They say when you
have a crush; every song seems like it’s about the object of your affection. I
feel the same, except mine is about the fragility and brevity of life. Sitting
on a bench for hours without the usual comfort of music from tiny pods, I
sought companion from my thoughts. There I was, “adulting” as some of you might
call it, and I was questioning why, what, or who I was doing it for.
Films and books show that the
vivacity of life was brightest in your teens, but I was no longer a part of
that age spectrum. It’s strange that I equate the feeling of a fresh graduate
as that of a ghost who newly passed—like I was stuck in a world that was no
longer mine to trek, lingering and lost, unable to see the light. Now,
everything I watch holds meaning, everything I see and read feels truer to me
than ever before.
Although I thought I was more like Little Women’s Beth and Amy, each day
I’m becoming more and more like Jo, awkward in her skin and wanting to change
but not knowing how to. I have never felt more spiritually closer to a
character than I have with Valancy from The
Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery, a single AF woman stuck in a dreary
hole who feels like she hasn’t fully lived her twenty-nine years of existence. Nowadays,
I couldn’t even properly listen to Nina Nesbitt’s song Way In The World without wanting to bawl.
Then
I saw on TV this talented woman probably in her 60s who had been trying to
pursue her dreams since she was young, and I thought to myself: what if I only
get to reach my dreams forty years later? And what if I never do? Will I be
like Jo if she never went to New York or Valancy if she hadn’t broken out of
her shell?
I’m
almost broke and the future I planned for myself, as a child—travelling the
world, buying a car, etc.—has never appeared bleaker. The formulaic ladder of
life (study, work, marry, and die) hits me right between the eyes, and I wonder
if that’s all there is to it. I ponder on where happiness comes in or if
happiness is the goal of our existence. The top on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
is self-actualization, and he says that not everyone achieves this. Will the
life we lead be meaningless if we don’t reach this level? Will its value
decrease if we waver or lose our way in the pursuit of happiness?
I’ve recently watched characters
(*ahem* Margo Spiegelman from Paper Towns
and Age of Youth’s Kang Yi-Na) who
easily hop around their comfort zones, make whatever they want with their
lives, and advise others to do the same. While the idea of living wildly sounds
tempting, the deed of actually taking the plunge is shrouded with fear.
I’ve always known that after wearing
the cap and holding your diploma, freed from the syllabi and lesson plans of
school, is a world where it’s now your turn to decide. They say to live your
life to the fullest and to hell with that metaphorical circle of comfort. But
it’s not easy deciding to sway from that layered brick of normality or the
school-job-marriage-death equation. Because it’s unclear what happens when you
do.
Sometimes I find myself wanting to
quit at life and becoming a useless burrito, wrapped in my blankets and sheets
of angst and self-doubt, because the pursuit of happiness and living a
meaningful life seems pointless. Then I squeeze my existential crisis and
realize there’s hidden gold coins to putting our existence under heavy
scrutiny. Because it means we care, that we acknowledge mortality and the
impermanence of life.
Perhaps
the answer isn’t increasing your comfort zone to the size of the galaxy, going
wild and haywire as a means of living your life to its maximum potential, or
forfeiting the whole race because we’re all going to cease to exist anyhow.
Perhaps
the answer is just living.
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