Last Published, April Eleventh

It's been almost one year.
So much has happened.
Nothing much has happened.
I've been to Tibet and back.
Spiritually intact.
I've been to Europe and back.
Friendship intact.
Loads of countries I've visited.
Yet,
I'm still me.
Despite the host of places I've visited,
The cultures I've tried to assimilated into,
The breathtaking sceneries I've captured,
I return unfazed.
Perhaps I'm too jaded,
Too nonchalant.
As I always say,
Water off a duck's back.
One year on,
I'm at a crossroad.
The major crossroad of my life.
People trivialize the word "crossroad" too much.
This is a word of change.
A word that connotes a paradigm shift in one's life.
Yes.
Indeed I am at the crossroads of my life.

Months back,
I was browsing at Borders.
I chanced upon a flimsy yellow book.
It was a cross between a diary and a calendar.
While flipping through it's coarse pages,
One and only one quote struck me.
"You are what you'll ever be at the age of twenty-five."
So simple, so poignant, so succinct.
What this phrase did to me,
Was to highlight,
In neon colours,
Everything that was wrong with my life.
Everything that I should have done but never did.
All my regrets started flooding back,
Streaming with anguish and pain at what I have missed.
Everything that I should have said,
But never did.
Those moments where I should have leapt,
But walked.
For all the hard tackler in a football game,
For all the Ah-Beng in me,
For all the nonchalant cool persona I portray,
For all the risk-taking gambles I take,
When it comes to the crunch,
I falter.
When it comes to the showdown,
I hesitate.
When push turns to shove,
I lack courage.

Are you afraid to be the same in your own act and valor as you are in desire?
Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would".
Was the hope drunk while you dressed yourself?
Has it slept since and stirs now?
To be more than what you were,
You would be so much more the man.
Nor time nor place did you adhered,
They have thus made themselves to unmake you.

Sometimes I feel that I'm a walking contradiction.
So simple yet so complex.
Just like friendship.
Just like love.

Some people think friendship is over-rated.
When you are married;
Start your own family;
Friendship is supposed to take a backseat to career and family.
We are not even talking about your own mother and father and sister and brother.
Your wife and kids become of paramount importance.
Who needs real friends anyway?
We are too preoccupied with work and loans and kids and wife.
What friends?
No time.
Not free.
I dont want.
Some dont even wait till after marriage to think so.
The little signs that we exhibit when we were kids,
Of our priorities in life,
Are exactly manifested in adulthood.
We become obsessed with money and status and fame and reputation,
Just like we were obsessed with grades and girls and grades and girls.

Give every man thine ear,
But few thine voice.
Take each man's censure,
But reserve thy judgement.

We choose.
We decide.
We prioritise.
We act.
We speak.
What's unsaid and undone and unchosen and unvalued hurts the most.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times' waste:
Then can i drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances forgone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell over
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think of you, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

A toast to all,
Dear friends,
Who have crossed my life,
Left their marks,
Walked with me,
Laughed and cried with me,
And are still walking with me.