Oh hey, look where are we now. Just days away to the beginning of yet another new year. Astounding really how fast time goes by, I can barely remember the year. Everything seems, vague. Sometimes you feel like you know you were there, yet it feels like a long time ago. While others, you look at it like it was just yesterday. I still remember New Year's Day this year like it was yesterday. I still remember the optimism, the expectations, the beliefs and that newfound excitement for the year. Somewhere in between however, it had all died down. I'll tell you what this year was, for me. It was a collection, an entire collection, of bitterness, battle of insecurities, hateful thinking and negativities. It ate me up. And now I am only left with regret. Because all that bitterness and pain I realise now, was worth nothing. At least not of my time. But when I look back now, I find the lessons I learnt throughout the year, and the most important of all, is the gift of time.
I just finished a book by Cecelia Ahern, and no, it's not your everyday chick-lit genre. Titled 'The Gift', the book taught me a simple message, about the importance of time. Ironically I read this during this time of the year, when a lot of us sit back and reflect our past. The importance in cherishing people, the loved ones, and every little things that holds on to something bigger. The gift of giving. Of understanding. Of truly living. This is because of what life puts us through. Just because things don't go your way, just because you don't have what you want, doesn't mean you allow the hate and bitterness to take over everything. I might have realise it a little too late for this year. Sometimes I say to myself, I should stop letting my temper get the best of me. So hating, so pushing people away. Stop letting the darkness slip in and take control. But it isn't easy to believe that. Not when you feel everything is falling apart. How do I see it otherwise? How do I hold on to positivity. This year, among the bitterness and anger, I also sat back and observe. Observe events, people, and life as it happen. Trying to truly understand what it means. You will never truly find the real meaning of life, but the least you could do is find what blooms happiness. Real happiness. The moments which makes you really feel infinite. That heartfelt joy of a moment. That rare smile which leaves you dancing. The feeling of floating and swinging in the sunset.
One thing we know about life is, it is a robber. A thief. Leaves you deprived of something. Maybe not now, maybe not before, but sooner or later. It is written in the future. Because we are familiar with 'nothing lasts forever.' You will eventually lose the thing you are most passionate about. It may be the money you love. Or you favourite TV series. Or your love for your favourite boyband. That could die down. It may be the person who lights up your world. Who means so much to you. How many times have we said to them that we love them? I have not let them know. I couldn't bring myself to. Just like a lot of people, I too live in denial. The refusal to believe in reality.
Let me tell you what 2012 has taught me. When the year begin, I foolishly declared that I'm going to make sure 2012 is the best year I will ever have. And then I was knocked off my feet. And was forced to realise the cold truth. Events happened. I read books, a lot of them, and funnily, they all came in the same theme. I watched movies which I was forced to reflect in pain. I love happy endings. But I found out that happy endings are possibly fictional. You don't go smiling into your grave. Trust me, you don't. I listen to innocent kids die, brutally shot in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. Kids who were excited for Christmas, the presents and the holidays in whole. Before that, a man bursts into a cinema, during the premiere of the Dark Knight Rise, and decided that many people should die. And then later on, a week ago or so, a woman was gang-raped with such brutality, beaten to pieces with the rod also used during the rape and thrown off a bus. She died after days of battling for her life. But maybe it's better if she died. If what happened to her hadn't killed her, the trauma would have simply prevented her from living. Darkness would have been permanent. You see what happened? We live in a world of monsters, thriving healthily among us. Monsters who see things as a joke. You can feel evil emanating within their veins. I'm often curious, what is going on through their heads? For all I know, I had thought they were humans like us. Who feel pain. Who knows the difference between the good and the bad. Why would it make you happy to see the pain, the suffering of another? How can it not have broken you?
The human mind is a mysterious thing. It is the same, yet not the same. I'll never understand reality, it baffles me unforgivingly. But what it has told me, all these tragedies, and the dawn of realisation upon reading that book is, anything can happen. You dream of a future which falls in your control, only to have it robbed away from you. The kids from the Sandy Hook's tragedy, their future. The girl who was gang-raped, her future. Victims. Preys. The innocent. We will never know what will happen. Life is not a series of Final Destination movies, no.
You know what life is instead? It is living each and every moment. Most people are too busy look in front, or too busy looking over their shoulders, they fail to breathe in the moment. I know, we have all heard of this countless time, yet who cares. But recently I find this point overwhelming. Overwhelming to the point of choking. I think of my future, I fall in despair. Sure enough I'm working hard as it is to achieve success and all that, but I am afraid, what will I do when I get there. How long will that sense of satisfaction last, before it is replace with depression, from realising I sacrificed time and moments of magic to reach the peak of brief satisfaction. Because that is how people live today. They spend all of their today working their butt off for the future. The little things left unseen. And then they spend their future regretting things they've missed. I was in Japan the past week, and boy did I learn alot about life. Achievements after achievements, upholding their pride, but beneath it, you can see the strain in the people. The pressure, the fear. They live in a beautiful country, and absolutely stunning one, but I wonder how many of them stop just to see it.
I felt that I have not done enough these nineteen years. I let hate, bitterness and insecurities to creep up my walls. Yes, I regret. And then there was selfishness. I greed for things I want. But if Lou Suffern, the main character of the book, can find space to change, so can I. Change for the better, and perhaps that should be the new year's resolution. In this case, it's a manageable one. Because it hits right to the conscience. I wish to lose the selfishness, to share love, to give love, to appreciate things better, to smile more, to treasure the ones who mean the world to me. I want to give them something in return. It's the fear of losing which keeps us alive. On our feet, and learn to appreciate more than ever. And learn to survive through it all.
Because we are all finding for that moment we feel infinite.
Have a great New Year's Day everyone. Here's to an amazing year ahead.
