For the most part, this routine and the shenanigans surrounding it define my life. Sometimes I wonder if I ever learnt the art of prioritizing. At other times, I am baffled over whether playing this Machiavellian game of socialites was my priority. Who knows?
All I know is that no one can retrieve the time I wasted. No one can suffer for the choices I made, but myself. No one can change my past. Which leads me to the overwhelming question of, 'what led me to make the choices I made?' The answer is conspicuous enough: experience. Experience is a real dampener - it grays us from the inside. We begin to make choices on the basis of rationality and practicality, to put things in perspective, to speak when spoken to. When I was 10 I could make choices on instinct - whether it was between kicking the bucket and leading a life that meant zilch to me. Now at 19, I feel intellectual laxity has taken over me and that is far more deleterious than physical slackness.
As the trite expression goes, time and tide wait for none and the only thing that is constant is change. Life gets hold of us by the scruff of our neck and bludgeons it with conformity and docility until it begs for reprieve. With every fleeting moment, to pick and choose no longer remains our prerogative. We try and rationalize taking dictation when in fact, life is the dictator and tyrant. You probably think, I'm going off on a tangent here, but it all connects, really - like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with the precise irregularity of their edges join in a cohesive form. The irregularity of my stance lies in the paradox: experience taught me to climb the social ladder; conformity made me scurry up again when I fell down. The incongruity of it all is almost comical - I should have thought age and wisdom would have taught me otherwise; to turn a deaf ear to the retorts and criticism of others. But in turn, the years have made me immune to the superficiality and materialism I experience everyday.
