Birthday note to self

I am 26 going on 27; I know that I’m naive. For that jump seems to carry heavier obligation than from 25 to 26, but only now am I realising that rise of age and fulfilment of duty begets recognition but not necessarily true success. For example, getting promoted after toiling two years in your first job is not necessarily the best thing if it chains you to a spirit-sapping occupation, or institutionalises you in employee servility.

Which leads me to consider that defining endeavour, employment.

Jobs I’ve had four going on five, but I know I’m naive. For if you had asked a 17-year-old-Clarence what he thought he would be doing at 27, he would have said “I really don’t know”; enquire now about my ten year plan and you would get the same answer. Yet I do know that from my sampling of such mixed trades as business, journalism, sales and environmentalism, I have pinpointed my professional calling (the lattermost). Thankfully, I have just returned to its fold, in an organisation that motivates and cheers me, while also pursuing my own business interests. This world may be small, but I believe so are most others’. Whatever the case, now I am truly settled.

Which leads me to consider the world, and final settlement.

In past two years I’ve done a decent bit of travel, but I know I’m naive. For recent sojourns around Asia, Europe and America were not so much 'travel' as 'tourism'; a quick sampling; a mere afternoon spent sipping the world’s wines. While this has seeded ideas of a life abroad, it remains a vague dream, more aspirational than inspirational. This superficial cosmopolitanism is made more painful by the fact that many peers have already (and quietly) left the soulless city-state that is Singapore, while I remain here decrying my host yet strangely resistant to shun it.

Yet in so many ways I am content where I am right now. When a friend recently attempted to talk up the good old yesteryear of teenage non-responsibility and undergraduate freedom, I almost commiserated about my 'advancing years'. But before tongue betrayed analysis, I realised,

No, being 27 is actually a good thing!

For gone is the 17 year-old waiting tables and servicing aquariums by bus; now my pay is neither pittance-per-hour nor at apprentice rates. Gone is the adolescent of social cluelessness and professional ponderousness; now confidence in both is developing new alliances and income streams. Gone is the yoke of religion and faith like a child, now released by science and fact.

And gone be the naivety that breeds inertia. If I also had one wish for the world, that would be it.

I am 26 going on 27 - come sooner the days of increasing personal efficiency, deepening relationships with the select few I choose to love, finding professional fulfilment, seeing the world and the sine qua non of relentless scepticism and enquiry.