Where Have All...

... the flowers gone? The other day, I sat down with old books of bygone days. Believe it or not, I once was a high school student, a junior collegian, a person with a life. I looked through the pages of the fading yearbook, and I saw many gaps. Everyone is old now, and some are dead. Some of us are old but look young, but the past is a country barred and gated against our free transit.

I have a visitor's pass though. I have a secret visa. That visa is a privilege granted to those of us who have the fortune to teach those who are younger. In a way, as these people grow up, you get to see glimpses of the old country.

You remember sports and heartbreak; you remember crowded cafeteriae and corridors outside classrooms. You remember hostility and love, misunderstanding and black comedy. You remember crushes and being crushed. You remember the space under the stairs where you lounged around with someone you never saw again.

I am fortunate in many ways. I have seen things and I have loved and I have fought a good fight and I have been happy. I only wish, and know that it will never all be granted, that those who came after me will also have been happy. And every day I wish, I pray, that some lessons learnt will be good ones, worth the learning — and not bad ones, hardly worth the pain.