Saturday, May 09, 2009
Gotta Believe
This oldie from the late 90's just flew from this random iTunes radio station, and I found myself caught in a sudden, contemplative if not slightly melancholic mood.(and yes, it's more than just b/c I just came back from emptying a bottle of red with 2 friends who encouraged me to finish my last 10 meters of the 100-meter dash ... only God knows why I even got myself into the race in the first place)
That night at A's house. Was it the 2nd semester of junior year or our first semseter of senior year? Anyhow, it was one of those Friday nights when A's grandma cooked us, once again, another delicious meal (of course, including our best time favorite and one of her specialities - 紅燒黃魚) and the grandma herself had emptied 3 shots of 紹興 while going over glorious years of her youth back in ... was it China? or 浙江 more specifically?
Yes, it was after all such Friday night dinner routine at A's with her lovely grandma (and occasionally with her shy but L.H. Wang-like younger brother who was just a middle-schooler then but is about to get married in a few months ...) that the 4 of us - nicely showered and changed into our PJ's - start the late-night DVD watch (oh wait, maybe it was still back in the VHS era? how come I can't remember that particular fact anymore?).
And when our lovely, youthful dreams, hopes, and aspirations started to fill our heads with such colorful bubbles of snapshots of the future that we were SO confident that once this stage of life is over, there is BOUND to be a more glorious future ahead.
That somewhere down the road, one of us will be living in an exciting city like NYC.
Or that one of us will meet a G. Clooney-like "the one" and receives showers of blessings from the rest of the 3 at the age of 26 perhaps but certainly no later than 28.
Or that one of us will become that successful working women plus working mom plus working wife who accidentally has the gracefulness of M. Pfeiffer.
Or that just all of us will end up having all of the 3 things above.
Yeah, we were so happily and amazingly and enviously - from the current perspective - confident.
More than a decade later -
Yes, one of us is living in an exciting metropolis like NYC except that this metropolis is even greater and grander in both scale and glamour (and perhaps for its sheer busyness) that it sometimes does more work of drawning one than elevating one.
Yes, one of us has met a steady BF though not necessarily with the looks of G. Clooney nor does she know if he could yet be that Mr. One.
Yes, two of us has successfully received their doctoral/MBA degree respecitvely and started a career that will mostly likely take off nicely in the soon future. But no motherly/wifely status yet. Not even close.
And no, nobody has gotten "all of the above".
But I somehow hope (or wish?) that that happy confidence still remains in some of us, if not all.
That's one of the things that I've managed to cling tight to my heart tonight while emptying this bottle of red and going on to a second Gin Lime with my pals.
Sometimes - I've just gotta believe that something new - and hopefully great - WILL happen the next day. Not the day after, the next week, or the week after. But tomorrow. Tomorrow.
I've gotta believe.
Like the way I used to.
梅ちゃん at 10:46:00 PM
1 Comments
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at 5/31/09, 3:18 PM
said... It's a great piece of reminiscence and of reflection. No one can be sure what will happen tomorrow; or even if one is sure what will happen tomorrow, I can assure you that on one can be sure what will happen a year from now. That's the great mystery of life, right?