my self

I was back in JJ for the first time since our post prom AAR last December. It's the first day of school,and kids are already up and about, training and studying and catching up. It was bustling. Before our meeting, Jon commented on how good it feels to come back to JJ on a school day, seeing the juniors going about their routine instead of coming into a "dead school" (during the holidays). Meiling hasnt been back for a while as well, and mentioned the small changes in the alumni room; the shifting of a table, the misplacement of her jacket, the shifting of the fridge. I just smiled.

While waiting for Ling and Jon to come, I just stood at the second floor, overlooking the rugby team training on the field, and the hockey team running on the tracks. I saw a few of my prom com juniors training and slacking, having fun. I saw some of my council juniors engaged in catching up. Suddenly, I felt displaced. I was a stranger in a foreign land. At that point, I questioned my return to this place I feel so jarred out of more than once while I was helping out last year. I felt like there was nothing left for me to give back, and the juniors do not need anything from me anymore. It was a large sense of helplessness mixed with fear, the fear of putting myself in a situation that makes me vulnerable.

I think it stems from the fact that the environment changes so fast around you, and sometimes it is just too hard to catch up. Jon commented that the school changes every 2 yrs, just like the kids. JJ moves at such a fast pace that some embrace the change as a challenge worth taking up by being part of the alumni, while others separate themselves from the college in its entirety. I am caught in the middle. I see all this change, I see my juniors change, I see unfamiliar faces and objects, new facilities springing up in places unexpected, and I feel like I am at a standstill. I am not progressing, but instead I just might be spiralling down, real fast.

The same can be said for people. We orbit about as separate entities, meet for a combustion, and then seperate again. People come and people go, and while I am glad that some I can manage to catch up with time after time and feel like nothing has changed, I have also come to accept, and come to terms with the fact, that people inevitably leave. Everyone does. As much as I am sentimental and unwavering, I cannot stop them from living. That if someone doesnt bother to meetup with me as much as I've tried to in the past, I am helpless. That is perhaps a sad fact I have to live with.

Perhaps the root of the problem is my disatisfaction with my current state right now. Who is ever satisfied with life anyway.

So this is just a matter of perception. Jon embraces changes. Meiling acknowledge and understand changes, and takes on anything with gumption. Me? I have a love-hate relationship with it, but I understand its purpose.



There is too much to do in this life, that sometimes I just want to give it all up and run away, let the flow take me wherever it will. I want to connect with nature, be like that Into The Wild guy and travel the world, grow trees. I feel confined and shackled, and my life feels like a pitfall. There is too much I cannot say, too many things I cannot do, too many people I havent and cannot and wont meet, too many places that I cant explore.


oh how it wears me down.