Tuesday, April 09, 2013

why worry?

A week or so ago, there was the inevitable coming of that moment of evaluation. It was the day when you shifted from an untroubled, spendthrift adolescent to a man questioning “Where now and what’s next and how but why?” Others call it the early pangs of perpetual quarter-life crisis. I call it a slap on the face.

Actually, I don’t want to call it anything yet. It is too early to tell. What I know is that it is something that gives the chills like a raincloud hovering on the skyline with me having no umbrella. I’d be drenched, I’d be cold. Whether I like it or not.

One might say it’s too much of a forward thinking, to plot the days ahead at such a certain “young” age, when my generation says I should work hard and party harder, when people sing hosannas that the sky is always the limit. But what if that sky is the same, murky sky mentioned earlier, sinister over the horizon? So much for optimism, eh?

And this is the part that is worrisome, the part where the vicious combo of uncertainty, cynicism, and missed opportunities becomes the benchmark of possible success. I should have done this, I shouldn’t have done that. It is not much on what you can do but on why you do what you have been doing.

The intensity of ambition and passion may still be there—in the form of writing, nursing, engineering, teaching, scrapbooking, or bungee jumping—but what prompts the hesitancy is the thought of setting the limit and the questioning of one’s purpose.

Because in the first place, should there be a limit? Does one need a purpose? What for?

I think for people my age the mid-30’s is the window where one sees nothing is really enough. Pessimism gnaws from the inside and out comes doubt, fear, regret, or other kinds of destabilizing emotion. Or maybe a new breed of malaise. Or maybe just plain, old exhaustion.

As experienced by those ahead of me, it is the period of weighing the priorities. In my case, with the flux of circumstances coming each day—i.e., fluctuating relationships, sprain in both of my ankles in less than four months, unbending intolerance from family members, increasing fear for my depleting savings account, and many more—this task becomes all the more insufferable, all the more urgent. Like classic movie villains, there are those that derail you from your goal.

Hence, my reason to be restless, irate, worried. It’s as if in every corner there’s a thief that would rob you of the greatness that may happen to your life soon.

But if Job triumphed over the multitude of sickness thrown at him by his savior, if Frodo managed to let go of the ring at the mouth of Mount Doom, and if Tony Soprano survived the cycle of patterns that he faced each day, then I guess I could endure the living nightmare that is my worries. The great icons are enough reminders.

You see, it’s everyone’s right to be anxious, and nobody must judge the degree of severity of one’s apprehensions, because if you think about it, comparing your worries to someone else’s is like two boys comparing how far each other’s piss could go. It is pointless.

So let me worry right now. I will be open to consolations and words of encouragement, of course, but these are by no means instant answers to the riddles in my head. I will solve them, maybe not now, not tomorrow, but I am certain that day will come.

It’s all part of being 25.