Birthday Post: Gone in 60 seconds

Looks like another year passed and I am now officially 23 years old. Not that old in comparison to many of my friends but as compared to the last generation, people my age would already have a kid or two. Sometimes it does dawn on me on knowing or perhaps feeling how lucky I am to have celebrated yet another year of blowing candles atop a birthday cake. Life as I see it is getting more and more fragile, which of course only makes me value it so much more. A cousin of someone close to me passed away recently merely from having stomach pain. Unable to detect what was wrong, he and his wife did not think much of it and his life ended while he was in bed. An uncle of my friend passed away recently as well. He had a heart attack while having a bowl of congee and there and then, another life taken. I used to think that birthdays are actually just another occassion for us to get more pocket money, invite a few friends over and if we are older, an excuse to kick back some booze but somehow it acts like a measurement tool for me. No one really knows how long we have to live but one thing's for sure, not everyone live their lives to the fullest everyday. At least not me. And I do feel that it's sad that I am not able to make everyone around me happy all the time, not able to make my parents feel that I am the best son that they hoped for me to be, not being able to make my girlfriend feel like she is the princess that I said she was and not being the friend whom my friends could always count on. But I do try... just that I might not be trying hard enough. I once said to someone close to me, "If you can't please everyone, first please yourself." Everyone is selfish but we can choose not to be. Many chose to devote their lives to helping others, making peoples' live more pleasant. Many more don't. Have you ever dreamt of dying? I have. It's a funny thing that I can recall many of my dreams because when I wake up, I usually replay the dream that I just had and that is why I can remember it. In my dream, the pain of dying is not seeing that you are no longer breathing, but the pain of seeing everyone close to you crying. I have waken up with tears in my eyes and I could literally feel my heart ache. Every second that pass, we cannot recover and it may be for that second, I, we could have made someone smile. I caught a movie recently and it talks exactly about that, time that was lost and could not be recovered. That movie was Click. Expecting a comedy and comedy I got but more to that was how Adam Sandler fast forwarded so much of his life, that before he could appreciate everything that he got, everything was gone. He got a second chance. We don't. I remember talking to my friends, talking about starting a business and such, that the most important thing is actually the destination and not the journey. It does not matter how or what we do to get there but most importantly, we get the job done and get the results that we desire. Come to think of it, where is the joy of succeeding when you don't even know how you got it? Simple example; Spending pocket money and spending your hard earned money.
This post is supposed to be a recollection of how my birthday celebration went but I guess I got off track. So I am going to have "Birthday post: Gone in 60 seconds" as my title because after the first minute, I proceeded to writing something irrelevant. Turning 23 somehow makes me feel scared. So many people at my age already achieved so much and have so much responsibilities to bear but me? I still live my life day to day. I guess this time, I really got to grow up. And this time, no more procrastinating.
Just want to say thank you to everyone that made this year's birthday the best ever (apart from the one I had 23 years ago), reason being, everyone whom I care for was with me, love and friendships rebonded. Darrell said to me before the night ended, "Hope that next year will be the same." Touche my friend, the same and so much more.
Maybe my next post will be about how I celebrated my birthday... and hope that I won't go off track again. Good night everyone. And thank you for being a part of my time.