Tuesday, May 06, 2008

New (Heart) Blood Come Tide

As i was telling Wenqi,
We are all like driftwood,
Meandering down the stream of life;
Direction-less,
Buffeted by the curvatures and undulation of terrains.

Beyond our control;
Afraid to struggle,
Yet drowning in waves of pragmatism and practicality.
We dont risk;
We dont venture out on paths less travelled.
We walk on the safe side of the road;
We dont dare to tell people our wildest dreams,
For fear of ridicule,
For we know it's merely a fantasy.
We dont park on double-yellowed lines,
For we fear the Fatimahs.
We queue up in orderly lines,
And we expect the same orderliness from everyone else.
We maintain a posterior of reservation when faced with something new,
Are we that jaded?
We check out the latest accident on the lane beside us,
Just to take down the numbers and speculate on the actual chain of events.
We buy the latest gadget just because someone else has them;
The LVs, the COACHes, the TIFFANYs, the GUCCIs, the iPods.
We all need someone to listen to us ramble on and on about nothing,
But we dont stop to listen.
We all know we must end this ennui and indolence,
But the currents are too strong and we are too weak to swim against them.
We all know she is the wrong one for us,
Yet we persist in digging up a hole to jump into.
We indulge in sentimentalism and reminiscence,
We think about what might have been;
What if???
We call strangers friends.
And friends?
We dont keep in touch as much as we should have.
There's always tomorrow to catch up.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
We take our family and home for granted.
We get irritated when parents nag.
We dont come home for lunches and dinners anymore.
We dont talk anymore.
We delight in comparing the contact list in our facebook.
We wallow in self-gratification when people send us virtual gifts or 'poke' us.
How many of them are true?
How many are acquaintances?
We pretend to like the songs that everybody else likes.
We are concerned by people's comments when these people dont mean anything to us.
We judge others as they judge us with deluded self-righteousness.
We give to charity just for that immunity sticker.
Those school kids holding tin cans compare whose is heavier.
Is charity artificial?
We think losing a football match all the time is alright.
We have tried, havent we?
Have we?
Is our best good enough?
We make the same mistakes,
We gloss over them with opinions that the other team is better.
They are faster, they are fitter, they are younger, they are more skillful.
We make up excuses to cover our shortcomings.
Yet we dont strive to improve.
We dont think how to improve.
We change formations and positions hoping that things will work out.
In the playing field of life,
Do we play like that?
We model ourselves upon others,
So much that we lose our own identity.
We become our boss's mouthpiece,
Eschewing our true opinions.
We become apologists.

We become someone else.