It's been a damn long time since I've written anything here. The blame could probably be placed to the countless of writings that I have to do just to get that measly piece of paper halfway through 2012. Slowly but surely I am asking myself- Is this all worth it?

Life would surely be better off if I was on some faraway deserted island where all I do all day is relax, enjoy life and get served by beautiful servants (no dirty thoughts here please). I am sure somehow this fits into some of your very definition of paradise. Instead, what we all we want is to go through hell for a measly piece of heaven before ending up in hell for eternity.

I have a joke which sums up the point that I'm trying to get at here.
An investment banker was in a plane that crashed into the sea. He gets washed up onto an island which was had a small native population living on it. After he was nursed back to full health, he began to take notice of how the natives lived their lives. They did nothing all day but to laze around and occasionally fish for food and farmed just for sustenance. Nobody seems troubled as their life was that of lax. He thought to himself, "they could be so much better off if they did a lot more!"
So one day, he went up to the chief and started questioning him.
"Why is nobody really working here?" he asked.
"What for?" was the chief's reply.
"So that they can grow more food"
"What for?"
"So that you can export the food"
"What for?"
"So that you can make money for yourself!" the investment banker was getting annoyed at this point.
"What for?" the chief continued.
"So that you all can one day settle down peacefully on some tropical island and retire peacefully without any worries about the world"
"Isn't that what we're doing now?" came the chief's reply.

Each day, we are in pursuit of something...something that is intangible: happiness. We take that everything we do now is just a means to attain that. But slowly and surely, it chips away our soul bit by bit. Are we really happy in what we do? I guess the best way for any of us to love anything that we do is to do something which is an end in itself- like making money.

Fact is, I still have no idea why im here. I should have signed that damn paper 3 years ago and be part of ISAF by now. But, some some sheer carelessness, i opted out of it. Not a day goes by without me wondering about the "what ifs".

I guess, we live our lives thinking about the "what ifs". Each day is lived with us making choices. Having the chance to actually choose is what makes us all humans. While we may casually think that there are many options available for us all, fact is, at every second of our lives we are deciding whether to open door A or door B. There's only 2 choices for us. Only 2! Every other choice is basically the succession of the choice that we've made from the previous ones.

Time is a bitch on this one because it doesn't allow us to reverse on the choice that we make. It's constantly moving forward. But thankfully, with the blessings of ingenuity, us humans have been able to delay the effects of time- we are now allowed to move horizontally. Progression doesn't always take place vertically; it sometimes takes place horizontally. Like from JC to Poly kind of thing. It is still a progression. We choose exhaustively without thinking much of the consequences of our daily lives. We choose and choose until we hit a brick wall. If you hit one literally, then, go see a doctor for it because I'm talking analogically. Upon the confrontation with that brick wall, we then have the option of sliding sideways. It's a slim chance but the chance is there nontheless. It's like looking for a that hole with sunlight in a dark cave- you either go for it or you'll remain there in the dark. Either way, there has to be progression.

Consequences do come with each and every choice that we make. Right now, the choice that I've made to write this out has resulted in me not doing my readings or any of my reports. But it's a choice I've made and we live with the choices we make. In order for us to make "smarter" choices we have to gain that sense of maturity. Here, I define maturity as having a full sense of consequences from the choices that we make. We never make our choices blindly. How we choose has been shaped by the people around us, and also past events that has brought us to the point of life that we are at now.

Too bad, nobody realizes this- we actually live our lives in a big circle. Ever wondered as to why a certain point of our lives seems so familiar? We have a term for it: mid-life crisis. It's exactly the same point where we decide what to do with the rest of our lives. Think O levels or A levels. That period of time left you wondering, "what the hell should I do next?" But thankfully, during our youth, we have our family, friends and also our teachers to guide us. Try doing that at the age of 40. The only sources of guides that you'll have are: mortgage, your family and your kids' education. But we get by...by god we do. That's the amazing character of humans: our resilience.

Well, after that period, you think you're doing fine because you got by. Wait till 50 hits you and then 60. The sad thing about us all is that we are only temporary. We are temporary in other people's live. We are temporary at a place. We are only temporarily on earth. The constant being of temporariness.

Life starts with us jumping off a diving board aiming for a perfect entry into that small hole at the bottom. Many of us fall short and land on the sides of that small hole.