There's always a season and a time

Not wanting to sound like one of those bloody self-help guru who tell people the obvious and attain some kind of occult status from commonsense that everyone would want to put into practise but being human--weak, failings and all always seem to fall short of, I risk sounding ahem, anal. But oh well. I've never dreaded anything as much as graduation and then uprooting, but now I've never been so grateful.

I still recall that pre-graduation syndrome we all seem to develop prior to leaving the school system which has weaned us for so many years. Ever since we have been conscious at that tender age when we start realizing that "yes I do have a brain and am expected to use it" we have been installed inside the school sytem and "Hell. It is frightfully scary when we realize we are going to be ejected from it into God-knows-what-is-out-there". And all those scary expectations we all seem to develop along the way about how sucess equates to alaphabets and rankings and even awards for how well we can write, learn inside that standard format of academia. And of course how we all get so lazy to even figure what the hell it all means to be the best, attain the "generally-approved and recomended" medal of honor. It is like being hung in limbo, when we see the end of that smooth sailing journey, we call studying, until we get the flimsy piece of paper. And then we start to worry.

But then, this uncertainty is probably the most wonderful thing that is going to happen to us, and before we settle into another comfortable comfort zone, where we just get into a track, and stick to it until something we calssify as "catastrophy of being sacked' or suddenly realization that mid-life-crisis has set in. WE all hate the uncertainty, it is like some blackhole hanging in the shadow just outside of the lighted zone we all want ot float around in lazily. I can understand why so many graduates want to go on all the way without stepping out there to hack it out first. Some fo them truly for the love of what they are doing. But mostly, it is to stay drifting in that lighted zone.

Soon, people start expecting you to develop certain traits ask certian questions about yourself at that certain age and you realize it gets harder to rebel. Discussion moves from crushes, boybands to work, salary and then eventually family, housing, cars. IT is probably unavoidable, and labels gets harder adn harder to shake off as we grow older. Probably because the possibilities seem to be shrinking with each increasing candle we get on our cake. until we don't bother with the candles and eventually even the cake.

I have never felt as free as now and am learning that there are so much beauty in the uncertain. It is a mild sense of fear and excitement and all these scary questions we ask ourselves in these precious moments about our lives and what it all means. IT makes us open up our eyes, our arms and our hearts to embrace and tolerate more about our abilities and inabilities.

I have never realized how imoprtant it is to not know what is ahead and yet still forge on, I guess that is probably why some people want to risk their lives climbing killer peaks just to see that view no one else has seen, sometimes not even knowing if it is all worth it or not until they reach the very top.

Perhaps. Robert Frost's poem can be read in a whole new way.

I remeber asking Ms Ng whether the sigh at the end of the poem can be a sigh of satisfaction instead of a regret that he cannot travel down both road. What we usually see as a poem about a regret and the uncertainty of the road ahead--is in fact a celebration of a moment in time, in life when we are faced with the uncertain. It is not choosing that one path that Frost is celebrating but the whole experience of the uncertainty and the possibilities in those diverging paths. It is that single moment when he is confronted by the two paths and he has to choose one that holds beauty. Enough for him to remember years later on.
It is at these uncertain moments that we are truly free. Free from the labels and confomrity, social expectations which put us into grids. Free from the expected and the fronts we must put on. It is at these moments that we stand at the cross roads with mothing but ourselves to confront.

Two roads diverged in the yellow woods...