The Impermanence of It All

So it's quarter past six in the am and I shouldn't be awake yet. Anyway, woke up to my phone flashing with a message.

It turns out that a friend of mine from College is leaving for Australia this very morning. The last time I got to see him was indeed the last time.

As always, saying goodbye is difficult. This got me thinking about some of the people I had to part with over the years. It just isn’t fair that after getting to know someone and perhaps even liking that person you’d have to part ways. The thing I like about globalization is also the very thing I loath about it. What happened to a society where you lived and died with the same people?

As a foreign student studying abroad, people do not seem to understand when I say that life can be very lonely there. Find myself constantly complaining that I do not have any friends. This is, of course, not true. The thing though is that people move around so quickly that it’s difficult to hang on to a friendship…or a romantic relationship for that matter. After months or years, you can be sure that either you or your new found friend will be moving someplace else. So this entire cycle of making new friends and having to say goodbye (geographically) is getting a bit old. By friends I’m not talking about acquaintances. Also something new I’ve learned not too long ago.

All this contemplating of life this early morn has inevitably lead my thoughts to the dumper. The last time I really saw him, as the person I knew, was indeed the last time. The scene that keeps playing in my head is that of the bus stop. I was off to a Halloween party and he was getting ready for his flight. I did not know then that it was the final goodbye. Even now someplace at the back of my head, I’m expecting a long serious heart-to-heart conversation with him when I finally get back to snoozeville. After all he owes me that at least, right? An explanation? Hmm…now even that seems like a faraway possibility. It’s NOT gonna happen. The sooner I get used to that idea, the better.

So, what next? Everything is so messed up. If nothing is permanent, why do we act like it is? If we have really embraced the idea that the world is impermanent, why do we go ahead with our daily lives accumulating wealth as if that’s what we should be doing? Should we not be enjoying ourselves spending time with loved ones? Coz seriously, today could be the last time for so many things.

Remember a time when I was really passionate about denouncing religion. After all wasn’t it Marx or Weber who said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” It is true if you think about it…but we will not get into that now. So at one point, if you wanted to do religion bashing…any religion…I was all for it. Now I have resigned to the thought that it really doesn’t matter if god existed. It truly doesn’t. All that matters is the sense of security one gets from thinking that god exists.

A childhood friend of mine had suddenly gotten REALLY religious after she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her. This reminds me of a sociology prof that was a source of inspiration a few years back. You could not possible come out of his class not questioning everything. Instead of doing the stupid moral classes which are mandatory here in Malaysia, they should encourage critical thinking through sociology or philosophy. Why is none of that incorporated into the education system here BY THE WAY. We are not as free a nation as we would like to think. So anyways, the prof said that many people who consciously choose to ‘take up’ a religion are often those who have been through a trauma of some sort. This is absolutely relevant in the case of my friend. Now…perhaps it will be relevant to me.

So…my point to the last paragraph is this. As individualistic as society has become, we still need some form of guidance. This is especially so in our generation where we are neither following the old rules nor are there new ones for us to go by. As it appears, religion seems to be the only solid explanation to life. Ironically even within the large scope of religion, there are so many opposing views.