Glorious Inferno

There had been a time earlier this year, when I written a post lamenting my age, or lack thereof. It’d been hard being 25 - an age where you have all the responsibilities of an adult without any of the credibility of one.

As we near the end of the year - inevitably older, all of us, that post has already begun to strike me as naive. I’ve had one of those balls-to-the-wall days, the kind in which you see people and their machinations approaching from a distance. The kind where you are privy to incredible rudeness and self-interest.

But instead of striking back with all the vitriol of fresh outrage like you would have before, there is sudden realisation that it makes sense to choke it back - just for now. That you are going to be here a long, long time and at that some point as the circle reaches a close, you are going to need all the allies you have.

Funny thing about allies - they are simply people who haven’t turned on you yet. Maybe, everyone’s search for lasting relationships- platonic or otherwise - would be less tortured if they understood and accepted that.

It also occurs to you that maybe there isn’t a satisfactory denouement - an ending where everyone who’s ever crossed you dies in a glorious inferno and you get exactly what you want, right before the folks at Fortune come over to put you on the cover. (I must, however, note with some satisfaction how Facebook has shown that all the people who made high school an ordeal for my formerly fat self are now themselves supremely fat.)

The real sort of ending to strive for, you suppose, is one in which you’ve managed to make the sum total of your insignificance add up to more than it should. To have enjoyed the few moments in life in which the universe hadn’t been playing hacky-sack with your happiness. Maybe everything else - including the enemies-in-a-glorious-inferno scenario - is a bonus.

So you think about your year, the year in which you learnt to take dressing-downs, to mouth platitudes and to say ‘ok, will do’ when what you really mean is ‘fuck off’.

And after all that time passes and you find yourself on the spent end of 2010, more grim but more calm, you realize something else.

Being young is a problem that takes care of itself.