we're looking for the beach cafes as we walk along the sidewalks of cronulla, a beachside suburb in sydney. we meet a nice old lady who is everything a nice old lady can be.

"where are the beachside cafes?" we ask.

"i'm going towards them. you can walk with me," she says, with a welcoming smile and a soft, gentle voice. she interviews us and says, "welcome to australia," when she finds out we're not locals and were here for world youth day.

"coming home from work?" i ask, noticing her bag and the time of day.

"oh, no no. i was playing bingo with the other old ladies. we play bingo every monday. but my feet were sore and i decided to go for a walk." after which, she starts explaining bingo to us.

as we reach the first cafe, she bids us the kind of goodbye which you say to someone you've known for some time and you're seeing off at an airport or something and walks into the st vincent de paul store for a little afternoon shopping.

we walk down to the beach and it is, whats-the-best-word...pleasant. some young guys are playing some sorta rugby, it's almost sunset, we muse about how nice it is that there is a gym facing the sea and how the locals' equivalent of playing basketball on concrete between concrete in singapore is playing soccer on the beach surrounded by the waves and the majestic hues of the sunset sky every evening in cronulla.

and it's hard to imagine that just 2.5 years ago, racial riots occured here. and fast-forward to today, as i'm sitting in the car while we're on the way to dinner, i think about all this and my life and the lives of people i know while listening to the conversations going on around me about the strife and joys of other people. why do people do this? why do people tear at themselves and at each other when they have everything?

as the conversation in the car moves along, so do my thoughts. we're talking about the difficult yet necessary choices people have had to make. i breathe in deeper and my heart beats faster. will i ever dare to make those choices, at least one? a choice that will forever change the course of my life? while i was in sydney, we had a conversation about che guevera and the motorcycle diaries. his initial path was to be a doctor and a roadtrip changed his life forever. but the crucial step was allowing that change to take place. i know i've yet to be so much more, and i have the most ominous and pressing feeling that it will mean that my life will be forever changed and that makes me want to just be, well, not much. but then, boom boom boom like fireworks in my heart, these dreams rise up from time to time and send electric shocks through me. at these times, i feel like my heart would just burst through me any second if i sit here any longer. then, i just let the moment pass me by, i let the dreams grow smaller, i shrink with them. will these dreams forever pound against my chest, waiting to take flight, waiting to be..something? waiting?

i was watching a movie on my laptop with earphones plugged in when i heard the low and loud rumble of the fighter planes probably preparing for national day. i run to the window and look for them in the sky. this is my second favourite part of national day (first being fireworks, of course). and as i gazed at those planes, i was washed over by an epiphany. it's like you were in one of those planes, soaring, where you should be. i don't want your dreams to forever pound against your chest either.

i think about all this now. the collective pain and joy of this world. i think of how even the forgotten and the unlikely ones would each have their moments of glory and tragedy and romance and heartbreak and everything in between, how each one of us could have an epic movie made after us. and my gosh, it hits me that this world is so alive! all these desires, whether it is the desire to be with someone you love, the desire to end it all, the desire to have it all, all these desires that drive us, mould us, tear us apart and make us beautiful all at once, all these emotions and motions, all this...life!

try it, just zoom in to one person right now, anyone, and then imagine everything you can to the finest details about this person's life. i used to do that and still do sometimes. i'd be sitting in the bus, looking out of the window, and my eyes would zoom in onto the elderly man on his bicycle at the side of the road or the construction worker sitting at the back of a lorry. i'd start imagining what they were like as kids together with all the innocence and brutality of being a kid, the aches in their hearts as they remembered home and wives and girlfriends and lovers-who-never-were and their favourite food and their daily rituals, the pangs of loneliness that just couldn't be shaken off, did they lose someone they love? was this the life they imagined they would one day live? and the dreams they carried in their hearts, are they still pounding against their chests or have they been set free?

and it's funny because i realise now that the more i turn my eyes onto myself, the less i am aware that i am alive and have a mission and dreams. yet, the more i look at the world and the more i am a witness to the lives of others, the more i find this sense of hope and awe, and with that, the awareness that i am, indeed, more alive than ever and have a mission and purpose here.

do you dare do you dare do i dare?