“Are you clinging on to things even though they have become irrelevant, because you fear losing the familiar?”

The boy pondered at the question for a moment.

“I don’t know.” He replied.

“Why not?”

“Am I hanging on to anything?”

“Are you?”

“Hmmmm…”

He stared out of the window into the still night.

“What’s the alternative?” He asked, “I am making changes, you know.”

“I didn’t say that you weren’t. I merely asked if you are still hanging on to the irrelevant.”

“But what’s irrelevant? As long as they matter, they are still relevant, no?”

“But are they still relevant to you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then so be it. As long as you know.”

“Okay.”

“Do the new displace the old? Do we need to let go of old things if we are to embrace the new?”

“They can co-exist.”

“Can they?”

“Sometimes, yes. But that’s not the issue. The issue is one of relevance. Whether they are still relevant to you.”

“I do not fear the unknown. Nor the unfamiliar.”

“I know you don’t. You can be quite adventurous.”

“Okay.”

“Why do they still matter?”

Pause.

The boy thought about that question a little.

“They just do.”

“So if they don’t you will have no problem letting go?”

Pause.

If nothing else, the boy was honest.

“I’m not sure. I won’t know. It’s too hypothetical.”

“Hypothesize.”

He knew that he was stuck.

“Okay. I’m afraid to let go. Because I don’t know what happens after that. I don’t know what will happen if I do.”

“Fair enough.”

“So what do I do?”

“I don’t have answers for you. I am not here to give you solutions.”

“Oh.”

Pause.

“So why did you ask me if had problems letting go?”

Silence.

He knew the session was over.

He stared out of the window into the starless night and fell into a dreamless sleep.

I stare across the road at the dark foliage that hides behind it a massive golf course.  How deceiving.

The occassional car passes, it’s quiet now.

How, in the last two years, much has changed.

It’s funny looking back at the distance that we’ve come. It seemed just yesterday when we made the downpayment for the first property that we would ever buy.  The apartment that was home for 2 years.

The apartment that had both happy and not so happy memories, but all good.  Where friends (and strangers) gathered, in happy camaraderie.  Birthdays, celebrations and festivals.

We’ve moved on — the apartment remains a memory now, it was just two months ago when, after the movers brought the last box down, I locked the door for the last time and handed the keys to the guard to pass to the next owner.

We’ve settled in pretty much, though for now, this place we’ve started getting used to is temporary, until the next place is ready for us.

Home is where friends and family gather.  In retrospect, I realise that I take after my father, who used to almost always have friends hanging out at his house during times when i visited.  I’m at my dad’s age now when i was 12.

Circles complete.  Dad would have been 62 now.  I wonder if he would have seen himself in me.  Never quite got there.

It’s all transient.

How two years ago we thought we’d settle down at the little apartment at the edge of the city and how now, we’re at a part of the world (ok, Singapore) we never thought we’ll live.  We’ve come some way.

Relationships have evolved — I’d like to think that we’ve all grown a little older, a little wiser but yet I know there will always be this part of me that wonders when I will ever grow up.  There were all these discrete stages that I thought would make up chapters of my life, but the lines are getting increasingly blurred.  Nothing is ever linear but everything is a lot simpler than we make it out to be.

Am I making sense?

A wave of cars pass, it’s 2:30 in the morning. I think I like the sound the cars make — it’s city noise — that brings a little bit of life to an otherwise very quiet suburban neighbourhood.

I think about the people who have become family of sorts.  What these friends mean to me and how they’ve come through for me, without question.  Friendship is not a function of time.  When the connection happens, it’s amazing. 

I used to wonder how people become friends.  Why people become friends. But friends are people life throws at us, not something we look for.  If it was meant to be, you don’t have to try very hard at all.  If it wasn’t, it’s damn tough to engage.  I used to have a highly romanticised idea of what it all meant — I’m a little more discerning now, but that still doesn’t stop me from making a fool of myself once in a while. 

For a reason, a season or a lifetime.  I’m lucky — there’ve always been people there at life-changing points.  They will come and go — we just got to make the most of each encounter.

So here we are now.  Hoping for the best of 2008 — for each new day and each new encounter.  In exchange for that little bit of who we are and memories we get in return.

Have a great 2008.