on the day i turned 27.

april 21, 2011

part 1.

today, i turn 27.

yes, three more years before finally turning 30, but i must say, i do not feel as though i am intimately acquainted with the cosmos -- because until now, i still feel like a stranger who is treading an unfamiliar path.

last night, while musing about what this new lease on life really meant to me, i found it ironic to realize that even before we are thrust into the world to be part of the multitudes of desolate souls who seek refuge from the stars for guidance, our lives had already been mapped out before us -- or at least, we conform to the mold of societal expectations, whether we think of it as an inevitability or not:

as children, we cannot wait to grow up. there is a lot of time wasted from being excluded in the world of adults. i remember that as a young child, i could not wait to outgrow my innocence, because the world that adults thrived in seemed to be more real -- a relatively less farcical realm compared to the golden unicorns and fluffy cotton candies that were in abundance in a child's world.

as adults, we are taught to defy the world, discard all our preconceptions about society, and wage endless battles against the suffocating moral standards of the undiscerning majority. we are taught that there is no sense in absolutizing knowledge and truth, and that only fools allow themselves to be caged by standards that are premised on mere consensus. the morally didactic in society need to be questioned, the university keeps on reminding us, because we ought to be defiant, lest we end up like the rest of the unthinking subservients.

but as we leave the confines of the academe and we get broken to the ruthlessness of the world, we learn first-hand that idealism needs to be tempered at times. that life, we all inevitably learn, is all about daily routines and patterns, and at times, we just get by with the thought that we need to do what we routinely do because that has always been the norm of the world.

that the idealism that propped us up during adolescence needs to be tempered with the fact that the world is vast, that we are minute in its wide expanse, and that ultimately, we are left with no other recourse but to conform -- until we breathe our last, and death emancipates us from the ordeal of always trying to fit in.

part 2.

as a young child, i wish someone would have warned me that at times, idealism rips your soul apart, that love is sometimes feigned, and that promises aren't always meant to be kept. i wish someone would have told me that even when society is double-faced at times, we still need to be subsumed under its stifling dominion.

that as we age and inch towards mortality, our very humanity will slowly be spirited away from us -- and that most times, even when we are defiant, we are helpless and incapable of doing away with the imminent defeat.