In Continuum.

It is just a thought I had the other day about morality, a heavy thought for a holiday, I know. But there are times when you just want to contemplate on things, and morality has always interested me in infinite ways. I remember attending the funeral of my friend's mother, though a "friend" would be inaccurate, since we were really acquaintances at best. You see how life works, when different generations go through different stages of life. Your grandparents start to die, your friends start to get girlfriends, then they get married, your parents start to die, so on and so forth. Sooner or later, your friends are falling ill, your friends are dying, and then it'd be your turn very soon down the line. But life does not work in fixed and predictable patterns, one event leads to another in a way that cannot be foreseen. I sometimes wonder, then, if someone I knew from the past has already passed away silently, and that I don't know about it because we've moved on from one another. It is a strange thought, I admit, but I can't help but wonder if those people who existed in my life in a point in time, still exists now in their own separate lives. If somebody is gone, then who, and why? 

It's strange to know that, if you don't know if a person is dead, then he really isn't dead, you know? I think more than our physical existence in life, much of everything else exists in the minds of those who knows and remembers you. You know, the classmates you met along the way, the friends from army, the teacher that taught you before, your neighbors, people like that. They come and go, and a part of your existence is, in fact, what they remember of you. So if you are in a distant land when you pass away from, say, a plane crash, these people back home are still going to assume that you are very much alive. I sometimes wonder if my friend Yong Hong is still alive, though it really doesn't make any difference to me, whatsoever. I was never close to him, and I'd probably never meet him again in my life. To me, right now, he exists perfectly in some corner of this tiny island, probably has finished his army duties, in a school studying and worrying about his career like everybody else in my age group. That'd be what I'd assume, naturally, unless I assume the worst. It is a strange feeling to know that someone from your past, someone you used to know, may not be around any longer. Stranger if you are oblivious to it, because these people are very much alive in your mind. They still exist, so to speak. 

I suppose the reason why I thought about such things is because, I sometimes wonder if people think and talk about me in the very same way. I wonder if these is someone from my past, thinking to themselves about me. It doesn't necessarily have to be in a special way, but just a simple passing thought, you know? Like how I sometimes wonder how my first crush in primary school is doing right now, I wonder if someone else I've met before thinks the same about me every once in a while. Of course, there isn't any way for you to know unless they tell you about it. But before then, you just have to assume that people do think the same way that you do, that people still keep you in a passing thought, even if it is just passing at a hundred miles per hour. It's comforting, in a way, to know that you are still connected even with people you hardly talk to anymore. It's nice to know that you exist even in the minds of those, whom you probably don't even remember their names anymore. Because I still think about people from the past, people I've played catch with, and people whom I've fought with in primary school, for one reason or another. I wonder if I've passed them on the streets someday before, I wonder if they recognized me. I wonder a lot, as you can see, and most of the time I don't know if it leads to anywhere, truth be told. 

It just gets me thinking about how seemingly unimportant people could, in fact, make a difference to your life somehow. Perhaps to inspire a blog entry, like what I am doing right now because of that one guy I remember from the past, or something more - it is impossible to tell. We meet so many people, and we only end up with a handful at the end of our lives. Even now, at twenty-two years of age, eighty to ninety percent of the people I used to know are no longer in active contact with me any longer. I think there is an illusion of connection somehow, with websites like Facebook doing all the connecting and MSN to keep check of all the friends you've ever made. How many of us actually bothers to talk to each and every one of them actively, anyway. Most of the contacts merely exist on your MSN list, because they added you a long time ago just to "keep in touch". But what does that mean, anyway, to be reminded of when your nickname pops up as a little blue box at the bottom of the screen? The truth is, we really cannot care less about most of the people on our MSN contact list. It's cold, but that's how it is - and why is that? Why do we care so little about the people that once mattered, one way or another? At least you bothered to enter his or her e-mail into the search box at some point. How did you come to this point whereby you simply, well, don't care? 

We all exist that way to someone else in this world. We are all, in some ways, cannot be cared less by someone in our lives. Five or ten years down the road, and we aren't going to be remembering too much about one another any longer. That is how we are all going to fade away in each others' lives. Not because we are in different schools or in different jobs, or live in a different country in a different time zone. We are going to fade away because we cannot care less, or at least most people in our lives. Even those that existed, even for a while, they probably don't matter to you any longer. I think we are built this way somehow, it's a very Darwinian view upon human relationships. This person gives me benefits and that person does not, so the latter begins to fade and slowly vanishes in your life while the other remains. We do not do so consciously, though. I don't think anybody really goes up to an old friend and says, "I really cannot care less about you anymore". We don't, but that's how we work. It's like the ability to breathe, the ability to smile, the ability to laugh out loud, and the ability to cry. I don't think we learn to do those physical things, or learn those human emotions. We do it because we were born to do it, just like how we "discard" people in our lives because we don't exactly need them around any longer. 

It doesn't feel good to know that you are in the dumps for someone else that you have met before. You are as important as the ingredients of a meal he ate three months ago at a restaurant that didn't taste too good, or the chunk of mud stuck in between the grooves of his shoes. That is how I probably exist to some people, not really because they choose to see me this way, but because that is how loosely connected we all are, as human beings, as friends. The word "friend" really is a vague term though, because it knows no bounds and no limits. It's easy to define who is a friend and who isn't a friend, but who amongst those "friends" are really your "friends"? Social networking websites give a very broad definition for that term, and that is: anybody you've seen before, talked to before, or share the same social circle or environment for a period of time. That is probably how they define it, though you cannot possibly call most of them "your friends" if you look deep into it. The truth is that we are really loosely connected to one another, and it is so easy for someone to fade in my mind, or for me to fade in someone else's. It really only takes a minimal contact and time to completely erase somebody from your life. Sure, something may trigger it from time to time, but it'd be like an afterthought somehow. There are friends that matter, and there are friends that matter more than just friends. And as for everybody else, though, you are no more than a flicker of memory, at best. Most of the time, you merely existed for a time, and nothing else of you would they be able to remember. Just a name, or just a face, and sometimes even those two are robbed from your identity in their minds. What is left, then? What is left?