Monday, March 22, 2004
the coupland effect
WE RARELY PAY ATTENTION to it, but each day is an anniversary for an event in each of our lives.
Which now leads me to wonder what it would be like to travel back in time and look at myself, as I used to be, at one particular point in time. Just be an invisible observer, and just watch the younger version of myself. Watch myself and try to capture a complete snapshot of you at that one insignificant moment in your past: what my dreams were, what used to make me smile, drive me nuts, or make my hands clammy.
If i were transported fourteen years back in time, I'd be watching a more fiery version of me. Short tempered, arrogant yet bit scared deep inside. I'd be looking at a twelve year-old boy, head resting on his right arm as he sits on sprawled on a table, his typewritten speech on his left hand, trying to memorize his valedictory address. Cramming, as he will always be for the rest of his young life. Now this boy, he's on top of the world. And he has more dreams that anyone lifetime could ever achieve. He wants to be a rock star. He wants to be a nuclear scientist. He wants a big house, a fancy car, a lovely wife and beautiful kids when he grows old enough. He believes he has what it takes. He believes he has the talent, the brains, the gift. He believes that someday, he'll end up marrying his school bus seatmate (whom he never had the guts to talk to, by the way, because he just isn't good looking enough. Yet.) and even if it doesn't happen, he believes that there's someone else who's being prepared for her. He believes this girl will look like Phoebe Cates.
He believes.
Three months later, this boy will move to the big city, to a new school, where life will start to unravel before him, and where reality will slowly take the place of what used to be a cup overflowing with dreams.
Four months later, this boy will be sitting in the pavement, looking above the moonlit sky, wearing his first long-sleeved shirt and clip-on tie, holding a slightly neglected long-stemmed rose, ignoring the soft music playing inside the school cafeteria. On a night where everything was supposed to be perfect, the boy will meet his first frustration, being too short to be paired to any of the girls, and he will lose his first battle with reality.
I will never remember exactly where or when, but after summer, when the rains start to fall, I will wake up to the anniversary of the day when life started to defeat my innocence.
I guess I have lost that capacity to believe in anything. Two Saturdays ago, I took a ride around our with my friends on a speedboat, and I asked God to "please send us dolphins..." The dolphins didn't come. It made me realize that some things are just aren't meant to be. That there is no point in hoping for things that aren't meant to come. Because if they are meant to happen, then you don't have to spend so much effort trying to have faith in it in the first place. I'll just take on life as it is, and accept whatever comes my way, no complaints, no frustrations, no broken dreams.
It must be the Coupland effect.
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