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| the unfiltered view of sunset from my hostel |
“Disenchantment”
is such a lovely, bittersweet word.
This I wrote onto a Post-It on my desktop, having discovered the word in
one of my readings- ironically, during the lead-up to the main test I had this
grade-free first semester in NUS, when surely all freshmen must in some way or
another be becoming disillusioned with the heady ideals with which they chose
their majors.
For “disillusioned” is all “disenchanted” really means, but somehow the
latter sounds a lot more magical and mysterious than the former. Rather than
something tricksy and indeed, a little nasty, an enchantment sounds so much
more romantic (didn’t Audrey Hepburn say you had to be a little in love with
every one of your leading men to play a role well?). I always liked the idea of
that- and the corresponding attitude to life it demanded, that we be a little
in love (if not more) with every pursuit we take up, whether for the better or
worse.
What this inevitably means is that every journey you embark on must
shrug on the proverbial arc of a love story. You fall in love. Behind your new
rose-tinted glasses everything is shrouded in the mist of fairy-tale. You love
everything about your new pursuit- the ethics, the arguments, the dilemmas, the
stories… You wonder where the plaintiffs and defendants ended up after their
cases ended. You wonder how anyone could have mustered the will to defend
someone against whom public opinion raged- you wonder at their dedication to
the belief that one is innocent until proven guilty- you wonder how it is that
you enter the case believing instantly in the guilt of someone you have never
met.
But then the little intricacies of daily life and the daily grind start
to set in. The way your lover never closes the cap on the toothpaste, or leaves
expired loaves of bread in the kitchen. The way the cases just kept on coming
and you couldn’t see the overarching theories and movements for the details. The
way you can’t muster up any sort of passion whatsoever to argue about certainty
in contracts. The way a three-hour seminar is the antithesis to your idea of a
perfect Friday morning in bed.
You start to remember the life you led before. Or, if you prefer, the lives you led before- for how many have you led exactly?
I had a
nightmare the other night- that I had to live my thirteenth and fourteenth
years again, except with my current mind trapped in an old body- that initial
heady optimism, that life is going to change for the better and this new
exciting journey would be the best yet- before being encumbered by the realizations
of “different”, of “popular”…
Social media doesn’t exactly help. If law is my new lover I see others
who have chosen differently- who have been with the one I had before, who have
stayed. Would I have been happier there? As I recently wrote to a friend in an
e-mail, surely it is a testament to resilience and adaptability that we must
always wonder if we would be happier somewhere else. But equally essential to
the strength of our character must be the ability to be happiest where we are.
For just as we become disenchanted with where we are, we must be aware
of how we tend to slip off our rose-tinted glasses, only to put them on in the
perspective of the past- to romanticize and over-glamourize our memories of
where we were before. “Wasn’t I so happy then?” you wonder, forgetting
instantly the gritty details that made you leave.
It is a painful, sobering feeling to be disenchanted with your journeys
on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. But at the same time, it is an oddly comforting
one- like the swallow of bittersweet coffee- knowing that as long as you can
always find something to fall in love with, you can never leave. And the
knowledge that what keeps you staying does not need to be what attracted you in
the first place is the balm that soothes your soul during the storm.
There may have been equally happy (or dare I say, happier) paths
elsewhere; but oh, what a joy to be on the one I am.
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