this has got to be one of my favourite songs from 5 years ago.
5 years ago. 5 years ago was the 45th anniversary of my secondary school - bpghs - and last week, my alma mater held her 50th anniversary celebrations.
i remember being a secondary 4 boy 5 years back looking at all my seniors who came back and telling myself that i'd want to be there for the 50th anniversary celebrations. and i also wondered how i'd be like 5 years down the road.
so what am i like now, 5 years later?
honestly, i would not have dreamt that i would take the paths that i did, to go to jc for a year, and to hate it, and then to a polytechnic for 3 more years and only now be getting ready to get enlisted.
honestly, i would not have dreamt that i'd leave my church very very soon, get to know some of the best people that i'd get to know, who'd later mentor me and teach me so much, and 5 years later, come back to GPC and get to re-know all of my old friends and to feel torn.
honestly, i would not have dreamt that really get to know many of my best friends, from jc, from poly, from church (both GPC and CEFC), from football and maybe some places else, and to understand that little bit better about the nature of friendship. i still am not the perfect friend, but i am treasuring my relationships a bit more than i did.
honestly, i would not have dreamt that i would later hurt, and be hurt by someone whom i claim to hold dear to. for all my faults and callowness, i really did want things to work out, but in the end, our immaturity told; and we both grew up into very different people looking for very different things.
honestly, i would not have dreamt that i would later play football and train with the sp team, and get to know so many people because of a "game" and also, that i would move deeper and deeper - from a winger (where i enjoyed using my pace) to a central midfielder eventually, a position that feels the most natural and enjoyable to me now.
but all these things all came to past, and then some.
looking back, while i thought that i was all grown up in secondary 4, ready to take on the world, fearless, i realised now that there was so little that i knew. we were all wide-eyed, innocent and naive to the workings of the "grown-up" world. things really were simple and a little more straight-forward in secondary school.
i do have ambitions for the me 5 years later, but really, do they really matter? in the end, how many of those plans actually get followed through?
i remember being so above the world when estella and i first got together, and i remember being so heart-broken and affected when things didn't work out. but did it matter? right now, just a few years after everything, i look at estella and see an estella different from that secondary 4 girl. i look at myself and i see a different matt from that secondary 4 boy. all the victories, all the defeats, all the fights, all the make-ups, they all don't really matter now do they?
and really, after a year that started on such a high for me, and then ending so terribly (the year 2006) it really proved just how volatile situations and circumstances can be, and after 6 months of changes, whereby everythings simply flipped - head to tail - it really proved just how fickle people can be, despite their promises, despite you trusting them completely, one really does wonder: why even bother with plans?
i was re-watching the dark knight the other day and the joker said that the schemers, those who had plans, are simply trying to control their little worlds, but when something doesn't "go according to plan", there is anarchy, there is panic.
things are bound to change, and there is only so much that we can control in our little worlds. yet we still scheme, yet we still plan, yet we still seek to control out little worlds. and when things go awry. we freak out.
i guess there's nothing wrong with having ambitions, having plans. but maybe being a little more like a dog chasing cars in the words of the joker isn't such a bad idea after all. i think, when the time and circumstances call for it, it would be wise for us to learn to let go.
i sincerely hope that the me 5 years later would be reading something that i enjoy, and that i would enjoy that education, and that i'd still be able to play football as much as possible. yes, that does sound rather good. of course there are other things that would be nice to have, but would they survive the changes that life will bring? i don't know.
because what will come, will come. and sometimes, when the time and circumstances call for it, it would be wise to learn to let go.