Life is much different than it was 5 years ago for me. 5 Years ago I was still living in San Jose, CA starting my senior year of high school and I still remember those days and how much has changed since then. Ever since then, I don’t have the same friends as I used to, I have my own money, I live in a different area, I have a stable job, and most of all I am still the same person but with a different mindset. I remember when I used to hang with my buddies from High School from Homestead I would feel a little different from them because they had a different lifestyle than they did. Even when I hung out with my friends from Cupertino High, I felt that I was different from them as well. I felt a bit more mature and more sophistacated than them. One moment in particular that I felt that I was more mature than my friends from Homestead was when I would hear them talking about their experiences they had getting drunk or smoking which dissapointed me because they always seemed a bit better than that. I never felt any real resentment towards them for doing that but I was still proud of them because my friendships with them were unique. I’ll always remember the fun times when I would see them in those times bt I felt I was lucky to move away from those group of friends of mine that were slowly but surely falling into a path that I was not set for. However, I remember five years ago in high school, I had a group of friends I dubbed the “Magnficent Seven” which was me, Anand, Vinod, Mohammed, Manu, Jason, and Hong. We were a close bunch but what I remember the most was that we were all smart and we never really had any problems with each other. I considered Anand to be a good friend of mine and we always got along well even though we never really agreed on much. We did a lot together in those times including going to the movies, studying, writing papers, and even going to eat out as well. Vinod was someone I considered to be truly awesome at that time cause we never had a disagreement and we seemed to click on all cylinders when it came to certain things (girls, movies, music, and school.) Mohammed was new to Cupertino so I had a difficult time getting to know him at first but after a while we seemed to get along just fine and we were never ran out of things to talk about. Manu, Jason, and Hong were sort of backdrop to my friendships with the other guys but they all had a good sense of humor when the time was right. However, what I remember most about 5 years ago was that I didn’t have to worry about anything. These days, I have to worry about saving money, putting gas in my car, making time for family and friends, finishing school, continuing to remind myself at the Big Red Machine that it’s not about me anymore and I have to enahnce talent rather than putting myself over in my head. It’s difficult to explain but when I was 17 I had no plans to find myself fighting over the fact that maybe life would be different if this happened or if this person never met this person. The truth is life would be different if I got toegther with a girl at the end of my high school tenure, and of course I always the millions upon millions of “what if” questions and some of them are:
What if I never moved to San Jose in the first place?
What if my brother and his girlfriend never stay together?
What if my dad never bought his first car after getting his license?
What if we never bought a car in the first place?
What if I never had found a job at the Big Red Machine? Would my life be better or worse?
What if my mom’s family actually started talking to each other again?
What if my dad’s family didn’t treat him like him like garbage?
OK you get the point life would be much different if all these things had happened in this time frame. If I didn’t find a job I would probably had never met all the wonderful people that work with me or have worked with me including(but not limited to): Ricardo, JB, John S., Audrey, James K., Dustin, Phillip, Manut, Alex R., and Jimmy. I always wonder what would life be like if we didn’t own a car and the truth is maybe our lives would be different and we would actually be a lot closer as a family. Not to say that we aren’t close it’s just you create a lot more memories when you ride not in a car. It’s also pretty funny how my parent’s relationships with their brothers and sisters have changed over the past few years. My dad has been someone that I’ve admired ever since I saw how he sacrficed for me when I wasn’t working and he would pay for my books and my school. I owe him big time for that and it kills my spirit when I see how his family treats him. He doesn’t get the attention and he never will because the people that do the most get the the least because they aren’t appreciated in the end. My mom has also had a pretty strained relationship with her brothers and sisters but I think that’s mostly because she’s the middle child and she has to take care of the younger siblings. It’s as if they are divided and they will only side with each other if so and so agrees with them. But whatever family conflcit is common and even though I hear it through phone coversations I know one day they will relaize the error of their ways and they’ll reconcile their differences. What we remember most of these days is not if we did things right or whether we did things the wrong way but we remember the reason it happened was because it was meant to be. Yeah sometimes a series of unfortunate events may happen but things happen for a reaon and the reason I’m writing this is to remind people that no matter how bad our lives get always remember there are people that have worse lives than we do and we complain about a bad day or a bad week. I think sometimes we have to be fortunate for what we have and as a good friend of mine used to say “It’s not about having what you want, it’s about wanting what you have”. Things happen for a reaon and at this timein my life I think all the good things are happening for a reason and even though something bad may pop out once in a while we just brush it off to become stronger later on.
Just Another Day... 