I’ve been asked difficult questions lately. Questions pertaining my future and difficult grown-up things like that. It is sometimes funny how someone could throw these kinds of questions to me casually and expect me to answer them in an instant, as if I have all of my life-plans laid out nicely in my mind. As if I have psychic power to oversee my future and how I am going to live my life 10 years from now on. As if I have an inkling of what I am going to do in 10 years’ time.

Like, the other day, I was browsing cooking books at Best Eastern with my cousin when she asked me that question. What am I going to be in the future? Oh a doctor.. – I answered her offhandedly even though I knew that she expected my answer to be more than that, more succinct, more descriptive, more telling, and I suppose, more ambitious. Something that I, myself, don’t even know at this stage.
2 weekends ago, I went out to a party with my sister. Someone had also asked me the exact same question after my sister told him that I am a medical student. I only shrugged helplessly and turned my attention to the drink in my hand as if the cup held the answer to universe’s secrets.

Sometimes, it scares me that I still don’t know the direction I am heading. Sometimes, I find myself looking for the glimpse of light that will lead me to my future life. Back in New Zealand, I used to envy my classmates as we sipped coffees, as we traded ambitions. Like J, he knows he wants to be a surgeon, he can feel it in his blood. And with my ‘fatherly’ buddy Mr.P, maxillofacial is his dream. And Ann already sees herself as an ED doctor, happiest in the hustle bustle of an emergency department. Most people I know already seem to know what they are after.



My eldest brother, also my biggest supporter in choosing this field, has time and time again reminds me of my childhood aspiration to become a psychiatrist. Ha. I flicked through my high school graduation’s magazine and saw my page, where I wrote that I am going to be a psychiatrist. There was no hesitation, then. As if I already knew then, that is of course what I am going to be. I wonder how I could feel such confidence in me at that age. I wonder how I used to know my aims in life. I wonder how it feels like to know.

Now a few years down the track, I am mostly teetering in the land of uncertainties. I have forgotten to have ambitions, other than surviving my attachments. Sometimes, I need reminders of my childhood aspirations to motivate me. Most of the time though, I still don’t know what am I doing or how am I going to turn out in the future. For that, I guess, I’ll just have to wait.