Lose Yourself by Eminem may be considered antique by now…
But I think it is one of the few meaningful rap songs still out there. It’s also what I am going to base to write up a series of blogs on this theme about losing myself. Since I’ve made this decision to migrate to Norway, to embrace and accept a new culture, I have lost quite a lot, however, I have also gained many new insights and points of view in life that are priceless, and worth much more than what I lost. These blogs will be about these parts of my life lost, and “found“.
While the song, Lose Yourself, was more like a rallying cry to bravery and about the fact that you ought to take the chances that life gives. I would like another alternative take on it. While I believe in seizing the day when you have a chance. I also believe that as long as you are living you will have many chances. The thing is not to stop believing until you are dead. So if you missed that “Carpe Diem” moment, that does not mean your life should now end because it has no more purpose and meaning. No, on the contrary, you should strive to prepare to meet that moment in life, if you ever do. Life is full of surprises, sometimes, what may seem as a good opportunity may turn out not so ideal in some ways in the future. On the other hand, for those that have seized the day, you’ll never know whether you are going to live for the next.
Therefore, there is this conundrum about living for the future versus living for the present (some folks still live for the past :)). My view is that one should live with one eye on the present and another on the future. There will always be regrets. There is never one person that I know that will truly die without any regret for whatever thing they have done while they were alive. When I say, “I can probably die without regrets“, it’s more like I am totally contented with the decisions that I had made in my life. While I may have made mistakes and I might have done some things differently if I go back in time, but I think I lived my life to the best of how I think it should be lived. And I think you could only really say that when you have an open view on how life is supposed to be, how is it going to turn out, how are you going to be challenged against your ideals day by day.
There are things that I would not give up upon, views about love and marriage, passion for what I do (some folks have a term for this: It is known as ‘work’), honesty and integrity. There were things that I did say I will not give up on, like religion, music (no, I have not really given up totally), friendship (or the so called “best friends”), but I end up giving up on some of them. The funny thing is that once I gave up on some of these things, I realise that I should have never held onto them in the first place. In a sense, there is some regret but like I said earlier, if I live with one eye on the present and on the future, I shall use these as stepping stones to a better future, even though I may not know whether I will wake up tomorrow to have it.
But hope is dope (pun is on kim karadashian’s remark on the pope dope brouhaha).
Hope can do a lot of wonderful things. There was an anime, Fate/Stay Night: (Unlimited Blade Works) which sort of romanticised this ideology. In it (and this is a blatantly short summary), a supposedly naive guy has an ambition to be a people hero’s even though in reality it is something that is looked upon with a lot of scepticism and disdain. Humans are never trustworthy, why bother to save them? However, what won in the end was not the guy’s naive beliefs, but it was his willingness to hope in spite of all odds.
We are born to hope.
Without hope, there is no life, no future.
It doesn’t matter whether you have both eyes on the present or on the future. Hope is having an eye on each.
