Tomorrow
It’s Sunday morning. I just woke up from a three-hour sleep. I started watching an animé series last night and finished around 6:30 a.m.—a total of 10 hours straight.
It has been a long time since I stayed up that long. If memory serves me right, the last was when I was still a junior high school student. My dorm mates and I tried to finish “Princess Hours” (a popular Korean drama series aired on ABS-CBN) in one day—walang liguan, walang kainan, tubig lang.
As I lie in my bed staring at the white ceiling, I feel an inexplicable twinge of sadness. I kind of miss those days.
Looking back, I realize how easy my life has been regardless of the academic pressure. At least I was able to do long hours of no sleeping, no eating, nonstop DVD marathons with my dorm mates/friends when I didn’t go home for the weekend. We would start on a Friday afternoon and finish the whole thing at Saturday noon. Then we would head out to the kubo beside a church, about a 20 minute-walk away from our dorm, so we could have a feast and fill our empty stomachs. On other occasions, if we had just received our monthly stipend, we would head for Vigan and do the eating and feasting there. Those days were one of the highlights of my high school life. Of course there was the prom, the countless role-playing, the seemingly endless dance practicum that I dreaded every year for P. E., the school fests, the verbal fights in the batch followed by reconciliations, the retreat and the graduation.
I miss high school very much. It has been more than three years since the “most memorable years” (at least that was what they were supposed to be) of my life ended. Most of my batchmates are graduating this school year and it makes me a little sad. And it is not that I don’t want them to graduate. The reasons are complicated.
Much as I hate to admit it, I am feeling a bit left out. I know I shouldn’t be feeling this way since it was I who chose to be where I am right now. I knew from the start that my course belongs to the “six years or MORE” category, and now I am hoping and praying that I will be able to finish it in six years without the “more” part. But I can’t drive away the thought that they will be able to start their lives earlier than I will start mine.
Now that I think of it, my teenage life will be over in a few months’ time and I am scared. I am afraid that what I am sketching for my future may not materialize after all. I am scared that I could have been wrong in taking the path that I willingly chose for myself. I am scared that my abilities will not be enough. I am scared that I will not grow up to become mature enough to face the world.
I still don’t know the purpose of my existence. I still don’t have a cause that drives my life. I still have not made any significant contribution to society, and I feel the need to hurry. Life is too short, what if I won’t be able to serve my purpose before my time is up?
And yet people say you have to take time slowly and enjoy every moment while it lasts. That is why I am confused, and that is driving me crazy. Now I understand why Peter Pan chose not to grow up.
I was supposed to have matured when I turned 18 (duh, I already have three wisdom teeth, not fully emerged though). At 19, I think I am still childish, still unreasonable, still confused, still throwing tantrums whenever things don’t go the way I want them to. This was not what I thought nineteen-year olds would be. At my age I am supposed to have an opinion about things happening in the world. But none of what I thought was true, and it scares the hell out of me. What if my life doesn’t turn out to be what I imagined?
That’s it: I am scared of my own future. I am too scared to risk anything. Too scared to even try, and if I do try, too scared about what the results will be.
I have this habit of reading the last 10 pages of a book before starting to read it (this doesn’t apply to textbook, magazines, or any reading material that is discontinuous, of course). I can’t explain why I do it since I read the book normally anyway after I read its ending. Maybe it is because I don’t like surprises. All the suspense and the anxiety make me feel uncomfortable. Still, I usually end up not understanding anything at all.
Perhaps even though I already know the book’s ending I still read and start at the beginning because I cannot understand how and why it ends that way. You cannot possibly understand a story from just knowing how it ends.
Someone told me that it is not the outcome of whatever you are trying to do that is important but what you have learned from the journey to get there. I think I know what she meant—at least as far as my spoil-the-ending habit of book reading is concerned. Applying it to my life is a lot harder, but I am working on it.
During my first semester in college, I had a classmate (I forgot the name but I remember the face) who was fond of quoting proverbs from the Bible. One of her favorites was this: “Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself.” She kept repeating it to anyone that came near her and since I am not exactly a very sociable person, I thought she had attention-seeking disorder or something of that sort. It is only now that I see the sense in what she was saying. Worrying about what is still to come is futile because nobody can ever tell what it is. If I let my worries about the future take over my life, I will end up achieving nothing.
To fear the future is to fear hope. To fear hope is to fear living. Despite all my worries and fears about what the future holds in store for me, I still look forward to it. Amid all the problems and chaos in our world, there are still a lot of things left to enjoy and savor.
I think I still have hope after all. Maybe I will take a step or two and try to worry less every day and let tomorrow worry about itself. The future is not mine to worry about. It is beyond my understanding and comprehension. Someone up there with a higher power is taking care of it. I just have to put my trust in Him as the ruler of my life. Maybe, just maybe, my life will end up better than what I imagined it to be.
Olivia D. Pungtilan, 19, is a 2nd year veterinary medicine student at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.
