GROWING UP
Thanks to FB (Facebook) I've gotten in touch with some classmates from a former era that seems long past. Some people had put up a class photograph from our final year in primary school - circa '97. It has really been AGES.

It's an exercise in growing up, when you are confronted with the grown-up realities of life - taller, perhaps a tad cooler with the party-animal addition, you have the whole girlfriends and boyfriends thing going on. Association with your pals always comes with an unwanted, additional paraphernalia. Sooner or later you get swallowed by the working world and colleagues. Relationships come to an end, others begin. It's non-stop from there. Some day you tie the knot, settle down, have kids, watch them grow up and leave the nest and then, you are back to the freedom of old-age. Wrinkled, a little less of a good-looker than before, with hopefully a stable companionship that lasts till the sun sets on your life.

Sometimes things end even before they begin and rude surprises await us in the kitty..much like the little emperors and empresses, born of China's one-child policy, who lost their lives in schools across Sichuan and all that's left of them are the school books, the bag, the tiny shoe peeping from the rubble.

Sometimes we end up lonely, having everything yet having nothing or actually having nothing - no love, no life, no nothing. When even the crowd seems to part and you're left with a weird whirring sound inside of your soul, you know it can't get worse...or perhaps it can't get better.
You believe in the existence of God but you want to have more than just blind faith.

If feels like we're racing through time. What are we living for..what's this unnecessary clutter, undying need for status, respect, success, life itself...Is youth merely a wild party? Is work merely a success route to moolah and recognition? Is old-age a wrinkled doom?

What do we actually want out of life..beyond love, relationships, success...I think there is a lot more, but I'm not able to put a finger on it. It can be as simple as reading a good book, enjoying a good movie, eating a delicious spread or getting a hug and "I love you" from that little kid after you've helped him do his art project. But I haven't got it deciphered as yet. True happiness like the alchemist's treasure is elusive. It's there yet not there.