09052011

Looking back into your eyes.

I'm not the same, years have past
It kind of scares me how it went so fast
It's a brand new game, life has past
And all I wanted was to make it last

(Brand New Game by Millencolin)

I started my morning with a song by Millencolin. I used to listen to this Swedish skate punk band a lot back when I was a teenager. The years of 14 and 15 went hand in hand with this band and I can still remember the majority of their lyrics and melodies by heart. They released their latest album, Machine 15, three years ago, which, now, seems like an eternity. They had a certain song on the album that struck me back then because I was about to leave my hometown, friends and family behind. Brand New Game sums up a whole load of old Millencolin songs in it by combining some of the lyrics of their older songs and their song titles as well. It's the sort of a looking-back-on-what-we've-done sentimentality song. And boy, does it get me on the verge of tears. It makes me look back into myself as the 15-year-old boy, troubled by acne and an identity in a crisis. The lost soul I was back then, or the one I thought I was.

I also read the speech I gave at my graduation ceremony for an audience of approximately 500 people. The speech was about summing up my high school years. I was on the verge of crying while giving that speech because it was partly about the huge pile of friends breaking up and dissolving into various directions. The speech was a great success and people praised it as a better speech than a politician had given in the same ceremony right before me. All that mattered to me was that my friends had thought it was good.

Last summer after I had served in the military for a year and had gone on a three-week backpacking journey around Europe I came back home and started preparing to move out from my parents' place. I decided to kill some waiting by watching The Lord Of The Rings -trilogy - one part of the trilogy per day. I never got around to watching the third one to the end. I was on the verge of crying for the last hour of the movie and finally when the ending was closing in and the best of the friends in the saga were about to break up, I couldn't take it anymore and burst out in violent tears. You know, not the typical sobbing during the ending credits of the movie but enormous gawks of tears and I had to get away from the movie, turn off the television and get somewhere else. My own fellowship was breaking and I was leaving for other shores as well.

This morning when I was shaving my beard I came up with a thought: I want to be a person whom people will later on in their lives look back to and appreciate the single fact that they have got to meet me - I want to be a person who has done everything in his life.

I'm about to head down to the city soon to continue my preparations for next year. I'm really leaving. I'm about to do something people can only dream of, again. I'm on the verge of taking another step towards what I want to be like someday. The person who has done everything. The person you want to have met. And that, that gives me a humongous amount of self-confidence.

No one knows what the future brings but I know the future is mine.

.maybe one day i'll be happy.