Sometimes I am inclined to believe that I’ve hit the limitations of my abilities, and by ‘hit’ I mean to say that I’ve crashed into the glass ceiling of potential at 500 km/h without so much as leaving a scratch on the glass. This may not be in a strictly academic sense, since, as we all know, there is an infinitely vast pool of talents and skills of which academia only makes up a small portion of; but as it is my life so far has been pretty much pivoted around the fixture of grades and qualifications thus making it both the motivation and bane of my existence. Like everyone else, I too lie awake in the dead of the night, staring into the blackness of room – looking inwardly first at the growing heap of failed attempts, followed by the weariness of defeat, and finally perniciously hovering above the borders of philosophical justification; sinking in a sort of twisted, logical excuse for personal flaws. I wonder why it is so much easier to take the blame for all that has gone wrong as opposed to blowing my trumpet and taking credit for all that has gone right. In fact, it’s difficult recalling anything at all from the latter.
Yet when I venture to think beyond academics, I am almost always in the danger of being subdued by melancholy. When I think about my background and all the experiences that have contributed to both the good and bad of my character, I am unsure whether I should fall over myself laughing at the absurdity of some events, or weep with a deep and sudden stab of desolation; knowing that I could never communicate the real effect of these experiences to even my closest companions, and realising that it wouldn’t make a difference to them or me even if I could. Bounded up with my desire for complete understanding is the contradicting need for complete secrecy; which probably explains why I am always compelled to spill weepy, long-winded confessions to trusted friends, but stop short of revealing the details of events and experiences that have actually mattered in the past 20 years and beyond. I used to think it was because some memories do hurt you quite a bit when you begin to speak about them with other people, but I’ve also realised that none of these things matter outside my life or mind, and the only reason I would speak about them is to indirectly attract some sort of undeserved sympathy that would excuse my failures.
Whatever I’ve just written may very well apply to anybody. I don’t dismiss the silent inner battles that are waged by every individual walking in the streets, neither do I underestimate nor overestimate them. I do not write to champion the cause of the downtrodden, the marginalised or the twenty-somethings who thought they’d be doing a bit more with their life than flicking through Facebook profiles while continually asking themselves what are they doing with their lives. I write all this because it is an instinct, and because I feel that there is no other medium in which I express myself better than in the written or typed word. As to whether I could eventually go on making a living out of doing something I feel comfortable doing, or whether I will keep on writing ’till the end of (my) time is something I ask myself from time to time, but for now I am simply compiling bits and parts of myself on this space.
