Some thoughts before I turn 21 next month. I feel old. Yes, at 21 I feel that a lot of promise is gone. When you are just a 6yr old, your parents probably had their hopes pinned on ya, like getting into a good secondary school and JC, enter university, excel at sports, get a job, a wife and have kids and lead a happy family life. 'Oh my son could be a sports champion, oh he could be a professor'. Sometimes when I look at my dad, I probably see myself living his dreams. In primary school, life was such a fairy tale, everything went smooth sailing, you had good friends despite different religions or races. In secondary school, you start to vision your dreams, on what you wanna achieve. In junior college, you work hard to fufill your dreams. We even try our luck on sports to see if we are really talented. Never mind if you couldn't get a medal in C division, there is always time to train for B and A divisions.
But life starts to change in the army. You get exposed to a new culture. Unreasonable superiors who use you as a pawn to move up their own ladder. Then you get a place in university. Suddenly all those glory dayz seem behind me now. There is only one route now, getting a degree. Get a job, pay taxes, slave for the rest of your life. I am not trying to sound like a 'the glass is half empty' kind of person, but I think life is experienced the day you were born to the day before you enlisted for your country. When I see the next twenty years, I foresee a another new chapter in my life. Adult life sucks, you are expected to earn your living around you. Everyone around you is self-centered, selfish and has a dark side of them, very much unlike the characters you watched or read as a kid. I think I am suffering from quarter- life crisis.