Inju
I watched Dhurandar: The Revenge yesterday.
And the thing that stayed with me is this:
For someone to achieve something in life, it takes an intense amount of sacrifice. You have to go on ways and paths that you never imagined you would walk. All for that one singular overwhelming goal that you have in life.
And what struck me even more was what happens after that.
When you finally arrive, you would have crossed so many roads and walked so many unfamiliar paths that nothing feels familiar anymore. Everything that once felt like you… is behind you.
And when you ultimately arrive, there is this strange feeling that you have nowhere to go.
That stayed with me.
Because in some way, it felt personal.
—
My 20s were not spent working on my interests as much as I thought they would be.
They were not spent travelling as much as I imagined.
They were not spent exploring the things I liked just because I liked them.
Instead, I spent them chasing debt repayments. Trying to get my family into a stable position. Making sure things were okay at home.
And somewhere along the way, I sacrificed a lot of my own ambitions.
Not dramatically. Not suddenly.
Just slowly.
Quietly.
One decision at a time
But lately I’ve been thinking about something else.
Maybe I walked down that path for too long.
Maybe I endured that sacrifice longer than I was supposed to.
And now I sometimes feel like I don’t have a way back to that earlier version of myself.
The version that was excited about travel.
The version that could get excited about small possibilities.
The version that didn’t measure everything against responsibility.
What makes this feeling strange is that in Dhurandar, at least he reaches his goal.
After everything he sacrifices, after everything he walks through, he gets there.
And then his dilemma begins.
But I’m still in the middle of the sacrifice.
Still walking.
Still enduring.
And I don’t know for how long.
I’m not even sure if I’ll reach the goal or not.
And maybe that’s the part I’ve been reflecting on the most.
Because if I’m honest with myself, the only goal that ever mattered to me wasn’t success in the usual sense.
It was freedom of time.
The ability to decide what my days look like.
To travel without asking permission.
To work on things because they matter to me.
To choose what I build, and who I build it with.
To feel like my life belongs to me.
And, Sometimes I wonder if I traded too many years to get there.
And if I stayed on the hard road longer than necessary and wonder whether I will reach that place at all.
But maybe this is what the middle of the journey feels like.
Not failure.
Not arrival.
Just walking.
Still walking.