Closure

For those who were looking forward to reading some new posts, my apology if I have not posted regularly for the last week or so. Still trying to rebuild my strength and it has been hard with ups and downs (more downs than ups) occurring throughout the week and within the day.

In the last few days, a couple of thoughts kept popping up in my mind and I guess it is again one of those prompting that I cannot ignore. In fact, over the years these thoughts and feelings had occasionally cropped up but I had no means of addressing them but now that I have this blog, I guess I have an avenue to seek closure for these past events.

When I was studying in Saint Andrew’s Junior College (SAJC), I knew this guy who was in the same year as me and who was a member of my present church and who was also in the Senior Youth Fellowship. We were sort of close but not to the “best friend” extend. I was trying to get to know him and there was once I asked him if he would join me for a movie and he agreed. Can’t remember what we watched but I remembered that at the end of the movie, he got into a sort of altercation with the person sitting behind him as it seem that guy was continuously kicking my friend’s seat throughout the movie. What happened next is not what I was particularly proud of as I walked away while my friend was continuing with the “conversation” with the guy behind him. It was a cowardly act and over the years I was beating myself over my sort of “abandonment” of my friend. After we graduated, he for some reason also left church and we lost contact. I had not been able to trace him and had not been able to seek closure for my cowardly behavior then.

When I enlisted and was undergoing Basic Military Training (BMT), I wasn’t the strongest or fittest guy in my platoon. I weigh about 55kg and could hardly do 3 pull up and failed my 2.4km run several times. Physically, it was really difficult for me. There was once the platoon was punished for something that I forgotten what it was and the platoon was ordered to run up a small sloping track to a particular tree and touch the tree and run back to where we started. For those who had undergone BMT in the 80’s, you would know what I was talking about. The platoon was running together and obviously some were faster and some slower. There was a small group of guys led by this Eurasian chap who took it upon themselves to be the kind of “guardian” for the platoon and they held everyone back and got everyone to run as a group which was good in terms of “teamwork”. As I mentioned, I wasn’t the fittest guy and thus was one of the slowest but the pace these guys was leading the pack/platoon was so slow that I knew we would get some more punishment from our instructors. Wasn’t the brightest thing to do but I broke from the platoon and ran on ahead towards the tree and my thoughts then was that if majority of us could reach the tree quickly, the few who were fittest could always turn back to help the slower folks. Anyway, we did get it from our instructors for the slow pace regardless of the “teamwork”. Anyway, concerning this Eurasian guy, I got plenty of expletives that I can use on him and one of his mantra was “do onto others what you would not want others to do onto you”. He was a good looking guy, charismatic, well to do financially and he got a bunch of backers in the platoon. Needless to say, my life got pretty much unpleasant after that with cut boot and shoe laces, missing tower that I had to buy to replace, toothpaste in my boots, etc. Why you might ask why is this one of the closure I seek? I really don’t know because I don’t know if I had to go through the same thing again, will I still make the same decision? What I knew is that I had made the choice then based on what I could have tolerated physically but obviously, these are the least of concerns for those guys who put “teamwork” ahead of others physical suffering or tolerance. From BMT, I made it to Non-Commissioned Officer School and from there to Officer Cadet School (OCS). You can guess the surprise on this Eurasian guy’s face when he saw me in OCS. I did not make it through OCS though. I was so weak that I had a relapse of my asthma that was in remission since I was 14 and had to drop out of OCS.

That’s it. I know it is kind of a selfish post as I seek closure for myself.

Please pray for me as physically I feel worse now than when I was in BMT. My weight is lower at 53.7kg compared to my peak of 68kg.

In God We Trust and in Christ alone my hope is found.

Hebrews 11:1