ONE
I think people find reasons always to not succeed.
In the middle of laps
Swim-Training Mate: "Oh ... I'm very slow today. You go ahead first. I haven't swam in 6 weeks." [In typical Singaporean accent]
Me: "Ok ..."
Swim-Training Mate: "Wah ... why you so fast? Your 50m sprint just now is 40 secs. Not bad huh. I haven't swam for so long already, that's why so slow ..." [muffled sounds as I submerge and swim away]"
Swim-Training Mate: "Eh ... don't so fast leh. Wait lah."
Me: "Just shut up and swim ..."
I think sometimes people find reasons for their inadequacies and inabilities - and they displace them onto others. Freud calls this displacement...
TWO
I've never quite recounted about the significance of the somewhat insignificant accident en-route up my now adopted and familiar mountain - Gunung Stong - in Kelantan. But thinking back, by process of association (Freud again), that incident spoke so much about where I am and how far I've come.
I've come to know most of the danger zones both up and down that mountain and can anticipate , almost as well as the guides, where accidents might happen - and so I'm always there to bridge the difficulties for the students. But alas, accidents often occur when least expected both in time and (literally) space. That's why they're called accidents. And for all my hikes up, nothing of this 'magnitude' has occurred.
A student slips and falls after she crossing a danger zone, just at a point when attention has been shifted away from her. She falls face first and breaks her incisor. It breaks into two with the lower half embedded in the upper gums. The profuse bleeding sends her into shock. I approach her to examine the severity of the wound and apply whatever necessary first aid that can be applied. And for all my pessimistic nature, I instinctively calmed her down, stopped her from crying (and she was undoubtedly one brave girl), and took charge of the situation - with a decisive instruction to evacuate her (a million scenarios ran through my head in projection of how each course of action would yield a particular consequence - and this included stopping the bleeding and asking her to continue). It was a significantly insignificant accident, something that laid on the median in a gradient of life-threatening situations. Everyone acted without hesitance.
The event is to be yet another story told by hikers - one of those these 'happy campers' (albeit used incorrectly here) would relate to other would-be 'happy campers'. But it was to me a sign of how I've 'changed' (?) grown (?) developed (?) I would not have imagined myself doing this 10 years ago and certainly not imagine myself hiking up a mountain. I would not have imagined myself developing the instincts to manage a crisis as this. I would not have imagined assuming the magna-responsibility of having others' lives placed on me (in this fashion of course).
But it happened. And that spells something for me - something fondly strange, something familiar yet alienating - as I ask myself if that was really me up there.
THREE
Everyone of us who's loved someone enough - regardless of friend, family, a significant other, or whatever other - would know that they hold the potential to disappoint you the most. And they eventually would - through no conscious fault of their own. It's one of those inalienable truths, one that I'm still trying to comprehend. The paradox of it all is that if there is no potential for disappointment, there was no affection to begin with. So how do we decipher such a simple complexity?
Can we love without condition?
FOUR
The deed is done; the message delivered. It is now time to pack the rucksack and store most precious memories.
To you who visit this site, and are still that which I call student and friend, I'm sorry for not seeing you through. And that is my deepest regret - it is my only regret...
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