Loss

Life is a caged bird. A rebellious, uncanny and inscrutable feathered friend. One day, it will just break out of its prison, a mere illusionary deterrent, and chase after the horizon, never pledging even a glance back to those it left behind. You will never be able to tell when the time has come for it to spread its wings. Sometimes, there are telltale signs. In the end though, you realise that predicting the next flight ranks as challenging a task as looking into the future.

Life is fleeting. Here today, gone tomorrow. And all without even a blink.

Lately, I have the miserable privilege of living the life from a drama script. In no more than a month, I would have attended the funeral of a fellow colleague and heard of the passing of a primary schoolmate.

And there I was thinking the biggest loss in the world was a few good senior colleagues of mine leaving for greener pastures. The difference of a farewell and a goodbye.

If I were a wrinkly old geezer, there would be little to fret. But there better be some reasonable karmic balancing act somewhere to have justified the taking of two young people, both with the world ahead of them. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Ambitions and dreams never to grow.

I was taken aback, and remain so now. Any notion that I had hit a comfort zone had vanished, vaporised by the harsh tune of reality. There is no such thing as a comfort zone. Things change. The world changes. The only thing certain is that there is nothing certain in this life that we lead.

It got me thinking about my priorities, my life thus far and my future. Living the life now never seemed more true. Every second gone is one that never comes back.

I'll not claim to be either of the two's best buddies, nor could I ever say that I made too much effort to invite them into my everyday life. Still, every grain of sand has a role and place in the great pyramids. So long as our paths had crossed before, I'll never feel any less to the time that was spent together.

When the tape stops, the only thing left to do is to rewind. Reruns do grow stale, and you keep thinking how it could have been better. I could have known them better too.

In the end, every loss in life has a meaning, an agenda attached. If a picture paints a thousand words, such news resonates a thousand souls. At the very least, I can count myself as one of the fortunate few, out of the billions in the planet, to have known them.

To IS and TSL, may you rest in peace. It has been a privilege and a pleasure, however short, to have met you.