Dear future,
How have you been? No, I don’t believe we have met, but I know you’re getting this sense of deja-vu, as if you have known me in another life.
Truth is, you do.
Remember the time when you went home from work one day, thinking that you have made a mistake of actually choosing this? I know you do remember, it’s one of those days you won’t really forget.
Just in case your memory fails you, let me refresh the story a little bit.
You have graduated from your very first Bachelor’s degree (you do have a Master’s degree in hand too, yes?), and during the last minute you chose to go back for good to Jakarta, well, at least for a year or so. You gambled on the pros and cons, and you decided that you still wanted to gain enormous experiences on stuffs before committing your soul into Master’s.
It took you a lot of courage and effort to actually decide to go back home. You have declined two wonderful offers: doing Honours in Psychology and Masters in Journalism.
When you arrived in Jakarta and started your internship, you realised you kinda hated it. You would reconsider the whole gig on working in magazines, ‘cos truth it, you really hated it – on doing celebrity buzz and beauty products and stuff. You sent your letter of resignation. You got scolded and yelled at (note to self: never hand in a letter of resignation when your boss is in a very bad mood). You cried almost the whole day but determined to face the problem. You went back to the office the next day and did resolve the problem. You were proud of yourself.
Then, you got a job.
Remember? This was the story of that job.
You were happy during the first week, thinking that you have made the right decision after all, as the colleagues were great and the job was intriguing. But after a series of day-to-day events of meeting one particularly very-hard-to-handle person, you got to ask yourself again if you have made the right decision.
Maybe, just maybe, you were wrong to choose experience over education.
Dear future, I wonder if you’re doing alright.
I wonder when you look back to this particular moment in time, will you think of a period when you have made mistakes and wasted your time, or will you think this as the right passage of growing up?
I wonder if you have indeed published your books, like you have always dreamed of, and whether you have learned the tricks to handle people well.
I wonder if you are already the boss of your own self.
Because right here and right now, you were really not coping.
It’s up to the point where you dreaded the next phone call, just because you knew it’d be another blow to your soul.
But you’ll get through this, right? I know you did. I’m just hoping you can actually tell me how. I’m hoping you can convince me that this is not a waste of time, that despite all these, I’m still learning.
Oh, Future, you know what?
I really wish we can sit down, drink coffee, and have a chat. I would love to learn so much from you, but we can never exist in one same passage of time.
Maybe one day when I look in the mirror and see you, we can exchange one silent encounter. And when our eyes do meet, maybe then we could understand each other perfectly, and realise why things happen the way they are.
Love,
Present
