The breeze sends a familiar chill. Christmas is a sneeze away, and the world is now again revolving around a giant Christmas tree. Gift wrappers and alluring promos wreak havoc on pockets and wallets. Christmas carols are now commonplace. Though the carolers are rare these days, the idea of Christmas still remains alit. The melody that never fails to elicit an aura of peace and humanity is immortalized by the people who remain steadfast in the tenet that Christmas is and will always be the most wonderful time of the year.

The one most surprising thing I've met thus far is the sole Christmas decor in our home. I was literally caught flabbergasted, jawdropped, and a smirk popped ephemerally. The reclusive psychedelic ball of mesmerizing light was the eccentric piece that lifted the dormant Christmas spirit in me. It has been years since I saw an ornament hanged in our home, more so a scintillating one. It was a crude contraption, made up of flaps of semi-stubborn plastic. It illuminated our congested terrace. Little streaks of kaleidoscopic light rested on the surface of dusty stocks of old boxes. It illumed by frayed eyes.

I just got home, and the sight I beheld replenished my dried energy. I never really expected someone will put up something of the like inside or outside our home. It was just too Christmasy. I took my phone, click on its camera and started to take a shot; a still moment in the perpetually moving world of blatant bitterness. It was a sweet panorama moving below and in front of it; a novel taste to the once tedious and bland universe that is our home. Christmas has once again touched the dried scales of our abode. It was simply heartwarming; a relief amidst the chilly atmosphere of late December.

Allow me this night to once again be desultory. Although this is more or less in the same context, the year is drawing to a close. The curtain of 2010 is incrementally falling down on the stage. The decade will now be ending, and a new dawn breaks the silent sky. As the stars slowly disappear above the sky, a new light peeping behind the clouds is a beacon of a fresh start. With my batchmates in Psychology about to graduate this March, I will once again be left behind. It's a sad ordeal, but sh*t happens from time to time. All we can ever do is take head on what life throws out you. Whatever fate spoonfeeds you with, the best thing and the only thing that can happen is open your mouth wide enough for it to see that you will not falter, and you will not slow down. In the end, we defecate every bit of it.

I am not getting any younger, and as my age indicates the true face behind the facade of inexplicable youth, I am way passed my pre-pubescent years. Although I have yet captured my true intent and my destined purpose, I am continually in the grueling search of an atrocious ending to my not-so-extraordinary life. I will be graduating in the not-so-far month of October, and that in itself is not ascertained to me. Nothing is certain. It would be an excruciating plight for me to witness my friends receive a piece of paper to certify that they have finished college. In my 23 years living, breathing, and travelling, I have known nothing else but the four walls of bureaucratic education. I have known the heartbreaks of failing, the wretched grins of a not deserved success, and the suppressed joys of a job well done. The pesky murmurs of an assortment of instructors, the sudden evolution of teaching, and the sharp decline of quality, I have been through. I have been here long enough to notice that more and more students are settling for substandard. I have been one with almost every clique, and the years that I lost is coming back to terrorize my focus.

Come March, I will be green with envy. I should have been one of those who'd traverse the platform of half-hearted success. I should have been one of those who'd receive a thin paper that certifies your credibility as a worthy denizen of a third-world nation. I should have been one of those who'd don a toga that symbolizes my worthiness of being called a rational being. But I am not one of those who'd giddily wait for that moment. I am here, and this is exactly where I should be. I could think of many should-have-beens to audaciously stir reality, it is where I am right now that I should be thankful for. For without the mistakes I've made, the lapses I delayed myself with, and the pit holes that served as my own traps, I would not have conceived my own person today.

Take what life throws at you. It may not usually be that appealing, it's going to fit in perfectly. It's not what life gives you, but it's what you take out of what life gives you that matters more than anything. The things you get from it are indispensable. As for me, I might have delayed my journey; I gained a better look at the scenery that is often taken for granted. Life after all, is never only for the quick.

Journey on! We are journeymen in a self-diluted promenade. It's when you learn to strip yourself of harnesses that you realize how breathtaking life is. Grab hold to nothing but a pen, a paper, and an open mind. Life, I believe is continually in motion. And we are gyrating with it or against it.

Happy 5-days-to-go-before-Christmas!