For years, I have been searching for something I can't exactly put my finger on. I don't know how long has it been since I began; was I always this way? I don't remember.
What I know for sure is that, in the years that I have been searching for, I have lost many things. Someone told me that I cling on to the past; I am sure that is true, for I always counted the things that I have lost; my innocence, my faith, my chances, beloved ones, memories. Each and every day I wake up, with the realization that for each day I lived, I will lose something every single day.
Thus I search for that something; some say it is God I am looking for, some say it is love, some say it is success, some say it is happiness. But the more I look for it, the more I lose.
In the end, I end up being a lonely guy who is having his final year as an undergraduate student in Japan, a guy who lost his entire youth spent looking for something that possibly isn't real; a guy who has come to a realization that, to carry on living, he can't possibly bring anything or anyone from the past with him; nothing belongs to hims, no one belongs to him; he is just alone, like many other souls before him.
He saw dreams crumble before him; how hopes turn out to be lies told to encourage one to move forward, only to realize that there is no such thing as a brighter future; there is nothing better or brighter about the future, nothing that really makes it a better time from either today or the past; it is just the reality as it is going to be, a future that is the reality that one has to face sooner or later, a future that one can never really be fully prepared for; a future where one is adrift across a sea of fate and time.
He saw how people grew up; some of his friends are happily married, some are pursuing their careers, some are excelling in their studies, some are struggling to make ends meet; he compared his life to them and saw that there is nothing really special about his own self; he ain't lucky or gifted, he is just the way he is. He is alone and he owns nothing.
That is me. I begin to question my very existence; perhaps there's no deeper meaning to this. Perhaps there is no love or happiness, no God or Heaven, no success or failure; there's only reality as it is, waiting for me to accept it as much as I'm waiting for it to happen. I don't look for miracles, I don't look for success in life, I am not looking for happiness. It is all a fairy tale, told to children by their parents who know better, and yet the parents told the lies anyway, because even if they know they're all lies and superstition, that the children are going to have a bright future, but they still believe in it anyway, for no one can live without believing in something. One has to believe in the existence of Future.
I know nothing is going to last forever. One day I shall lose everything; heck, I don't have anything anyway, so why should I despair about losing anything at all? I am not going to be afraid of the fact that my parents are getting older, that my family is changing, that I am now an uncle, that I'm going to leave many of my friends behind; I am not gonna let the fears of fading into nothingness take over me. At least rhetorically.
With that, I shall have to take leave, in order to comfort my mind with a dose of nicotine. Allah hafez.
