2009 – a year in retrospect
Where has 2009 gone? It’s a question that seems to be persistently pestering me these days. All too often, I find myself wondering where an entire year has gone, and whether a new year has really begun. Not too long ago, I was thinking of “last year” as my J2 year – which I remember as a year of lessons, recesses, class outings, worrying (to some extent at least) about A-levels, and thinking about matters that seem a lot less significant in retrospect. Now the “last year” that I’ve been thinking about has become “the year before”.
Similarly, the “this year” that instinctively comes to mind is one where I slacked around for a couple of months, did a few odd jobs here and there, made a trip to china, and of course, became an NSF. Of course it wouldn’t do justice to the time and memories past that I simply gloss over the last eight months as “being an NSF”. The last eight months have been a period of self-realization. It hasn’t been a glamorous eight months. In the first few months of these eight, I’ve given up certain opportunities, and there is certainly a lot more that I could have done. Nonetheless, even if time were to replay itself as the result of a bizarre malfunction of the space-time continuum, I would probably have made the same choices given the circumstances of those times.
Whether it’s out of self-consolation or genuine self-realization, I guess that’s how life is supposed to be. We make choices at certain points in time, often without full information of the consequences of these choices. The associated consequences are a mixture of the good and the bad, never solely consisting of one without the other. The composition of this mixture will tend towards either end of the spectrum, resulting in a general sense of (dis)satisfaction with the choice made. I’m trying not to sound like a generalist, but perhaps the essence of the art of finding happiness lies in admiring the good, while acknowledging the bad in the consequences of the choices we make.
That said, I think the reason why the past year seems to have passed so quickly is because of the lack of particularly memorable events, at least for a large portion of it. I’ll gladly acknowledge the more memorable occasions, but to a larger extent, it’s mostly been about spending each working day anxiously looking forward to the end of the day, or to the end of the week. I hate to sound cynical or depressive, but maybe that’s how working life for most people is like. Spending each working day battling trolls and monsters at work, and hoping for the quick arrival of salvation, either in the form of the end of the day, or the next well-deserved break.
With that in mind, I’m pretty convinced that I shouldn’t live through 2010 in as mundane a manner as I did last year. Life looks set to get better, in more ways than one. It’s up to me to keep the momentum up, to keep things moving, to try new things, to do cool shit, to live the good life. 2010 here I come.
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January 10th, 2010 at 1:27 am
if we could have information of the consequences of our choices, then it wouldn’t be life! it would be pretty scary to know what happens in the future :X
the future can only get better though :D
yay update your blog more la pig (:
January 10th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Well, seek meaning in your medic work? Maybe at your camp boring…
January 10th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
@eternalhap: work tends to be pretty mundane, but I enjoy the interesting cases and moments that I see from time to time :)
@eve: glad you agree!