"A couple of years ago, I was up there, and I decided to go for a walk in the woods by myself. Stupid, I know, but I was fourteen, so what can you do? Anyway, the trail was really faint, but I kept walking all afternoon. Finally, I decided to turn around, but almost immediately I came to this fork in the trail. I didn't remember any fork in the trail, so I started to panic. Which was the way home? I didn't know. The two paths looked exactly the same."
"So what did you do?" I said.
"Well, I knew that buried somewhere in my head was the right answer. And if it wasn't, maybe there was some force outside myself--God or the spirit of the forest or whatever--who could give me the answer. So I cleared my head and stared at the two trails. I stood there for the longest time. And finally I knew. I went down the trail on the right."
"And you picked the right one."
"Nah," Gunnar said, "I picked wrong. I ended up in this nettles patch, and that was the time I got those ticks, and then later I got sick, and I was sure I had Lyme disease."
"Gunnar!" I cried. "What kind of story is that! You picked the wrong trail?"
"Did I?" Gunnar said. "I'm standing here, aren't I?"
I stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, obviously I made it back to the cabins. I lived, right?"
"Yeah, but you walked through nettles and ticks, and you thought you had Lyme disease! If you'd gone the other way, none of that would have happened."
"Oh, yeah, the other path would have been a much better choice. But at least I picked one. Because if I hadn't, I'd still be standing up in those woods."
-Brent Hartinger, Split Screen
I asked the author's permission to quote directly from his book because paraphrasing this passage would dull its impact. Split Screen is the second sequel of Geography Club, which I thoroughly loved. A definite must-read. Seriously.
In life, we always want to make the best choices, right choices. More often than not, though, we opt for the easy ones, even though they are not necessarily the best. Sometimes we make hard choices that affect people around us. Sometimes the choices we make alter us forever, no turning back. Sometimes choices are made unto us.
We may not realize it, but we face choices all the time. We decide whether we want to wake up in the morning, hit the snooze button, or just ignore the world and continue sleeping. We choose whether to start the day with a prayer or not, whether we want to take a long shower or a quick one. We choose which clothes to wear, and if we have time for breakfast or not. Decisions are made one after another throughout the day. But these choices, they don't affect us much. In the long run, maybe, like how the kinds of food we eat or how active we are will determine how healthy we stay forty years down the line, but as our day-to-day life goes, we don't give these choices much thought.
Then again, making choices is the easy bit. It's living with the consequences that can leave us awake at night, bathed in sweat and tears.
When I was thirteen I entered a boarding school. I did it to please my parents and the rest of the family, but I was responsible for ultimately enrolling there. The experience became a six-month hell both for me and my family. My siblings hated me then, and I tested my parents' patience and love to their limits. The whole mess culminated in me harming myself. I drank half a bottle of Benadryl, and I slashed my right forearm several times. After several weeks of therapy, the counsellors decided what I did wasn't a suicide attempt, but a desperate measure to get out the school. I told them that from the start, but did they believe me? Adults. What can I say?
I could have tried my darnest to fit in. I could have waited patiently and let the adults deal with my transfer (which took too damn long). I could have slashed my wrist instead of my forearm. What I did was wrong and stupid, and it almost gave Mama a heart attack (she played it cool and scolded me instead), but if I hadn't gone through it, I would have found suicide more than tempting when things became tough. You see, I'm in a love-hate relationship with myself. I heard most artists battle this particular inner demon. I still have the scars on my forearm to remind me of what I did, of what could have happened. I still have the scars to remind me that no matter how dark my life is, I want to choose life even if it means struggling even to breathe.
When I became a social pariah toward the end of high school, I could have easily skipped school and loitered at shopping complexes. I could have taken up smoking. Instead, I locked myself in the Garudamas room and concentrated on rebuilding the school magazine from scratch. Granted, I could have used the time studying, and my results would have been much better. But that year (1998), Garudamas became a benchmark for other school magazines. We became the magazine to beat. And I'm still a doctor, now pursuing Neurosurgery, so it wasn't all that bad. However, just to prove how our decisions can affect our future, when I sat for the Master's Program interview, the professor commented that he could foresee me struggling to pass the course because I had bad Chemistry and Physics result. I had decided to leave the comment unanswered, but inside, I chose to take that as a challenge. And I love challenges.
Also, when I joined the Master's Program last month, another professor commented on how severe my lack of theoretical knowledge was (and still is). It stung, but when I got back to the apartment, I opened my books and read about the topic we discussed earlier. And I rediscovered how much I love learning new things and understanding how the human body works. I admit, I'm not passionate about it. I still prefer tweeting and writing blog posts (like this one), but at least now I can answer more questions than I could earlier. Still feel stupid, but at least I'm getting somewhere.
Not everything turns out well, though. When I decided to confront Reza with what I found out about the things he did, I knew our friendship would end horribly. But I cared too much to let his bad decisions affect his future. I lost him anyway, and I could no longer be there for him, but whether he acknowledges it or not, I'll always be around when he needs a brother and a friend the most. That will never change, even though I'm already adjusting to life without him.
And most notable is my giving a relationship a chance. As I said, I'm in a love-hate relationship with myself, and I cannot romantically love someone when I cannot love myself. For the longest time, I stood in front of the fork, not daring to pick a path, to move forward.
It's scary as hell, but my feet are finally moving. It's too early to say anything, so I won't.
In life, backtracking is not possible. Every word we say, every action we do, has its reaction and consequence. However, we can choose to stay where we are, or we can choose one of the paths laid out in front of us. We may end up making the wrong choice, and if we're lucky, we can jump onto another path and walk it. Or we can always face the consequences of our decisions, good and bad.
I count myself one lucky guy. My family may not always understand me, but they love me nontheless. I can always count on Mama, Kasha, Faiz (and now Ayis, too) when it matters the most. I can count on my closest friends. And from my track record, I hope I can keep on counting on myself to make the best decisions for me, and boldly face the repercussions of my choices.
"Oh, yeah, the other path would have been a much better choice. But at least I picked one. Because if I hadn't, I'd still be standing up in those woods."
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