Thursday, August 12, 2010

Days of Future Past

Wonderful, wonderful day.

I was in a cab which took an hour and a half to reach the destination, was in a meeting, fought with rude tudunged bitches at the Ramadan bazaar, was late for another meeting, and had two meetings to end the night.

You know, all I wanted to do in life was to make people happy. That was it. I was eight years old, and I could read and understand English, so I told the kids in my classes stories about dinosaurs and what killed them (meteors, definitely. Or aliens) and I felt such joy knowing that I managed, for a moment or two, open them to worlds beyond their imagining.

I wanted to make my parents happy. I was such an approval seeker. Such a suck-up.

Little did I know that my approval seeking would end up giving me a superhero complex later on in life. And that's not pretty at all.

Or the murders and hidden bodies - the collateral damage I incurred, trying to make people happy.

Realising and accepting the fact that it is not in my power to make people happy, was pretty hard to swallow.

I can merely provide the tools and the situations with which they can use to make themselves happy. Some people call me arrogant, but I have always bowed to The Truth, which is the most important thing besides Freedom and Independence.

My constant search for The Truth, in whatever form, has worked for me. Got me out of delusion, kept me in check and in balance.

Like today, I woke up with no expectations and no baggage. No pre-conceived notion. No desire, for I have bad experiences with hunger. Hunger only creates more hunger.

So I went in, practising whatever little wisdom I've gleaned in my life from many different sources. And it turned out smooth-sailing all the way.

I am now back home, my eyes behind a shimmering veil of tears, knowing how lucky I am.

I am lucky - blessed - to have been given opportunities to do what I want to do.

It has not been an easy journey, but not because it was made hard for me. I made it hard for myself. With my complexes and being fooled by my own mind.

In reality, I have been given extraordinary and amazing stuff.

I was made editor for a newspaper before I am 30. I have handled 3800++ of TV production in a year. I have written 10 movies, two of which will be the top three most expensive film productions in Malaysia.

I have written a novel, short stories, and conceptualised hundreds of TV series in various formats.

I want to retire. Hahaha.

But seriously, though, I say all this not with hubris. I say it with gratitude.

Both angels and demons watch over me. I have always been given the path that would lead me to what I enjoy doing.

Which is, in the end, to make people happy.

At the end of any time I spend with anyone, I hope that I can put a smile on their faces (especially women I fucked) and that when they think of me, that smile would be there.

In truth, I'm still that eight year old kid in a swamp, telling stories about the possibility of alien life.