takeaways

It's been about a month with a new job and I am already swamped with work. I'm already thinking about if I really want to do this. I get to think of what I want from my life again. If tomorrow is the last day of my life, will I be doing the same thing? Get to work at 9:30am, chased by due dates, due hours, and due minutes till I get off work. Too tired to do anything when I get home. Life should be spent for something more meaningful. I need more time to fit love and inspirations in my life and others'.

WIth all this thoughts and confusions, I remembered one of the piece written by Douglas Coupland. It was introduced by Dougal during one of our evening classes when I was back in school, when I was going through emotional and painful time of my life... I spent all night crying after that class, thinking of life and death, the beautiful summer days in Australia with Sean. March is coming again. The painful month with the loss of Sean. It's funny how everything else is returning the same way they always have been... only except one single thing that I'm not afraid to die for.

Here's the inspirational piece of Generation X by Douglas Coupland.

The setting is a poolside in a run-down Palm Springs apartment complex where a few twenty-something friends sit and tell stories to each other:
"Let me see your eyes."

Tobias leans over to allow Elvissa to put a hand around his jaw and extract information from his eyes, the blue color of Dutch souvenir plates. She takes an awfully long time. "Well, okay. Maybe you're not all that bad. I might even tell you a special story in a few minutes. Remind me. But it depends. I want you to tell me something first: after you're dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what's going to be your best memory of earth?"

"What do you mean? I don't get it."

"What one moment for you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet. What's your takeaway?"

There is silence. Tobias doesn't get her point, and frankly, neither do I. She continues. "Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don't count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you're really alive."

Tobias does not readily volunteer any info. I think he needs an example first.

"I've got one," says Claire. All eyes turn to her.

"Snow," she says to us. At the very momenta hailstorm of doves erupts upward from the brown silk soil of the MacArthurs' yard next door...

..."I'll always remember the first time I saw snow. I was twelve and it was just after the first and biggest divorce. I was in New York visiting my mother and was standing beside a traffic island in the middle of Park Avenue. I'ld never been out of L.A. before. I was entranced by the big city. I was looking up at the Pan Am Building and contemplating the essential problem of Manhattan."

"Which is--?" I ask.

"Which is that there's too much weight improperly distributed: towers and elevators; steel, stone, and cement. So much mass up so high that gravity itself could end up being warped--some dreadful inversion--an exchange program with the sky." (I love it when Claire gets weird.) "I was shuddering at the thought of this. But right then my brother Allan yanked at my sleeve because the walk signal light was green. And when I turned my head to walk across, my face went bang, right into my first snowflake ever. It melted in my eye. I didn't even know what it was at first, but then I saw millions of flakes--all white and smelling like ozone, floating downward like the shed skin of angels. Even Allan stopped. Traffic was honking at us, but time stood still. And so, yes--if I take one memory of earth away with me, that moment will be the one. To this day I consider my right eye charmed."

"Perfect," says Elvissa. She turns to Tobias. "Get the drift?"

- Generation X by Douglas Coupland