I don’t remember the last time I just thought – felt the breeze of the air conditioner pass over my skin, every oscillation after every oscillation a reminder that I was growing up in a controlled environment where things were somehow regulated and modulated, that this space that I was a part of was a part of a training, it seems, for the broader world.
The thing I’ve learned about training though is that life seems to be an unending series of trainings or exams – and how well you do in the ‘training’ determines whether you can progress to the next stage; there is no real ‘final’ moment or exam – everything is merely a preparation or a test to see if you can get onto specific paths, where again you will be tested.
In school, you go for your first trainings – arithmetic, English, literature, history. In classrooms you sit, listening to the teacher either wax lyrical or drone (most likely drone), told that you must sit for the first term exam; after the first term, you’re told not to get complacent – the second term awaits. A succession of second terms come and go and before you know it, they’re telling you about an SPM, an SAT, a GRE, and before you know it, you are 50+, the SPM becomes PMS (if applicable), and you realize that whoops, it was all exams all the way down.
…But that’s if you’re ~ privileged ~, as society might say.
If you’re not ~ privileged ~ in that way, surely you don’t have exams – surely you wouldn’t be tested.
But nope, life isn’t that simple. Job applications with no degree? Those are exams. They’re harder though, since you didn’t take those other exams. Marketing and sales to a random prospect? An exam. Dating? Exam. Meeting in-laws? Exam. Marriage? The ultimate exam…
And you get to do it all over again when you have a kid and the exams continue!
Life is interesting in that way – an unending test, a continuing challenge that never really ends.
In that sense, I think it could be easy or tempting to think about slowing down, retiring, stopping, having the challenge disappear – but I think it is rather more healthy to think that challenges are normal, and part of the basic structure of the universe; they can be arbitrarily difficult and tough, but even ‘overcoming’ any particular exam or challenge is never the end.
In a way, I feel that life is an eternal overcoming of oneself – I’ve definitely felt this to be true in recent days, whether the objective results match my aspirations or my sense of self.
The challenge is to accept that and to continue to strive, knowing that in the best of worlds, from the greatest men that history provides, that the challenges will not end – but they will only become more grand and interesting.
