Four years (and) running.

20 October 2009

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

At the very last minute before handing in my final draft, Father inserted this quote at the very beginning of my valedictory speech. It was a concoction of words, wound together by the invisible strings of childhood memories and experiences, all of which had to be carefully restructured by the cumbersome hands of my parents and teachers, alluding to the idea that perhaps I – even though I was the (allegedly) smartest kid in the cohort – was too young to understand what the hell Lao Tzu really meant. Well, I didn’t even know who the hell that guy was.

My childhood memories have slowly disintegrated away to the most unreachable corners of my mind, but somehow, I have managed to hold on to this particular fragment of the past, embedding it on my life like a hammered piece of nail on a white, empty wall of cement. The resulting crevasses, fissures on the wall, those little distortions circulating the nail, stagnant and permanent in the immaculate sea of white, hid beneath the overhanging framed picture of a twelve year-old boy with a sun-lit smile tightly sewn from ear to ear.

Four years have passed and I have already hung so many pictures on this wall. The collection has kept on growing and growing and growing. Whenever I felt that I had to keep a memory or two, I would take a nail and a piece of string and hang them, keeping them alive with the stillness and tangibleness of these photographs. Looking back at them once in a while, I can’t help but realize how much time has already gone by; how many things have changed; how much experience I’ve gained; how far I have journeyed on my own. I also can’t help but realize how much of my life has been kept beneath these photographs: the sadness, the sorrows, the pain, the secrets, the bad experiences of the past, all trapped within the crevasses of my existence, cunningly transcended by my extroverted attitude and almost unearthly happy disposition as flatly seen by a typical outsider.

Well, it’s overwhelming. It’s a continual bombardment of the past, the present, and the prospects of the near and distant futures. Leaving home at the age of fifteen, facing the trials and obstacles of the unforgiving world without the physical protection of the hands that I once deemed cumbersome, encountering the kinds of people that I’ve never imagined I would actually meet, opening my eyes to the reality that life is not as clear-cut as black and white, questioning the validity of truth and the meaning of physical and supernatural existence, having to shave every three or four days for a nice and clean face, I must say that I have already traveled a long, long, long way.

It doesn’t sound like I’m happy, but don’t get wrong. I am happy. I really am. Seriously, I’m not kidding. LOL. I’m extremely thankful for everything; for my family and friends; for the awesome education that I’ve received over the years; for that person that I was, that I’ve become, that I still am.

It’s already been four years running, and I am still having the time of my life.

The contract is going to end soon, but life doesn’t just end there. There’s still a lot more ahead. There’s still a lot more things to do. And there’s still a long, long, long way to go.

A journey of a thousand miles,

of a million kilometres,

of a billion light years,

of eternity,

begins with a single step

and a simple smile that says,

LG, life’s good. ;D

Happy 4th anniversary.