Before Sunrise

I am not going to write in structured manner for this post. I have always written like this to avoid getting out of hand or saying too much that is unnecessary. But for this post, I am going to go light and unstructured. This is line with the screenplay I read on one of my favourite movies: Before Sunrise.

This book reminds me of the bluster and fluster of youth. Of the chance encounters that we so often experienced when we goes in head first during the heady days of our younger days. Of the heady idealism and constant intellectual musings that we seemed so intense when we read a great book or chanced upon a brilliant idea. Of the light and fluffy conversations that we often have with ourselves when we think of the future. The only difference is that it is based on actual conversation between an actual couple. This is coupled with one long take of movie with a no cuts at all of a film. The constant flow of intelligent conversation seems to flow like champagne overflowing out of a bottle.

The serendipitous nature of the chance encounter of an American writer and a French student is something that as a young university student we all wished that we have. They even meet a poet in the middle of street who wrote a poem spontaneously for an unsolicited fee and coupled with a fortune telling gypsy that they tell them a fortune. This is not a cliché, this is what sliding doors is about and serendipity should be about.

Of course, in Singapore, I have no illusions that such encounters would happen, of meeting a jobless poet writing a poem on the street or gypsy telling my fortune or even watching a German film with deep intellectual musings, but the spirit of the whole encounter gives hope that in my not too distant future that something serendipitous would happen to me.

Of meeting someone who is my intellectual equal and then spontaneously some feelings will blossomed out of this rather chance encounter. Someone out there is some girl who thinks like me and who is really smart, pretty, eloquent and somewhat neurotic.

Meeting someone like this would be a dream to me and I think deep down inside me I think I still hold that dream but life has told me that I was creating my cliché as well and sometimes a fantasy is really just a fantasy.

Meeting girls was the easy part and holding onto them was the difficult part- and that was one of lessons that I learnt in life. But as I begin to fade away from this fantastical future that I created in my youth, I have began to realise that there were more to life than love really.

There was much more things left unexplored that somehow parochial youth can be- it is almost oxymoronic to say that really. Youth seems to be about boundless opportunities and exploration but really we were indulged so much in that world-view that we did not realise how narrow-minded our point-of-view. Everything was about love, sex, travelling and exploration that we forgot to look in ourselves for exploration.

There was no need to go exploring to find ourselves, there was a lot in our backyard worth exploring that we simply overlooked while in search for excitement. But really, what we want is excitement and not about discovery. It was not about finding ourselves but about fulfilling some fantasy that we harbour. There was something more "real" that we leave behind that lots of movies, music, books and magazines do not tell you.

As I leave behind the light-headedness of the screenplay of Before Sunrise, I began to realise that even though, my fantasy never did get fulfilled literally [ but in reality, I got quite close to it], life did not dealt me a heavy hand, in fact, they dealt me a hand which gives me a surprises. It was surprisingly more fulfilling than my fantasy, there is an indescribable satisfaction that I have right now, rather than chasing some dream that I made up years ago that was manufactured for me by the media that I read, watch and listen. It was not light-headedness, it was lack of for a better word: just "there".

I hope you reach that stage too.