1+1=1 ?

1+1=1 ?

It’s hard staying in solitude as twenty-first century adults. We are in the midst of romantically evolved society where coupledom is overly commercialised, where most mothers are brainwashed with the melodramatic soaps with endless twists and unpredictable turnouts, overlapping affairs and unbelievably hot casts. This booming romantical shift penetrates all ages and generations, even our primary youngsters are encouraged of early hitch to avoid future lonesome misery.

It is simply easier to stay with someone you “can live with” rather than really seeking someone that you want to be with. It is simply easier to get a paying day job, spend the weekend with a partner, own a flat-screen TV on an apartment with a twenty-year loan, and suddenly you’re a renewed and complete human. How true is the equation: “1+1 = 1”? Or, in a neo-Shakespearean cheesy terminology, “you complete me”?

People seem to grab whatever job that was served on their plate, without questioning and exploring their inner yearn of their callings in life. Then something that started as a hot fuelled engine slowly deteriorates and remains in a constant stationary point, realizing that they’re doing something rather pointless and emotionally stagnant. And then people starts to question life, and their purpose in life. But by then their age has got them down and they gave up on ever finding the answers altogether, and spend the rest of their non-working days playing golf instead.

It is comfortable, yes. It is also easy, yes. It is safe.

But does it worth your life?

In Anglo-Saxon and more westernized culture, we believe that humans are entitled to one mortal life and one life only. This means that if we screw up once, we screw up big time. It takes you to the small noisy tuckshop hall when you were in primary school, and on hand you have the dollar that your mother gave you that morning. You could only pick one candy, or a bar of caramel slice. You can’t decide which one is best, but if you pick the worse off, you have to settle with it for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, our lives are not century-long one dollars and we don’t get to wait until the next life-day to trade our life currencies.

So what do we do?

Some of us decided to rush with the first opportunity that came, and stuck with it for the next seventy-eighty years. Some hung around and see what ‘bus’ would come next. Some never even realized that they’ve missed all their chances and that they’re only sitting waiting for the whole thing to end.

Is it scary? Is it challenging? Is it fun?

One thing I know: it’s real.

I guess at the end of it, no one can really judge on how others spend their lives; professionally, spiritually, or romantically. We only know what we know, and we don’t know what we don’t know. At least we all give it a shot, and after we decide on what to get, we’ll cross our fingers and hope for the best that the tuckshop lady makes the best caramel slice that day.

JK