Light

Life never gets easier as you age.

While that very fact is dampening to the spirit, it also proves that we are maturing as adults. So yet again, we are with two choices which require compromisation and sacrifice. Isn't this the same for every other matter?

I could live care-free and unbound like a child if I choose to ignore my responsibilities and conscience. Compromisation.

I could have majored in the field I dreamt of since forever if I had chosen to be stubborn and unaffected by all outside influences. Sacrifice.

With every decision I make, both these elements come into picture and then, I become a being filled with doubts, insecurities, fear and negativity. Since we become more complex and think more than necessary (at times) as we grow older, decisions we make tend to become more negative. Somehow, someway, I think I became more timid as I aged.

With all these clouding your mind, it is easy to become lost within your own mind, further confused by the thoughts running through your head, being mislead by the darkness filling the world you envisioned in your mind. Then, you stop trying. And you continue to live in this dark little imaginary world you built, all alone - angry, scared and lonely.

Sometimes, I wonder if everything around me is real. Having my fair share of nightmares, at times I wonder if me - breathing and alive at this moment - is real. What if, this is just a dream, and I am gonna wake up one day and look into the mirror to see another person? Or maybe, what I have now around me are just illusions? What is real in this world? . . . Maybe I am being a bit of a paranoid now.

If I am real, a real person, how can I be taken down so easily by such mere abstract elements which I can't even explain or understand? When this question dawned upon me, I suddenly realized: Maybe it is the unknown I am afraid of. Is it just the same for everyone?

People driven to depression. People who supposedly lost their mind.
Were they just defeated by themselves?
By the conclusions they made about the world, the assumptions they convinced themselves of, the lies they believed in blindly - of which none might be true at all?
All questions to which we never dared to find the answer. The unknowns.

I was looking up at the gloomy December skies back in Sandakan while in the car. It was drizzling and people looked cold and isolated on the streets as everyone scurried away from the rain. As I gazed into the grey-ness of the sky, all sorts of questions flooded my mind and I held an expressionless face. I felt tired, inconfident, cowardly and lifeless.

Then suddenly a small beam of light passed through the heavy grey clouds. It was so small but yet, it was the most prominent thing among that vast grey sky. At that very moment, the coldness of the whole picture was no longer felt.

Just like the darkness we played up in our mind, what it takes is only a small beam of light - hope, faith, confidence - to make things right. Although igniting this light may be hard when darkness dominates and it will take time for this small beam to fight off the darkness, but if you choose to not give up I am sure it will succeed. For from the moment you chose to not give up, you have already gained faith.

There isn't one zombie movie where those zombies lived forever while the sun gave up shining.

We can learn a lot from nature. After every rainfall - the sun always shines, the rainbow only appears, the warmth is more appreciated.

We will continue to worry our way through and through but it is okay as long as we know not to be overtaken by these negativities, by our mind, by our own self.

For now, we just need to make sure that we are trying the best we can.