This is a piece of my conversation with my best friend earlier today:
- I realize so many difficult issues is surround us. Is this what growing up does to everyone?
- What difficult issues?
- Nowhere is safe, nowhere is certainty, nothing is true and everything is negatively possible.
And then our story let on with daily stuff.
Maybe tomorrow I would wake up and consider those exchanging words are nonsense, illogical, irrational or whatever they address immature thoughts are. But for now, it bothers me, so I must write it all out somewhere, otherwise I will not sleep well tonight.
I am almost 20 years old and I am a Vietnamese college student studying abroad in Northern Europe. Uncertainty and insecurity clings on me ever since I am aware about my responsibilities, my rights, my disadvantages - I guess that is everyone's issue, right? And like everybody else, I try to manage my time schedules, socialize with people around me, improve my life-enhancing practical background knowledge since high school, etc. And what remains solid after all this time is uncertainty and insecurity are all excellent stalkers. Sure, enough you can make them go away with all the detailed plans, solid opportunities, close companions, but you cannot make them disappear - they are just lurking around dark corners like vampires avoid daylights, patiently waiting for you to be vulnerable and wham! they devour you as a whole from time to time as an indefinite loop.
You already know their forms of presence, right? I am sure you do, everyone does. They can present themselves as all those one-sided, exaggerating, manipulative news and gossips piling around you on TV, newspapers, brochures, advertisements depicting a dangerous, cruel world full of liars, sinners, gold-diggers, legal robbers and 'imperfectors'. They can also whisper into your acquaintances' ears to be wary of your selfless kindness and helpfulness and worse, to exploit it, which makes them and you become less faithful to good characteristics' existence in this 21st century. There is so much more forms that uncertainty and insecurity - let's call them 'clinging shadows' - can evolve into, and as far as I know, there is not much to prevent them - you can locate them, but you can do nothing to stop or eliminate them.
The irony is I am intending to go with the flow - the easiest, most comfortable solution which almost all millennials think of and act upon. Why should any of us waste our time worrying about what we cannot control, instead just live for this moment, try to get through this day ? It is so much easier right, not deciding where do you live in the next five or ten years, but determining what to cook for yourselves a nice meal this evening? Surely it helps casting all your clinging shadows, and it works every day, because you only bother to deal with one day at a time.
Facing the above solution always make me jealous of my parents and grandparents. They had the rush and pressure seeded from their times of war and hardship which urged them to come up with long term plans to improve their life conditions, force their clinging shadows to diminish. Therefore, they surely did not have this spontaneous thought as mine right now. And obviously when they reached their 20, they had their stuff altogether figured out.
With that being said, a part of me disapproves the temporary 'go with the flow' solution because sooner or later, I will have to stand against the odds. Eventually, I have to figure things out. In conclusion, I have to accept seeing myself growing up and making efficient plans for my life. The war against clinging ghosts has to be fought with vigor, perseverance and tirelessly determination.
Well I just spilled all my guts (figuratively) on an online webpage, and my head is clear for going to sleep now. Hope that in the next time, my article would be more authentic, practical and not just a mumbling line of these obvious nuisance.
N.D.Đ