Take 5

Prophetic?

It's strange how things turn full circle.

The missus had gone through some of my older posts at my previous blog while she was waiting up for me last week and remarked to me that I should go revisit those.

I thought it was a exercise in ego-indulgence at first (i'm not ashamed to admit that I like my own style of writing. But thats me.)

But I stumbled on this gem I wrote in NS about my dreams. How oddly prophetic, looks like I really took my friends' advice to heart. Here it is.

Forgotten Dreams

Its 10pm in the evening and I can hear the laughter of the family next door. They’re watching Friends on telly as am I, different individuals in different households drawn together by the hilarity of situational comedy as displayed on the tube. With the telly on, I’m settled on the comfy couch, relaxed in the knowledge that as the years have passed this sextet of friends will remain the same people, people who have gone through trials and tribulations to entertain their unseen audience and have yet remained true to one another.

Of course this is all make-believe what with stars drawing on mega pay scales to continue appearing on the sitcom. Hence, its probably not so much of the fact that the six have entertained us for close to 8 years with their antics; but rather that alongside these characters we’ve each grown to be different or rather dissimilar to what we once were when the comedy first premiered.

The show aside, how much has each of us changed? For some all that has happened is the mere discarding of one physical form for another the very same way a snake sheds its old skin to reveal the new; for others instead of discarding the previous physical form we choose to keep it within the new. Is it the old within the new? Or the new without the old?

I remember days of long past where my childhood dream was to be a teacher and to spread knowledge to as many as I could, very much the same way a tent revivalist gathers his new flock. I had hoped to travel to distant lands and to teach those who really saw learning as fundamental and essential to their being; It didn’t matter if the ministry had decided to place me within some primary school and teach children the difference between 50 cents and a dollar, I had just wanted to bask in the exuberance of being able to be there for a student when he said thanks for being there sir.

I told my closer buddies bout this desire of mine and they told me to go for it, but I was warned by my parents to be aware of the tough road that lay ahead in a job were students rapidly grew up and became more successful then envisioned while I would still be there behind a plywood desk in an air-conditioned room grading the papers of students who were to come.

Soon after that I had hoped to become a journalist instead, to write columns in the dailies and comment on the societal behaviour in general. This soon morphed into wanting to become a lawyer and live up to my family’s illustrious past of such, but my grades were pretty average and being content with my lot, I decided to forego that dream too.

It seemed that that’s all there was to these dreams, unfulfilled and impossible to accomplish. Whats more, which was worse I reasoned? To have a dream unaccomplished or to have it crushed when reality proved other wise? Some may say it is better to dream than to have not, but what of the dream that forever remains unfulfilled? Is it to be discarded like an old skin for the new, or to be kept within, shriveled up and hidden from view by the new, but alive nonetheless?

Whats my dream now? To get through the university and perhaps work as an analyst for some investment agency or defence organization. But is that a dream in itself? Or is it just a means of telling myself that dreams are that which should be within reach, not with-out? There is no true way of telling unless I go on to fulfill this dream.

I asked some of my friends what I should do about this dilemma, this inability to decide upon what dreams I want to pursue, and their answer was that we’ve all got many dreams, it doesn’t matter what they are, what matters is if you’re willing to make them reality. That, sure busted my noodle.

But wait, who needs dreams, when you’ve got Friends.

posted by leo @ 12:56 PM