When I decided to take up sailing in jc, the people around me never failed to ask why. Much as I kept to my story of expedient training for a lazy mind and sluggish physique, it was really the impression a tv drama left on me when they centred the lives of main characters around varsity sports. I still remember those vernal faces with their unabashed passion for life, embodied in that singular pursuit of racing on water; which child wouldn't mistake youth as the right to dive for lurking challenges? Such reflections roused my spirit, and then they were translated into a symbolic desire to learn to sail.
Truth be told, I volunteered myself for the shambles like an unsuspecting goose the day I joined the school sailing team. Each Colours award was exchanged with blood, sweat and tears. In staggering proportions (it's the one reason seawater stays salty). Accomplishment was the amount of verbal abuse I managed to secure within a single session of training.
But then, I also learned to fly. As if empowered with wings, I surged across the waters in full embrace of the wind. I felt the breeze on my face, in my hair, wrapped around my arms and legs; it was everywhere. I thought I was soaring, but it was really the water transporting me.
If the sails were my wings, the water is you. On my own, these wings would never have lifted off. Beside you, the possibilities take flight.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Wish Upon A Time
It's unbelievably good fortune, how an ugly duckling has today the privilege to be regarded as a graceful swan by a few kind spirits.
I didn't always use to be like this. Pleasant, confident, easy-going. I know I'm still a rigid perfectionist in the eyes of many, but I'm certainly a far cry from the snub prefect in primary school.
Actually, I never even suspected that I was worth something; much less the possibility that I was smart. It's true I breezed through my education, and my bosses seem to like me, but I appeared so ordinary next to my scholarly and popular friends. I still do. I've entertained many a thought that they were my mates only because I made them shine. Yet they would insist on giving the world only to be as together a person as I.
The world is one confused oyster, isn't it. Which was why I determined in my heart, that the person who said one's defenses break down with age, was wrong, right from the start. Because regardless of the verity of the statement, I resolved to make it so.
Today I have not let down my guard, I have simply made it less offensive to the unacquainted soul. My untrusting disposition has been explained into paranoia, taken for elitism, and disguised as insecurity. Behind this graceful facade, the ugly duckling abides as real as ever.
I didn't always use to be like this. Pleasant, confident, easy-going. I know I'm still a rigid perfectionist in the eyes of many, but I'm certainly a far cry from the snub prefect in primary school.
Actually, I never even suspected that I was worth something; much less the possibility that I was smart. It's true I breezed through my education, and my bosses seem to like me, but I appeared so ordinary next to my scholarly and popular friends. I still do. I've entertained many a thought that they were my mates only because I made them shine. Yet they would insist on giving the world only to be as together a person as I.
The world is one confused oyster, isn't it. Which was why I determined in my heart, that the person who said one's defenses break down with age, was wrong, right from the start. Because regardless of the verity of the statement, I resolved to make it so.
Today I have not let down my guard, I have simply made it less offensive to the unacquainted soul. My untrusting disposition has been explained into paranoia, taken for elitism, and disguised as insecurity. Behind this graceful facade, the ugly duckling abides as real as ever.
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