Sunday, October 09, 2005
Close Encounters of the Real Kind
In the last few weeks, it's become clear to me that being 18 is no fun. There's so much to contend with. Studying for exams, taking exams, the harrowing wait for the results of the exams to be released, realising the results really suck, taking more exams in preparation and in the hope that the real one won't be so bad and so on and so forth. It's never ending really.
Add to that, the emotional problems of being 18. The different camps of people, the cliques, the politics of the cliques. Raise it a notch, add in boys or girls, into the fold. Being infatuated, perhaps even to the point of being delusional, hoping for what cannot actually be, clinging, wanting a relationship because you think it's the only way out of the lonely shit hole you think you're in. Discovering that that in itself, brings with it more problems, more insecurities. Worrying about it, obsessing about it. Googling people to try to find out just a little bit more about the parties invovled. The misguided belief that information gives you power. And not realising that obsessing, worrying, searching, deconstructing, pseudo-psycho analysing, all take time. Time at this point that none have.
Perhaps that's why my parents were adamant about the fact that I shouldn't date when I was that age. It was detrimental for me too, but I'm thankful I didn't throw out my whole academic career the way some of these kids might end up doing. I remember discovering that the boy I was seeing, was physically involved with someone else. I remember discovering this in the midst of a very important series of exams. I remember obsessing about it, trying to find out who she was, why she was doing what she was doing, why she seemed more attractive than I was, why he
liked her more than he liked me (although I think that was actually quite clear to me). And all this, I did , before the advent of the Internet,
Google and
Technorati. The amount of time I spent, the ups and the downs, not funny. The subsistence on an apple a day, very not funny- skeleton with skin would have been an apt description. Anyway, it took time, time that I should have used, to study, to make sure that I did well. I didn't realise I wasn't doing that. I think I was far too caught up in it to realise how adverse the effects were on me.
Till much later anyway and then I asked myself, what in the world was I thinking? Thank goodness, the damage was minimal. The results were still passable and respectable and no one thought much of it. But I knew. I knew, inside me, how much better it could have been. And how silly I'd been.
Now, that's what I see going around me. And I am powerless to stop it. They choose their own paths of self-destruction and it gathers speed and momentum and they fall further, farther and deeper into the abyss. What to do? Hope they learn from it? What if this costs them more than they can afford? How do you help them?
At the same time, I'm desperately trying to teach the same kids about the Singapore government and the meaning of patriachy. How in Singapore, we are treated like young children. Not being capable of thinking for ourselves, of being told
how to think and what is the
right way to think about things. I'm trying to impress upon them that it's very much like how parents try to prevent us from making mistakes because they
know better and even if it
really is out of the goodness of their heart, sometimes, it's just something we have to learn for ourselves and they have to take a step back and let us figure it out for ourselves. Perhaps more is at stake when it comes to a society, but the main point is to trust that people make the right decisions and learn from it. Problem is there are too many people who just don't think and we need to stop them from being destructive. So, it's a chicken and egg dilemma.
I guess I can
tell them what to do and
insist that they do it by the authority invested in me by the Ministry of Education (hahaha). But they probably wouldn't listen and resent me for it. I can also give them carte blanche to do what they want, hope they realise what they're doing and perhaps wake up their ideas a bit. And if they don't, hope they pick themselves up and make the best of what they have? Hope they get a second chance later on?
Lives are so easy to screw up and there's so damn little anyone can do about it. And the sucky thing about it, is, damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 09:30
0 thoughts...
0 thoughts...
" Far in the stillness, a cat languishes loudly"