your routine - servant or master?

Often you will have this funny yet selfish thought that whenever something of significance happened to you, you sort of expect the whole world to stop and take notice; you expect that people will stop going about their daily routine for a minute and recognize the fact that something out of the ordinary - to say the least - just happened to you.

Their willingness to spare a few minutes of their daily lives or to halt whatever it is they are doing at the moment qualififes to you as a polite acknowledgement of their awareness that your life is undergoing some kind of change.

At times, we may even go so far so as to expect that when they resume their normal activities, they will do so with a silent reminder tucked away at their back of their minds that you are about the embark on some life-changing experience.

I have come across a few writings in which people do expect such things to occur - for the whole world to stop spinning, for everyone to take heed and give their utmost attention to what is happening to you; people expect that to happen when someone close dies or goes away, when they are diagnosed with a terminal disease, when they failed to achieve something, when they loose something dear to them or when they received some earth-shattering revelation.

In each of these circumstances, all of them thought that what is happening to them is so mind-boggling, huge and important that time itself should have stopped so that they will be able to absorb or digest the news.

But alas that is not to be - time flows relentlessly, people go about busily with their daily routine, the city does not halt to a standstill, the trains pulls in and out of the station, flights depart and arrive on time, no public holidays are declared, no nation-wide announcements, no mention in the media.

The minutes ticked away like it usually does and in the cosmic scale of things, that particular moment to which you attach such great significance does not seemed any different from the minute before or after.

As my day of departure back to London draws nearer, that funny and selfish thought ocassionally comes to my mind.

I guess I am just struck by the uniformity and normality to which some of my friends go about their daily lives - commuting to college or work, having meetings and discussions, conducting classes and tuitions etc.

It made me feel a little offended with their today-is-just-like-any-other-day attitude which makes one wonder whether they are able to make any time at all in their daily schedule to spend some extra time with me, before each of us go our separate ways again.

But then again, maybe by allowing their daily routine to dictate their lives, by letting themselves to be so entrenched and caught up with their work or studies, they won't have the time to feel sad or lonely once I'm not here - not that I fancy myself as someone missable that is, quite the contrary I think.

Perhaps it is just their way of coping with my absence - to allow themselves to be swept away with waves and waves of work without any time to dwell in such thoughts.

Therefore, it is cruel and unfair to suggest that they don't care at all; they have their own lives to take care of, their own matters to settle. Besides, I am not their center of the world - their lives doesn't constantly revolve around me.

And I trully abhors the fact that I am able to dream up such selfish notions in the first place - it was really uncalled for.

I guess to a certain extent, their coolness in dealing with my upcoming departure caused me a certain amount of unease as well; their ability to go through their daily lives without exhibiting any excessive concern or despair have somewhat made me feel as if I'm doing nothing more than just moving over to the house next door - their calmness gives little weight or emotional resonance to my departure.

I fear that the lack of obvious acknowledgment may lull me into a false sense of security and complacency - that my 2nd year in London will just exactly similar to my 1st year, not that there is nothing wrong with my 1st year.

But the sense of complacency made me felt as if my 2nd year will be devoid of any new excitements and challenges; it doesn't have that enigmatic quality about it; that made me feel both apprehensive and a little too comfortable with my departure to London.

I want to be on my toes when I arrive there to begin my 2nd year; I want to look forward to new things to discover, meet new people and visit new places. However, the combined sense of calmness and coolness exhibited by my friends have made me feel as if my 2nd year in London is just like any other year in my life.

But then again, I must admit that the sense of security I feel now about leaving for London is also quite comforting sometimes - the kind of feeling you get when you slip into a pair of your most comfortable shoes, or fitting into your favourite pair of clothes, or of tasting your most likeable dish.

I mean, I too look forward to my routine back in London to allow me to settle in and get back to work; I hold on to it to prevent myself from slacking and wasting unnecessary amounts of time. By clinging to my routine, hopefully I am able to focus myself.

In short, I suppose the sense of complacency and security one feels can be both comforting and troubling.

Indeed, for some their routine anchors them to reality, detaching them from the mundane and trivial affairs of the heart and allowing to sail through their lives without much hassle - it comforts them and it accords them a sense of certainty and stable complacency in their lives.

For others, their routine shackles them to dull monotonous existence, preventing them for branching out and making new experiences and stiffles their joie de vie - it condemns them to a sterile and rigid life.

In the end, it's all about feeling your very best, being most comfortable and at ease with yourself under a given situation - routine or not.

After all from a cosmic perspective, it is us who impose rules and gives meaning to a particular moment in the grand passage of time.

And as much as we like to think that time somehow control our lives, the truth is that it has been the other way around all along.