how we choose get through life. We don’t ever get to choose the path we will tread, much the same as how I got allocated a white outline of a plot of land and told to dig – even after I looked up, a little worried, “this seems like a really hard place to start, do I continue digging?”
I could feel the roots as I started work, and I knew that the deeper I dug the more there were waiting for me. Knowing that did not make it easier. For every one that I had to hack away at, I felt relieved that the ground was now clear, but was immediately seized with another wave of despair because I know that the next one would be thicker and longer and even harder to remove. Those spanning roots felt like the hands of some outside forces trying to hold me back from getting further.
The process of getting a scholarship very much reminded me of this unearthing of roots. Each selection round left me feeling anxious, and each time it was a success I was so happy afraod for the next one that I know for sure would be harder. Each stage I cleared only landed me at a new starting line, and I have no idea how much further I must go, or if there even will be a finishing line. Even getting the scholarship is nowhere near the end – it is yet again only the start. How deep do these roots go? Every time I found a new one, I cannot help but complain.
As I kept going, I gradually became conscious of the noise my blade was making as it cut into the ground. The metal was ringing as it struck clay and refused to bite in deep enough. I thought to myself – what the hell, I thought the roots were it, am I digging a shellscrape or mining for one? I worked so hard to swing my blade and get the clay out, but it felt like I was doing nothing. I wanted to keep going during the rest breaks because I knew that I could not finish it in time. How could I afford to rest despite knowing that?
As I struck the ground again and again and again and again, frustration turned the air sticky and painful at my throat. It was as though I was convulsing on a fistful of cotton. Swinging again and again and picking up those rocks pathetically with my hands, the inside of my spectacles started swimming with water that is not sweat. What the hell what the hell what the hell! Is this it? Is this my limit?
This is my limit. I have hit something that no matter how hard I try I could not break through. At some point in my life, perhaps career-wise or relationships wise, I will be made aware of my best and the seemingly impossible task of doing better. That is so incredibly frustrating. Is this really all I am capable of? I kept thinking “it was a trick of fate that I had this plot of land to work with because someone believed that I could do it” – but also “what if someone else could handle this shitty situation better than me?”
All these, while everyone else around me were shovelling up two mounds of soil and are halfway below ground. They were so fast. And I was so slow. I kept looking around me even thought I know I should not. I kept trying to comfort myself that I got a terrible place to dig, even though I knew that it was a terrible excuse. At some point in time, somebody from an earlier batch would have had to unearth an unbroken ground for the first time and they did it. I had no excuse.
In whatever race in life, there will always be people around me that I will unconsciously compare myself to, and from now on it is almost inevitable that people will compare me with those around and before or after me. I still have not found the way for me to manage that.
At the three hours mark, the whistle blew and my heart sank. I was relieved because I was finally allowed to give up. We had to lie down in the shellscrape we dug (or whatever resembles one). As I proned in my sorry excuse of a shellscrape, I felt freaking pathetic and wanted to become one with the shadow of a tree behind me. Lying in the shape of my failure, shivering with a shameful emotion that I could not name, I realised that striding through life is like digging this terrible shellscrape. Things will only get harder. I can choose to throw down my ET blade and stick and wallow in a shallow hole saying that “this is it, this is my limit”. I had thought of doing that and refined that vision till it is so clear that in my delirious state I thought I had done just that.
But I didn’t. I was crying and feeling like shit because I didn’t give up and all that effort was for nothing. It dawned on me that when the only alternative is to quit, I have to push myself to carry on swinging that stupid blade over and over, blisters and tears and all, in shellscrape digging and life and all.
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