Ticket to the world

When life gives you lemons…

Its been an eternity since anything of note was posted here. Its strange when the contemplative mood decides to strike though and the new year seems as good a time as any to start posting again.

It seems hard to post anything here. I guess its cause I am not the type of person who wears his heart on his sleeve.

That said, the past two years were life-changing, to say the least. I lost people and dreams dear to me but I gained much more in exchange.  I had to learn to come to grips with the disappointment of not achieving my dream of becoming a pilot. Looking at my successful peers around me only served to compound the misery. I remember the talks with my close friends in JC about the trajectory we wanted our NS path to take. For 90% of the guys out there it would be the following formula. BMT -> OCS -> King of Tekong/ Inspiring PC in whatever unit you got posted to -> ORD

However, life does not exactly unfold the way you thought it would be. I really thought I would be selected for airgrading. After all, I had cleared all three components of the selection phase. The rejection was a bolt from the blue especially since previous correspondence indicated otherwise. It took me five long months before I could let go of the disappointment and resentment at the inefficient bureaucracy that stifled my application.

Witnessing the success of my peers was a bittersweet experience for me as well. I smiled as they shared with me the good news of their academic triumphs but inside, I felt empty. In JC, my results were crap but I always told myself that I would redeem myself at the final reckoning. However, those were just delusions of grandeur and reality struck hard, shattering my carefully crafted illusion of a bright future.

“Where do I go from here?” was a question that I pondered about many times in the months afterwards. My subsequent enlistment into NS only added to the mental flux. My past profligacy with the opportunities accorded to me resulted in the ensuing dearth of opportunities when the time came for university applications. The two words that kept appearing in my head during that time were ‘What If’ .

People have an annoying penchant to rue the loss of something only after its gone and I guess this holds true in my case. My time in NS has given me much time to reflect and I believe I have found the solution. As a wise friend succinctly put it, “Don’t look back and ask why, look forward and ask why not”.

Time to man up and make some lemonade.