A plan so fine

I’m glad to know there are more than two people who read this blog. Thanks for the encouragement, you know who you are.

In the past few weeks I’ve had a lot of reason to contemplate life in general. How things that we flippantly said years before can suddenly come true now, making us go “Whoa… now hang on a sec. How?” Or things that were once all that we lived, breathed and dreamed… and now, looking back, there’s nothing else to do but thank God they never came close to happening.

Years ago, I said to my mum one random day, “Wouldn’t it be fun if when I grow up, I work for [her favourite exclusive Japanese cosmetics house] so that you can get free cosmetics?”

I have no idea why I said that. I’ve never had an interest in dermatology or anything remotely connected to the beauty industry. I think I was just being my practical, Hokkien self: considering how much my mum spent on cosmetics, I probably figured that if I could get her sold on the idea of free cosmetics by the time I was 25, she might go easy on them for now and save enough money by the time I was 18 to… buy me a car? Who knows.

Anyway, a few weeks ago as I organised a bunch of cosmetics and skincare I’d taken home to test for work, I suddenly remembered that statement I’d made to my mum.

And realised that the things we speak of, however lightly, always have some chance of coming true. Not necessarily in the way we imagine, but in such a way that even through the fog of intervening years, we can still recognise them. Maybe it’s these small, seemingly unimportant things that serve to remind us that our past and future are never separate from each other, even when all we can see of the present seems to tell us otherwise.

There are times in life when I just can’t imagine what’s ahead and sometimes I forget that whatever it is, it’s good. I’m so thankful for all the people, animals and things around me that constantly help me to remember that while some of the things I say are random, life never is.