SMS Musing #12

While lounging at Gochi-So Shokudo waiting for the delivery of my ordered Teriyaki Iberico special set:

As I scour through my contact lists on Telegram and/or Whatsapp, I cannot help but think about how after thirty years, life has seemingly gone full circle. I started my life alone with my parents, then had a sister, then went to school where I made friends, most of whom didn't last, served my national service, left with no lasting friends, studied overseas twice, given the opportunity to start a new life in a place where my kind is not just tolerated but welcomed, decided to forego all that in the name of principles like honouring promises and loyalties, fell in and out of love with different types of futures, and while everyone seemingly has "grown up", here I am, back with staying with my parents alone, practically friendless-ish, jaded with everything thst is happening in the industry that I had once thought I would stay in and make a difference.

Perhaps I'm one of those perpetually bitter dilettanti, always feeling that the society that I was in was always wrong in some way, making myself out to be some kind of outsider.

I'm not really sure about that though. As the days go on, side thoughts about whether I truly belonged to Singapore kept on surfacing in my mind. In some ways, perhaps the "system" has failed me, but perhaps in some other ways, I have failed myself. I believed too much in my ability to control my fate, and even as things got progressively less ideal, I kept on believing that as long as I kept on thinking, I would be able to think my way out of things.

Naturally, nothing ever works that way. Hindsight would reveal the breakdowns over time that aat that point I would bot be able to see.

But of course, it is easy to fall into such thought patterns due to the foibility of being human. It is easy to forget that far above sits the Lord, and He has His great plan from which I am to play a role in. I think I know of at least one point where it would be hard for me to deny myself to pick up my cross to follow Him, but with Him, nothing is impossible. It is always heartening to remember that I am God's adopted child now, and that I can cast my fears and anxieties upon Him.

A sign of delusion from one who has read/studied so hard that one's perspective is warped to the point that any sort of relief would be greeted enthusiastically without reason? No. I think it's just the natural realisation that would come when one objectively observes that one is only a miniscule part of society, let alone the universe, and that one's size is too small to matter in the big picture. God is the big picture, and it does take aa little getting used to the fact that one's life really isn't one's own. It's easy to fall into that complacency because we literally live only in our bodies all day all the time; that proportion of time spent is the reason why most are self-centred. But take a quiet night, and look at the darkened skies, and observe that each star seen is but one of a million more that we cannot see, and that each visible star is as large as or even larger than our sun, and it will be quick (and mind-breaking) to realise just how insignificant we are.

I may have gone full circle, but I don't need to fear the future, for I am safe in my Father's hands. Amen.