Time
Mother’s death anniversary is today. Cancer in the early thirties, and passed in the late thirties. I am 28 this year. Once shared in Yale-NUS Christian Fellowship how my relationship with time, ever since my early-20s — how I spent my time, understood time, danced with time, was defined by experiences like this. Not as though I amassed wisdom and direction overnight. Wise counsel, spiritual and professional, helped shape and refine me away from unhealthy perceptions. An immersion into the most multitudinous of narratives and outlooks I had ever experienced, especially during my time at Yale-NUS, played a role in putting my life into perspective. No long post here, not yet, especially when I’ve been a lot more discreet over the past 1.5 years about the timestamps of my social media updates for personal (and meditative) reasons. Some friends have started to notice and even quip about it. I can only chuckle.
I brought up the age factor above because, in some way, the empathy grows more palpable as my age creeps closer to that third decade of life. ‘Palpable’ is an apt adjective here. The desires and cares of this world shroud me and the lives of my friends. Lifestyle inflation, pragmatism, comparison, hustle-culture, burnout, mental strife — the list is endless for the woes of a freshly minted but quickly embittered adult. Yet, who is to blame them for all that has besieged them in a society like this? A wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. Time after time, as my age crept forward and the world loomed over, I took a step back and asked to see. And by seeing, no wonder I’m where I’m at right now, ‘opportunity costs’ aplenty: that coveted career, a palatable salary, sinecure and security… all such things at one time easily before me, nowadays a spectre sometimes out to haunt me.
No wonder I’m where I’m at right now, simply but deeply invested in what brings meaning to me.
Therefore, touchwood, even if soon I find myself in the shoes of my mother before me, more likely I’d look back to know that: with what time I had, in the lifespan I never knew I only had for a while, I had spent it wisely and could go peacefully. I believe my mother did, by God’s grace. But as a witness to her life and all the tension she had to balance until it was no longer the case, I cannot callously entitle myself to such grace by living life as a twenty-something-year-old making decisions that presume no such shockers might come in my thirties. That would be unbecoming of my faith. Of course, I’ve had to learn to do that healthily. As I grew to behold a retrospection of the fragility of life, the pertinence of time, and more importantly, the faith I profess (something she wouldn’t have until her calamity led her to consider Christ), I look to my thirties and ask my present-day self, “are you at peace to go, if it’s suddenly time to go?”. May these responses inform my coming and going.
Also: to be wise is not to beproductive. Do not conflate. And what about ‘productive wisdom’? No - you’re still delusionally on the productivity bandwagon.
I therefore close this midnight note with a story I’d like to share with anyone who bothered reading this far. I do so in the hope that you, too, have time and space to contemplate your life and all its decisions as your years roll by; its principles, core motivators, and what have you. Although this story finds its roots in two of the synoptic gospel accounts (plainly, the Bible), I hope you do not stop here if you are a non-Christian. I sure hope you do not stop here too if you are an ‘I’ve-read-this-already-and-know-this’ Christian. If you’re not a Christian, go ahead and read this parable as a piece of literature, and close read it for yourself. It’s just that, for me, as a Christian, I am reading this with a Christian lens, and I believe its full effect is derived only through the Christian lens. But that’s me. Read this — the parable of the wise and foolish builder, as you will. Define your parabolic ‘rock’, as you will, and keep doing so from time to time*.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine (Jesus) and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
In conclusion, knowing my rock, and then building my house on the parabolic rock, brings me deeper into my twenties… and ready, if must be, to leave this earth, even in my thirties. I hope you all find your parabolic rocks on which to build your houses. Thanks for reading.
2 Aug 2022.
*p.s. At this time of my life and for a while now, I subscribe to shades of what is more comomnly understood as Gamaliel’s Principle. In short, as a Christian, I genuinely believe in the infallibility of Christianity and its attendant characteristics, e.g. Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Nothing will kill it for what it is. But it does not compel me to dispel or disrupt those who do not subscribe to my faith. Instead, I genuinely journey with my friends as they chisel out their versions of truth. All the while believing in my truth ultimately prevailing, whilst not coming at them with my truth in a manner as though I am the unequivocal reason or factor that they find their truth as mine in Jesus. Much less with condescension. That is the basis of my encouragement for friends to read the parable as is, if that feels better for them.
