nothing once again

This all reminds me of that episode of Avatar called The Beach. It'll become clear as you read.

There are our old faces, faces sunken deep in stigma, engraved in stone, tossed aside in favour of new, unknown faces. Faces that have never been worn before, or perhaps have been forgotten years ago. This is the freshness of seeing the world through new, perhaps skewed, perhaps finally objective (so objective they seem skewed after years of imperfect vision), lenses. Is this the masquerade, or is this the unmasking? Am I pretending for the first time in my life, or have I at last been laid bare?

I think my class has brought out my worst, inwardly, my best, outwardly. I feel the silent demand that my unspoken place in class conveys to me. The only studious one. The one who actually listens to the teacher.

This is the direct opposite of what I was just last year. Is this really how the world is, or have I sunken to a new high? Tinted lenses never seem so because you have no point of reference. Only when they have been removed do you realise things were not normal. Or then again you could say you've just been pulled out of reality into a fabricated perspective that people insist is 'truth'. Confusion, worry, surprise abounds.

Maybe this is an hurdle of life I will need to surmount eventually. Though no one likes to admit it, I've been locked in a glass bubble for a long time, and I've seen barely a fraction of the people I'm going to meet in future. Especially if I take worst case scenario and become a roadsweeper. Surrounded half my life by the most studious, obedient group of people in Singapore. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to pull us out and teach us as a segregated group.

Whichever it is, whether this is reality or whether this is a test made to register in my mind like reality, I know I need to get used to living among 'normal' people. People who haven't grown up equating studies to life. People who don't mind failing sometimes. Noisy people.

I must be tolerant. I must not presume my superiority, what rubbish. I must not want their respect for being 'elite' (elitism within elitism, how funny). Respect is earned, never mind what you had in past circles. A person's respect is not yours until you prove to him/her that you deserve it.

My classmates shared, during ice breakers, their achievements in various sporting fields. Some people, no names given, shared unbearably impressive and unbelievable egotistical things at every round of sharing. Sure she made us feel some form of awe towards her, but she also lost some amiability from me.

So will I stand up and lay unbacked claims? Will I say that I once topped the level at the end-of-year English writing paper? Will I brandish my AMC ranking, supporting it with the fact that I've never taken math training, never even liked math, and started the compulsory test colouring fancy patterns in the OAS? (not to mention that I only missed the medal score because I friggin misread a question.) Will I mention my score on my Grade 8 piano exam, possibly the second highest score I've ever heard (after Lee Voon the freaky genius)? Will I tell them that I won three of the four top awards at a songwriting competition my teacher had to beg+force me to take part in, the first national competition I ever entered?

No, because it says nothing. I will earn whatever I have in them. I won't let myself be judged on my past. I won't languish in my laurels. I won't build my cathedral upon jewelled skulls. I am no one to them until I earn it.

It doesn't matter what my class is like. I'll get back to where I have managed to get before. I'll make the climb again. I'll claim another peak. Yet another.