Since this year, I often have the feeling of losing something, something almost equivalent to a part of myself. The loss appears in many ways – in my essays, in my conversation with others, in my thinking process and in my way of looking at things. For quite a while, I have not been able to figure out exactly what I have lost. It seems that something has been missing, just that I don’t know what it is. Though it sounds cliché, but the feeling is precisely just like those people who have lost their memories depicted in TV serials – flashes of memories just come back in bits and pieces. While the feeling keeps getting stronger, it wasn’t until this afternoon that suddenly it became clear to me what I have lost.
Few weeks ago, my junior in hostel was asking me something about physics, more specifically about lenses. His question seemed simple enough, but I was stunned by my inability to answer it. When my sister asked me about some geography questions before her exam, once again I realised my incapability of clearing her doubts and recalling what I have learnt. Yes, this is what I have lost this year – the knowledge that I have gained in the past years. A large portion of it has already slipped out of my memory.
Just few days ago, I was chatting with Xiao Tian via MSN. I was deeply shocked when he told me that he is still taking Chinese at ‘A’ Level. This year, I have stopped taking Chinese as a subject, and I realise that since then, my command of the mother tongue has been deteriorating. Besides occasionally reading some Chinese books and magazines, listening to Chinese pop songs and talking to some of my friends in Chinese, I hardly write in Chinese or encounter Chinese in my daily life anymore. Even my name in Chinese appears a little strange to me now. It is a weird feeling, but you will only understand it when you have lost something which you have once being proud of, which you have once held dearly to and have put in much effort in learning it for the past 10 years of your life.
The same goes for the humanities subjects. While I have learnt a lot more about biology, chemistry and economics in this year, it has come at the expense of my knowledge in all other areas that I do not learn in school now. For example, now I find it harder to relate certain things that are reported in the papers to their historical contexts. While I have learnt about World War II and Cold War in my secondary school years, if you want me to explain certain things related to them now, I would have to frankly tell you that I have forgotten about them. For once, I realised the significance of the humanities in my life, even though it might be a bit too late.
Perhaps this is a fact of life that I have to learn to accept – when one grows up, one’s education tend to become more specialised. Well, for the moment, I guess the situation would only worsen, as I do not know of any method to stem the osmosis of information out of my mind, nor any way to store all the information in a device that would allow me to recall and use it as conveniently as my mind. As for now, the feeling of losing something would continue to haunt me, though at least now I am clearer of what I have lost – a loss that would be almost impossible to recover.
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