Low Hanging Fruit

 

The last time I had such a rough time in my life was at the beginning of my adolescence. And it was bad. It cast such a big shadow over the rest of my life. For the previous few years, I had done well. I was finally in an environment where I was well adapted, I had friends, I was doing well in school. And then it inexplicably fell apart. There were a few things... first, my grades slipped. And when I say slipped, I don't mean I was in a lousy school, I don't mean I was in danger of failing my exams. I mean that I was making that unhappy transition from being an A student at a top school to being a B student at a top school. And of course my tiger parents treated it like it was the end of the world.

Which was the second thing. My tiger parents were treating it like the end of the world and making things miserable for me. And when that happens, you just don't have pillars of emotional support at the very time when you are trying to figure out what life is like emotionally. It just felt like life was very grey all the time. All the people I was ahead of just raced ahead of me and I never got back to where I used to be.

I got over it, eventually. After I graduated from secondary school, it felt very good. But did I really get over it? What happened was that I went out and I found a few more niches. I was in an environment where if you displayed talent in anything, you would be richly rewarded. They'd help you along the way. It suddenly seemed easy. But maybe it was the wrong impression.

IF you were good at mathematics in school, then it would be easy. But was it easy? You'd go into the university, do more mathematics, and finally get to a certain level where you were struggling, just like all those classmates you were sniggering at.

If you had talent for writing, you could write a school play. And a production would come up just like that. But in the real world, you would have to handle all the politics that came up.

If you were a teenager, being a fan of rock music would be the closest thing to heaven there was. I thought that love would last forever, but apparently it doesn't. It just feels watered down now, like it was something comforting, like the company of a good friend. I would say that my life was saved by music, you have to ask, why music? I guess that was the best way out of my depression.

I looked at a lot of the things that I had grown to be proud of over these years. Rock and roll. A faculty with mathematics. A faculty with music. Running a marathon.

That's really disturbing, because it tells me that the last time I pulled myself out of a hole, it was by excelling in things that young men typically excel in. That's not good. How am I going to grow old?

I earned a piece of mind in 2006, and so far that hasn't deserted me. My life between 2006 and 2018 has been pretty good. I can't complain. I can only wish that I used this time more productively, to earn a little bit more financial security for the future.

I think about how movies and music were a temporary distraction. And in some way, they were even more than that. I actually thought that they were some kind of higher plane of existence, that they would be a celebration of life. I saw myself as having a creative career. And in many ways, that would not be meaningless.

Was it too easy for me the last time around? Did I just do all the easy stuff? I guess I took the easy way out. Go to a good school, and then after that things will be easy for you for a few years. And then after that, what happens?

There were other times I dug myself out of a hole. That happened in 2006, and I did it by finding out how people at my office worked. By finding out what ticked people off. That was a way of getting yourself out in a positive way. Then there was this time when I needed to find a job and I ended up doing just that. Maybe that was positive, but I really didn't enjoy doing that, being responsible, having to make deadlines, having to be polite. And maybe that's why I bounced back, and shirked against more of the same.

When I was in secondary school, there was always this thing called “the mould”. It was a place that did try to make a man out of you, and at the same time, they tried to cast you into this character, where you'd be an efficient and impatient leader. A type A personality who would just do everything quickly and efficiently, and not think too hard about all the finer nuances. I didn't live up to that, and now that I think about it, maybe they were doing me a favour, and trying to beef me up or life in Singapore.

What happened instead was that I tried to be some kind of talented artist instead. And that was a left turn that suited me more, and yet at the same time, it could be debilitating and took me far away from adjusting more to the Singapore system.

In a way, Singapore is suited to be a 21^st century city, social media ready. But at the same time, it's not really that great. There is so much emphasis on putting everything on warp speed. There's so much competition. It's an emotionally blank place, and yet everything is on warp speed. There's so much stuff everywhere, and yet you might end up hating it. You're just rushed all the time. It's more more more. And you could be headed in the wrong direction, you might be headed for a terrible crash, and nobody really cares.

I have to strike this balance now, between being the comfortable existence of being laid back and artistic, and at the same time, moving fast enough to keep ahead. I've run out of low hanging fruit. I've run out of easy ways to have makeovers. I need to start making sacrifices, need to learn to do the hard things now.