Of past, present and future

19 September 2024

My month-long trip back home has come to a close.¹ The trip has been fruitful and satisfying, and it has been comforting being in a place and around people that feel like home.

This trip got me thinking plenty about the passing of time as I saw the changes that took place back home—buildings built up, solar panels installed on apartment roofs, new stores opened—all in my relatively short time away. Living in my childhood home once more with my parents, roaming about the neighbourhood I grew up in, and traversing through spaces that were once familiar—it truly was a time of travelling down memory lane. I could not help but feel a twinge of sadness at the thought that the places I used to know no longer are—

• the swimming complex with turnstiles, nerve-wreckingly large gaps at the bottom of shower stalls, and piping hot nuggets

• the library with turnstiles (yet again), librarians who would stamp due dates on a sheet pasted on the inside of back covers, and the children's section on the ground level with Asterix comics and Baby Sitters Club books on the left of the entryway

• the new library that followed after, where I would spend hours browsing on the third floor before looking for Dad on the first floor, which had self-borrowing machines where you could scan your books and borrow them (that was really exciting back then)

• the A&W near the library, where we would eat curly fries, ice cream waffles and drink root beer

• the Princess Theatre, which was old and said to be cockroach-infested, where I watched my first and only movie alone (it was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), and where the kacang putih man sold his nuts and snacks in rolled paper cones

• the arcade where I first played Time Crisis II—the only arcade game I care to play and can play no longer because these machines have disappeared a long time ago

• my grandparents' home (now my aunt's place), absent of the many furnishings that once filled it, now that yé ye and nǎi nai are gone

—these places that I used to go, now no longer accessible, existing only in fragments in distant memories of past. It is strange to be hit with the realisation that much of my childhood no longer exists physically, especially when I'm not even that old at all.

And it is not just in places that I see these changes, but in the people around me as well. In greying hair, weak limbs, and conversations about health issues, and in a visit to the columbarium, I see the passage of time hit the ones close to me—in the end, we are all truly human, from dust we came and to dust we return. This reminder has been sobering and yet a necessary catalyst for living for what really matters, for time and tide wait for no man.

"Time and tide wait for no man"—that was the title of the photo-essay book I produced at nineteen for my final-year project. In it, I wrote about the transitory nature of life and the changes that time brings. My photographs centred on the theme of change and transition, yet purposefully captured the beauty of the ordinary and everyday world around me. The message I had was simple—stop and smell the roses; appreciate the little moments in life. But the deeper meaning behind and the conviction that burned those years ago was this—in the face of a fleeting and transient life, live in the light of eternity.

And it is this truth that I need to hold on to more than ever now.

I don't want to keep chasing the wind, and for that, I will keep seeking.