empty

I don't have a glamorous life. I have just enough to go by and enjoy some bits of luxuries here and there. I do have a PS2 and a 29-inch television so that's pretty tasty. However, most other things come at intervals which would make others cry. I'm not whining though, I think I have a fantastic life right now. I have good friends, I have nice acquaintances, and I don't live in a basket or anything like that. God has been really good to me.

When sometimes I evaluate myself as a person, one thing pops up almost always: the empty feeling that I have. Sure, I'm terribly busy with all the extra-curri stuff that I'm doing. I nary get a breather sometimes. And the consequence? Well, my friends don't see much of me as they used to (don't know whether that's a good thing or not, though). Yet, I enjoy all these things. I really do. If you examine my heart, you'll see how happy and fulfilled I am by all the things that I'm doing. Many of these things never even reach the ears or eyes of the community that I am in.

I crave not attention. I crave not recognition. I crave not rewards. I crave not admiration. And I definitely crave not pity. When I do something, the realization that it is for a worthy, noble cause is enough reward for all the work put into it...at least for a night...

But I guess what I'm really trying to say is that behind all the titles, behind the reputation and the fame, behind the congratulations and the handshakes, behind the overly overrated perception of my intelligence, I'm really just someone trying to find something which will make up that emptiness.

When I fail at whatever, when I don't perform as my community expects of me, and when there's nothing for me to do for lack of inspiration, I cringe...temporarily. But after a while, that weird feeling is gone and I'm back once again at my seemingly perennial dilemma. And after comes the bitter sensation that if I had that one thing which I crave, then my failures would mean nothing, because compared with that one thing all the failures in the world are nothing.

I can't back out from this situation. My options are wide open yet I refuse to take any of them. I'm stuck with the assumption that maybe life has better plans in store for me in the future...maybe it isn't my time yet to be complete.

There's one thing that I'm sure of though, the one thing which holds me through all this clutter, and that is I, Ryu Uchida, Master of the Universe, will not willingly let go...If it leaves me, then it leaves me. And that, my dear friends, is the end of it.