(I always feel, living mainly for food and physical comfort is like taking a bath in a warm swamp, hopeless and falling. Yet living while not giving in, we strugglers, has rendered the sky with a rainbow, a shiny blessing to all those are trying, here is my story and my blessing to you)
How draining,
I look at the posture of a colleague from my side of wall.
I look through the same piece of documents third time, among which, the content made me wonder, whether the reality of this moment is just a surviving game.
If living, if surviving means compromising to the choices you are available to.
‘What is your dream’ should never be asked in childhood,
Only making ways for your later reconciliation.
It has always been a game of persistence.
Giving myself, immersing myself, relinquishing the detest I have.
I am the one who keeps pushing my head into the pool of water,
One splash and I am in, the bubbles of disturbance slowly rise up,
With the rush push, with that little threat, it’s what makes me jump in every morning.
Every night, when I leave the pool, the unsure footsteps left behind has that question mark,
Have I numbed my senses, have I washed away the colour of my soul?
Reconciliation with reality,
How long will it take?
One second if I admit I belong.
Then after one hopeless minute, I know I can’t.
I swing around sitting in the chair,
“There seems no hope afront”
A stunned face look up to me,
And I immediately pretend it was just a humming wining.
Strange thing is that, I don’t feel any more boosted when fellows are on the same path with me,
And I don’t feel much despair when I am standing or struggling all in one.
Most of the times, colleagues are just the slight decoration to warm up the surrounding temperature, so it’s bearable.
There still has a massive map in front of me that I cannot tear up for now and I don’t know how to re-draw by myself.
Stability, statue, professionalism,
Words are universally used as compliments.
Picturing you would never fall, heavy as your footsteps, and you are raised in reputation.
I am encouraged to take the reconciliation, to secure my being.
But being,
Ironically, feels so not alive when all I could think is to pack up and run away.
Are there roles for those who don’t want to play the role?
Can we be, and proudly be,
The narrator, the set painter, the performer.
When the reality keeps choking me,
When the walls around coming towards me,
Reconciliation only means to adapt into the being that shall survive in the confined space.
In the end, the compromise is the means to giving up.
So I have to wait,
To wait when freedom has finally creeped onto my doorstep.
So I have to listen closely,
To hear when the drumming revolution has finally arrived at my stop.
To resume on this road,
We are not to compromise.
We hold the grudge and burn them to be the beacon of our mission.
Though sometimes it keeps us awake in the midnight,
Which only means that we are still on the track.
I hope that
When I bump into anyone of you,
We could have a toast and saying
“As much as we are brave to be!”
~Carol Shi