~The Road Less Taken~

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

it's now almost 6pm as i type this.

"6pm?" i can almost hear you say as you read this. "that's rather early isn't it?"

the surprising thing is not that i'm home at 6pm (and in fact i was home an hour earlier), but that i don't feel that i'm coming back late, at 6pm.

it's a mix of emotions.

i don't quite know exactly why i feel this way.

so much for reputedly being able to know why i feel what i feel (albeit on my own account).

this one takes a bit longer to comprehend,

or maybe i simply don't want to.

actually it doesn't lend itself to comprehension, and if it ever does it will overpower me and make me the reputedly emo monster i am (this is according to my classmates).

and i'll admit it here - this is an emo post. no two ways about it.

i won't deny i have a lot of feelings about ri. too many to begin compressing them into a 10-minute showcase portfolio presentation. and even if i do it won't fulfill the requirements, will it? and nobody would like to fail any assignment at all, let alone one of such significance and proportion.

i was thinking on the way home what exactly i should do in the coming 3 months, the last 3 of a 4 years which took a while to warm up, but when it got going it didn't stop.

and truth be told i didn't want it to.

but now i find myself somewhere between wanting it to stop, and wanting it to never stop.

ri comes at an incredible personal cost. time with your family, time for yourself, is really all taken away once things get going.

but isn't it truly amazing that amid the hectic schedule and massive workload, there's still more than enough time to fulfill the "thinker, leader, pioneer" mission, almost, set down by the school?

the raffles programme really challenges you. changes your perception of yourself - how far you can go, how far you're willing to go, and how far you will go.

and that's the reason for the real conflict of emotions now.

during house meeting today i wondered.

wondered why i was taking this exco position up.

was it a love for hullett?

a more general love for the school?

or was i simply going through the motions for the sake of my testimonial?

so i forced myself to do something.

i looked at my hullettians in the eye, and told myself, "if you're doing this for the house and not for any selfish ends, fantastic. all's well. but if not, work in the knowledge that you have your own aims, but all the same put the house before yourself."

i remember talking to justin a few days back.

about the motivation behind prefects becoming prefects.

well it was his social documentary issue.

but the same concept applies.

no prefect can say that he's in the board to serve the school, and only serve the school. it's almost not a human capability to do that, except for a select few in this world who truly have a singular sense of direction so grounded that nothing can shake them off course. people like mother teresa.

likewise we cannot say that in whatever we do we don't have any vested interests.

i'm really caught wondering what my life in ri has been all about sometimes. and it's becoming a question i'm considering more and more, seeing as i only have about 3 months left here.

sometimes i just find school to be a routine. come to school, sit in class, do work, go home.

but i want to feel something else. or i would just be wasting my time.

there's really too much to talk about here. i could go on and on for hours and still i won't really have cleared up my thoughts. in fact, because i'm throwing everything up here, i'll probably be confused from what i'm feeling.

but i guess the bottom line is that the end of ri life is drawing closer.

it's close enough to feel now. every day which passes in school now becomes a question. one of how i'm going to leave this place and all its people behind without any regrets.

3 months.

and if you secondary 4s out there still remember, shanzhi threw down a challenge last year.

to leave a legacy.

and i've always kept that in mind.

but truth be told, i'm not sure what it's going to be.

personally, and perhaps even for our batch.

maybe that should be the one final goal left standing, after the usual rush to do well for the exams and all our various commitments, little or large.

and then there will be no regrets.

I stopped to rest at 5:57 PM

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...