Strange epiphanies

University, as it turns out, is one big existential crisis.

I still wonder how others might think if they stumbled upon this and saw all my half-formed theories, and heaven forbid they see right through me and discover the simpleton that I actually am. At the same time, I have no inclination to mince my words or to beautify it for any audience. This is my raw and unfiltered thoughts that you see, my inner ruminations if you will. I suppose if I spent more time on actual productive work instead of waxing philosophical all day, I might get a lot more done, but then I wouldn't be me.

As a writer and actor - I think I am happy to take on those two roles as my title - I have stumbled across many questions about the human psyche, and I have had the chance to observe more dimensions of humanity than most. Writing, thinking and performing different personas is my profession after all, and the practice of my various crafts have lent me some insight into the people whom I cross paths with each day.

And yet, curiously, it is myself whom I still do not understand.

Who exactly is this person? Who holds herself with such intense confidence in the eyes of others that everyone believes that she has something more, and who paradoxically knows that this confidence is nothing more than the performance of a lifetime by a terrified and insecure soul who just wants to be loved? Because on the darkest nights when I confide in my jiejie, she alone knows the scared girl who stays awake at 5AM wondering if she is a fool for trying.

At some point, the fiction I created has bled into reality. There are moments in which I genuinely believe that I actually have more than I give myself credit for, but those fleeting moments of self-appreciation and gratitude are quickly washed away by the socially-imposed need to censor my own pride, to give into humility and the norm because my soul deserves to be chastised for baring itself like that, the audacity. What's there to celebrate after all? I am as bright as any other star, and there are billions of stars in the night sky.

I constantly want to fix a little more to my name, as if I am not enough. I have never felt like I am enough. 4.67 - ha, so what? That number is a shaky little thing. It hovers up and down, ready to fall deep into the ravines at any moment and never rise again. I will not let a number as volatile as that define my self worth. What then? 85...? Does any shred of my academic performance really paint an accurate portrait of this very unrestrained and artistically inclined soul? I was raised to believe that the numbers do not lie, and maybe that is the case indeed.

But the numbers can never represent the full picture. No one can see my 85 and understand the amount of heart, pain, love, siblinghood and courage that forged my two years in Eunoia Junior College. No one would ever really know why that girl suddenly swerved out of her orbit to pursue theatre after being on the academic track for so long. She herself does not know, after all. And in fact, 85 is a number rolled on a dice. I could have gotten a paper that was so hideously bad that I just failed to perform, and then it would be a U. Every step of the way, from the PSLE to NUS, feels like divine intervention that has kept me on the path I hoped for, and so often I awake wondering if it will one day be taken away from me. The allegory of Flowers for Algernon sends shivers down my spine. Does intellectual capacity stay forever? If it is gone, then what is left to define me?

Somewhere in 2020, in another lifetime that we have all forgotten, a girl stared at the ceiling and made a wish. She would follow her own heart and no one else, and at the end of the day, the consequence of her choices shall be hers to bear. Who will know how fiercely she loved? Who will know the life she lived? One day she will just be another face in the sea of people long gone, forgotten and erased from the surface of the earth. Her story will be the same as so many others - she lived, she tried, she died.

Does it not frighten you to realize that we are already being generalized? With massive broad strokes we are called "Generation Z". Uniquely connected, trauma-aware, too politically correct. And there are those among us who scream, no, that is not me, I am different! But in the sea of voices all clamoring for the right to have their own identities, the individuals drown. The reality is that there are way too many of us for everyone to love or to care about. Some of us, precious few of us, will receive that recognition and our names shall be heard far beyond ourselves. Others fade away into the night. Do not go gentle? Aw, too late. The night has already stolen us away.

The lesson I learned here is that there are 8 billion people in this world, but how many times do we get to stand at the center of it and be heard by everyone? I am not content with standing aside, but I want to find my own corner rather than jostle with so many others for the same prize. If there is nothing else to believe in, then I believe in my ability to make a path where there is none. If not because of someone who once phrased it perfectly for me, then because I sincerely learned to believe in that refrain.

I once believed that I somehow knew a truth that others could not see. I once believed that I had the answers, and I could not understand why they did not see things the way I do. There is a lot more to learn, but at least for this semester, I now know that not everything is under my control. There is a lot more to negotiate with this world than I knew, and those negotiations grow more complex only because I now see more of the big picture. It scares me, it intrigues me, and it makes me want to understand this strange world we live in.

Hey, after reading this entire nonsensical outpouring of words, if you still follow my train of thoughts, then I'll leave this for you: We come and go, so whatever lengths we go for love, can we try not to hurt another soul in the process? We are always trying to be understood, and so in this act of proving ourselves, can we try to understand another person too? Because whatever kindness we have been given was the selfless act of someone else, and it would only be right to give it out in return.