How Red Sneakers Changed My Life

What does it mean to grow up?  I don't think we ever fully realize we're shedding little pieces of our childhood day by day, until the time comes when you're watching a scary movie or you get a random message from someone who you gave up on long ago and you suddenly realize you're able to sleep soundly through the night and aren't afraid of your own shadow for weeks afterward, that you are able to formulate a clear-headed response to a text message that might have evoked hormonal reactions had you received it a couple years earlier.  I am scared of it. I am scared of how easy it is for a human being to forget that they too, cried the first time they fell off a bike, that they once were just as inexperienced and warm and open to love as a child is. I am scared and ashamed of the disdainful look I bestow upon a child asking his mother silly questions on the bus, or the disgust with which I regard the kids running around in the park chasing sunlight.  That was ...

The hotel room is unsettlingly familiar, as if I've drawn a ghost memory out of the earlier faded pages of my life and breathed it into existence. A blue flowered quilt cover hugs the wide double bed, the assortment of throw pillows and cushions and the creamy folds of the sheet beckoning my tired body. And ah yes, customarily there's a picture hanging over the bed as every respectable hotel room is wont to feature. This one is a framed shot of a stretch of beach, the waves frozen as they rise up to meet the sand. A bedside lamp throws warm yellow light over the bed and the beach. It could almost be cozy, yet…yet, there's something nagging at the back of my memory. I walk over to the window and pull back the matching blue curtains. The Malaysian sky is stormy. A strange blue light seems to emanate from outside the window, and the glass is streaked with angry rain. I look at my reflection and quickly pull away as the faintest hint of recognition crosses my face. Have ...

I've had a moody kind of day. Actually, no, I should make use of my newfound GRE vocab and say I've been CANTANKEROUS all day. Whatever. There's always an alarming amount of unfinished work and deadlines swarming around me, and seriously, all I ever manage to do is read Gone With The Wind. I'd like to think I'm not the only one and that procrastination and laziness are necessary characteristics of any college student but then I should learn from my ingenious classmates who seem to have time to revise lectures and finish assignments and study for tests and lab tests and complete their lab manuals on time and still have energy left over to attempt bonus mark questions. Impressive. And to top it all, I got such an exciting text message this evening. There's a distraught soul out there who wants to be my 'frnd', he says he knows who I am even though I don't know him. How comforting to know that there is someone out there who cares! I shall warm my poor,...

So, they tell me there are worse things in life. And somewhere deep inside, I know they're right. Hell, in this century, with countries vying with each other over nuclear warfare, and suicide bombers blowing craters a meter wide in residential streets, merely existing is an achievement. People get divorced, get cheated on, lose their kids to gang violence, have their houses robbed (sometimes five times over), get jailed for crimes they didn't commit. How many families have lost loved ones in airplane crashes? Yes, there's always somebody out there who has it worse than you. But does that mean that if a person doesn't fall in one of the above-mentioned categories, his or her problems aren't important enough? Their suffering doesn't matter because they haven't been hurt enough, is that it? I don't think so. Every time someone hurts, no matter how small, it matters. We're all human, and we're all equal, and when one of us hurts, it is a t...