By Jan Vicente B. Pekas
The future is a topic often talked about in school. Even in college the teachers talk about it so often. Though this time, it is sprinkled with a bit of seriousness compared to the idealist teachers back in the elementary days. Gone are the days when curiosity dominated the wondering of children about their future. Now, it is all about pursuit.
There is an image I see when I think about the absolute peak of my desires, a future I wish to transfer to reality. And everytime I imagine a certain goal, or a certain outcome I know instantly whether it will come true or not. I call this my own special power.
Everytime I think about that future, it feels similar to that same feeling a couple of years ago. There was trouble concerning my papers to cross-enroll to UP Baguio for the semester. The deadline for those papers, I believe, was due in just hours and the signed papers from my original school had not yet been emailed. It looked bleak at that time, and the reality of me going back to U.P. Los Baños, my original school looked more and more like my future.
But deep down, whether from delusion or premonition, there was always a small belief within me that we could get this done. And as I wondered in that campus waiting for that email, I just knew I would walk the same halls in a couple of weeks when classes would start.
The email came in the nick of time, and just like that, after a couple of weeks there I was walking those halls going to class. That imagination before was being truthful, I really was able to cross-enroll successfully.
The same image I see in the future feels just the same, its vivid in my head when I think of it there is no need to put any amount of effort to make it clear, it just comes out in a clean image. It also feels light on the heart, it knows there is not a shred of lie within me that I greatly desire that image to come into reality.
The problem this time, is perhaps me not fully comprehending that image and its context. My heart is light when I think of it and I can just feel it will come soon, but I can’t help being scared of that future. It looked dark, dangerous, hard, and lonely. An instinct that reassured me many times in the past is now something I try to fight against. This was always gonna be a losing battle.
Whether we are truly bound by fate, just playing along with what is already planned or guided purely by our own actions, perhaps that can only be answered at the end of the line. **
