Those Forked Roads

My observation during a bus journey yesterday led me to rethink about whether people need to dream or find their authentic self, thoughts which preoccupied my previous blog. I had earlier on concluded that people who are authentic seem more alive.

The counselling center which I am attached to is at Eunos, near the Eunos Cresent Wet Market and Hawker Centre. I was in a bus on my way home from Eunos yesterday when I noticed that every single passenger in the fully occupied lower deck is an elderly person probably 55 and above. I started to observe the faces of people sitting just across me on the side bench, the passengers standing at the front half as well as any face within my view. Other than 2 elderly ladies engaged in a chat, the rest stared into empty space with eyes that don't seem to catch any passing object. It gave me the impression that each mind is adrift and watching a film rolling out scene after scene from the past, from a day ago perhaps or maybe a week ago or a month or a year or years, who knows. I thought to myself there must be thousands of scenes over a 50 year span, each unique to every single person. I wonder about each individual life story just as I know my own and I thought to myself, just in this bus there are so many stories untold.

My frivolous reflections could have been influenced by 4321, a book which I have been reading that tells 4 stories of a single person from the same set of parents but growing up under 4 different sets of circumstances. Apart from the inherent DNA which more or less determines his character and inclinations, the life stories of the  main character in the book are shaped by incidents that happened in his close circles as well as events in his country and the world. Within each set of  circumstances dished out by destiny, choices had to be made along the way, quite like a fish having to find its way in a whirlpool. The sense of lost opportunities and Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" come to mind often. Each of the 4 lives has its own share of drama. What also strikes me is the rippling effect a person's actions has on those around him and they in turn stir another level of ripples. Hence people have to steer their lives around these currents. In the book the 4 identical characters moved towards the same authentic self which their destined DNA bestowed, that of a writer.

Those drifting minds in the bus, those unseeing eyes. I wonder whether they are revisiting the forked roads in their lives.