growing up really sucks. there is of course no denying with growing up comes financial independence (which can be a good or bad thing, depending on how much daddy and mummy was paying you in contrary to how much you are earning now standing on your own two feet) but i guess one of the major problems of getting older is that you pick up "responsibility". it's the inevitable "effect" of growing up, like it or lump it, growing up simply means that you must care about more things in the world. have more things on your mind and more worries guarantee less time to yourself and the inevitable loss of childhood innocence. how great those days were... those carefree, whimsical days when all you worried about was what mom packed in your lunchbox that day and how you were gonna avoid getting pelted with rocks by Billy the Bully during recess. ah...the memories.
i was lucky to be able to catch up with a good friend from uni today. technically, he isn't from my uni. we just happened to be in the same country at the same time. i guess you could called us "accidental" friends. long story short, our friendship blossomed when we chanced upon each other when i was sightseeing in London and he offered to take me around. he did confessed later that he wasn't much good of a tour guide of London and only offered to do so because I looked so lost and he took pitied that I was alone. I did felt a tad crept out at that time but he turn out to be a pretty awesome friend who made London feel like my second home. he was always one of those people I knew I could count on and having him around while living abroad was one of the few blessings I thank God for. a true friend: he's always there when i need him. i pray to God that i could be half the friend he is to me.
so my stint in England came and went and naturally, after I returned, the long chats on the phone that we used to enjoyed with our free minutes came to a halt. we kept in touch but since we lived in different time zones, it was never more than the occasional mail or text message. occasionally, we might "bumped" into each other online and chat but it was never the same like the good old days.
let's call my accidental friend, Calvin. Calvin recently landed himself an awesome job in London as an investment Banker being a graduate from LSE himself. yeah, he's gonna watch his bank account balloon up now. what's even better about Calvin is that he is SINGLE and is actively hunting for that bachelerotte who will complete his cosy apartment in Camden.
we went out and chatted about life, love, relationship, Christmas and our pursuit of happiness. All in all, Calvin has grown up so much in this year alone and years of elite education at LSE has seen him grown from boy to man. He is still the same charming and remarkable man, grounded and sincere man that I shared so many heart to heart moments with. he has developed new views on life and adopted different stances on various things but overall we both agreed that growing up wasn't all that nice afterall.
growing up does have certain repercussions. you don't have those refreshing, innocent reflections on life anymore and you lose the creativity you once possessed in your childhood imagination. probably cause your mind is too often preoccupied with burdensome responsibilities and recurring worries. as a result, "grown-ups" become more cynical and weary after years of a hard life beating them down like red-headed step-children. i find myself becoming more cynical and sarcastic every time i take a sip of bitterness from the cup of life. i glare at little kids with so much envy and jealousy that they wet their pants and their parents label me as pedophilic. but how i wish i could be back in their shoes, exuberating so much imagination and raw creativity.
So we are both in our mid-20s now and while Calvin has achieved an amazing feat landing himself a job as an investment banker, I still didn't know what to do with my life. It's not that I do not have a focus in life, I am doing what I have been slogging in law school for but there is more to life than just being a lawyer, isn't there? I always wanted to be everything from a rockstar to a ballerina to a rich man's wife to being a personal designer shopper. Deep down, like most woman, I yearn to have a family of my own. To hear pitter patters of tiny feet and to have someone who comes home to me. Calvin tried to comfort me by applauding my achievements and my larger than life principles. He felt I am having it better than him and that I had cut myself a pretty good deal in this short span of a year. Although the comfort of having one another at just a phone call away can no longer be a privilege we enjoy, we still manage, he said.
Throughout life, we always tend to look back and think, shoudda, woudda, coulda. I shoudda have study medicine. I woudda have been a doctor and I coulda marry a doctor too. Well, maybe it helps not to be so hard on ourselves sometimes. Though the cosy apartment at Camden does sound luxurious and niceties, its still going home to an empty place. Nothing beats the comfort of being where home is. Truth be told, as envious as I am Calvin, I am not ready to leave my cul de sac. I still enjoy going home to mummy and whine about the Bully at work. I have yet to really grow up. But that is another story. let tomorrow worry for itself for today is already laden with it. we can only hope that the sun will come out tomorrow.
