I have been told far too often that I think very far ahead in terms of time, but this is done with good reason. How I think, how I conduct myself, how I make my choices, all these boil down to very simple yet poignant sentiments that I maintain as convictions.

The image that burns most deeply in my inner imaginations is the image of my gravestone. I always wonder what people will say in memorandum, or what will be written on the grave as a flourishing touch upon my life? Will I want them to talk about me as an upholder of justice, being a good father, a good son, a freedom fighter, a hero, a devil? The gravestone is the ultimate tabula rasa of the teenager; at an age where one thinks that he knows almost all there is to know, the only thing he cannot know regards the life he is now living: is this the life he wants to have lived? The inner conflict within is one that all teenagers face eventually when we come across choices, especially those choices that make a key impact, when all life has thus far remained a sheltered oasis for nurturing inner development.

Faced with a bewildering array of choices, it is with trepidation that we carefully select amongst the limited range which we see relevant for ourselves. For example, Junior college versus Polytechnic, which university courses to pick, which university to attend, local or overseas, these are some of the major decisions that Singaporeans at our age face. Our choices eventually are limited by several factors: circumstances (in this case, financial resources, results and records), convictions, and contemporary trends. Can anyone say for sure if the path picked will turn out more successful than the rest? For instance, will an MIT undergraduate claim with near certainty that he will succeed compared to someone who “merely” entered NUS? To answer this, we must look into individual definitions of success, as well as what society deems as success, since what society thinks usually affects our individual convictions far more than we will like to admit.

Success is a strange concept. It is too vague to define, yet it is concrete enough to visualise, so it is easy to set off after the spectre of success and find mirages at your destination. However, I do think that success depends very much on the imaginations of the individual. The aspirations, the dreams, the hopes and the drives; these are indicators as to what the individual conceives as success, and today, society agrees. Through the mass media, society has welcomed dreams with open arms, revealing the ecstasy and joy that one might indulge in with the luck and corresponding hard work, but way too often, the media also inspires these high hopes and smash them to pieces without so much of an afterthought. Such is society, within which the individual is little more than a cog in the machinery, or more accurately perhaps, a water molecule in a raging river. One may drown or one may break out into the bright sunlight, depending on the whims of the mighty river.

The vagueness of success and the flood of choices turn people off. They don’t know what they want, so they turn to external assistance to assist in re-defining their own definitions of success, and to give them purpose in life. These “externalities” are the major religions of the world. But this, in any case, is my own theory on why teenagers are so prone to religious conversions.

However, success depends less on individual aspirations of the current moment than it does on individual aspirations of an entire lifetime. A martyr gives away his life willingly, but certainly not ignorantly, because he knows what he wants to achieve with his life, which may only be attained through his own death. This is the very pinnacle of sublime self-sacrifice, the very epitome of heroism. For this reason, we cannot dismiss the rage of the Jihadists in Iraq offhand, as this very same act scrubs Joan of Arc out of the annals of history, Jesus from the churches, Gandhi and his civilly disobedient followers, the countless soldiers of modern war who died for comradeship, or past revolutionaries who march into acute danger, guided only by lofty and abstract principles. There are things worth dying for, as much as there are things not worth dying for. The difference between suicide and martyrdom is simply that one escapes from having to choose, while the other chooses and dies for his choice. The former is indelibly a failure; the latter is irrevocably sublime, the convergence of a lifetime worth of aspirations into the heroic victory of the moment, at the price of the worldly self.

Fortunately, there are very much less people looking at martyrdom than people looking at a peaceful death. The definitions of success changes very little both ways; it is still dependant on the aspiration of the lifetime, and I see the gravestone as the starting point for determining exactly how I define success. Hence do I look at death’s door, in order to set my foot upon the threshold of life; what I want is seen through the lens of who I want to be at my death. The image is so searing that it fuses itself into my mind’s eye and my subsequent choices revolves around this image as my final destination. It remains somewhat vague; there are a few images that I want, and greedily, I’m setting out to grab them all, or at least, until a few becomes less feasible than before.

The grave’s image reflects clearly what I believe in, and what my priorities are. There is nothing about family, nothing about wealth, nothing about worldly success. The most romantic image I have is of a wanderer who never settled (heh), but the more poignant one is about being an idealist, and never backing down from these ideals. Perhaps this image will evolve as new elements enter my life.

Having thought as far as my grave, thinking five to ten years into my future is not so difficult, given the availability of information to determine the likely route I will be taking. With the increase of time considered, many more choices come into play, some trivial, some life-changing. Thinking hard and thoroughly about the potential choices years and years in advance will certainly rescue anyone from a sticky situation of having to make a hasty decision, especially if it happens to be a major decision. I have had to plan the next several years of my life several times as things don’t happen as I expected, but this is part of the fun, together with a measure of security as you try to put things into perspective, to see if the plans still fit what you really want. While there is a danger of “over-planning”, with so many smaller decisions that has to be made daily, life remains as unpredictable as ever, and I doubt that there is such a thing as being overly cautious when planning out the next decade, with an eye fixed on death’s door.

I sometimes lament that very few are curious about figuring out what they want years in the future. For many people, the considerations and trivialities of the present are sufficient to hold their attention, while the goal of understanding themselves better takes the backburner. Such people are driven far more easily by society and its undercurrents and overlying trends. Just see how popular Business School is; ask potential Business School undergraduates about why they chose what they chose, and the likely answer is that they want flexibility, and they want to be pragmatic. If you were pragmatic, you will pick Science or Engineering or Computing for its technical skills, so that at the worst case scenario, there are always technical jobs to fall back on; as for flexibility, business degrees are too general, for instance, I can always get into business by studying Physics, on top of physics related jobs, but not the other way round. My opinion is some people use “flexibility” as an excuse to say that they really don’t know what they want, so they want to keep their options open until circumstances present them something they think they want. I’ve indeed met some that probably fit the above.

The image of the funeral is very moving. The image of a funeral of someone whom you can associate with is deeply disturbing. The image of a funeral of someone whom you love is painful. In all three cases, we see the ending of a life, the final strokes of the fading will of a man who once walked the earth. He shall walk the earth no more. With it goes the memories, the ideals, the triumphs and defeats, the life lived and the life not yet lived. It rocks the quiet inner world when we see in the gravestone a reflection of what our own lives may yet be, and as we reflect on the brevity of humankind, we wonder: is what is written on the grave really what the occupant wanted for himself? Perhaps, perhaps not.
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