the creator himself gave mankind the ability to do so. The problem was with man’s response toward his fellow man that he classified as “different” from himself.

          The creator saw, in the future, that much devastation was to arise from the division of mankind upon itself. Sure enough, he was right. Hitler’s contempt toward a group of people known as the Jewish led to a mass genocide that ended millions of lives. All over the world, humans hold prejudices against each other due to differences in skin color. In school, children bully other children that they considered different from them, the social outcasts. There are even movements to expel or murder one another because of different religious faiths.

          Thus the creator made the platypus. He fashioned the platypus with the bill and the webbed feet of a feathered, winged creature; but left its body furry like other mammals. He designed the platypus to live on land, yet to forage for food in the water. He also gave it a tail resembling that of an otter’s, but unlike the otter the platypus reproduced by laying eggs instead of giving birth.

          And so the platypus was created. Like the other animals, it too conveyed a message to all of humankind who witnessed this peculiar creature. And its message was this: that not everything can be categorized. Like the oddballs who don’t fit into any one category in society, the platypus could not fit into scientists’ ideals of a typical mammal or a common amphibian. Instead it was a hybrid creature which was part of many categories, yet belonging to none.

          The platypus is evidence that things do not always belong in the box that we put them in. Mammals, before the discovery of the platypus (and the echidna), were purported to all give birth to their young. Similarly, Muslims aren’t always terrorists, black people aren’t always dangerous thugs, and certainly not all Chinese people are good in math! Additionally, platypuses serve as a reminder that it is perfectly fine to not be like anyone else; it is alright to not meet stereotypical expectations. In fact, on closer inspection, everyone is unique in their own way; everyone defies some sort of stereotype placed on them.

          The sooner we learn that we all have a bit of platypus inside of us, the sooner we will understand that nobody can be categorized completely. Perhaps, then we will stop looking for the differences that separate us from amongst ourselves which cause us to hate one another and start looking at the similarities that unite us as humans.