life

Sometimes I look around me and I see the whole world moving, the earth constantly in motion, never pausing to take a breather, never stopping to stick around.

And I feel left behind. Abandoned by everything else that’s persistently on the move, I’m scrambling through this never-ending battle to keep moving forward. I look at the modern landscape of sunny Singapore, and I see millions of people climbing the ladders to the dreams of a certain Mr. Lee. A global nation, they said.

But the ones that I don’t see, the ones hidden under the cryptic layers of the society, are the suffering effects of this rapid movement on the community as it becomes ungracious and unkind. See in the shadows there, that old hunched-back lady shuffling along, bumbling after the pretty, self-obsessed society with her stack of empty cardboard boxes, her money making career on her swelling back.

And that young coke-head of a boy with those dark sunken eyes and face sallow without colour, his fingers quivering around his hundredth cigarette stick, a reward for the days of past, and a telling of the days to come. They say that cigarettes kill you. He can only hope.

I am looking still, but I can only see darkness. It’s the end of an era, and some of us are still stuck, struggling to catch up with the imminent future. Change is scary.