Lost Souls

On a tired day after work, I sat in the MRT train and stared blankly at the people who boarded and alighted. Many of them like me were making their way home. You could tell from the drained looks on their faces and slouching bodies that they too had a hard and exhausting day at work.

A colleague of mine was telling me his routine of life: Every Monday to Friday morning, he wakes up, rushes to work, works for a good part of the day, heads back home after work, bathes and has dinner, watches a bit of television and is too tired to do anything else, so goes to bed. The next working day is the same and the weekend is the only time to catch up on his hobbies and meeting friends. He ends up feeling real tired if he squeezes too much activities for the weekend but feels his time would be wasted if he does nothing.

This is most likely the routine of many other Singaporeans and perhaps many of us are too caught up in our lives and work that it becomes a neverending cycle. We become like mindless machines that go through the motion of life. The days become nights and the nights become days and in time, we resemble soul-less zombies with a meaningless existence.

In a fast moving society like Singapore, people are always rushing about to meet impossible deadlines. They hurry here and there, all in the name of making enough money to make ends meet. They tend to worry about work a lot and thus feel immense stress. To make matters worse, fatigue wears them out.

As I sit and stare at people go by, somehow I can't help feeling as if the world is full of wandering souls, just drifting through existence.