Three days ago, it was the second time I played basketball in my college after three years. It’s been a long time, I realized being dormant made my body rust. My movements were much slower than before, my reflexes were in a dismal form, and accuracy was off tangent… Just shows how slacking off can get deteriorate your form. But I realized one thing, my left eye's condition is deteriorating, I couldn’t see anyone or anything through the end of my left eye.

I was left exposed and people stole the ball from me from my left side and somehow it’s getting scarier because recently I bumped into people when they were right in front of me, I hit things without realizing it even when I thought I made enough distance from them. It’s really troublesome, having to go through all that.

The doctor said before that when I grow up, I’ll start noticing that I couldn’t use my left eye that much but I never knew it was going to be this bad. I’ve tried scouring the net for answers but no cure was available, I wanted to understand more about my innate disease but alas, it is futile. I couldn’t do a lot of things with my current condition, I couldn’t be a pilot, I couldn’t aim for the hoop that well (it’s always a wild guess every time I shoot) and I don’t think I can drive a car too (not that I’m into cars).

I always wished that I would get this cool cyborg-like eye, you know, the ones like The Terminator, I can zoom in, use infrared, night vision, x-ray stuff, but meh, it will always be a dream.

Well, the least I hoped for was being independent of glasses, it was one of the reason I stopped playing sports, the rate of replacing glass was just too high for my meager expenses to cope with and anyway, playing with the glasses on is just too annoying.

My sight would be limited to what my glasses can cover, the glasses will always fall off, then there’s this fear of your glasses breaking and being blind until you get a new one and the best part is, everyone thinks my eyes are normal.

They expect me to play like a normal person and it’s very tiring, having to explain over and over and over again to normal citizens who don’t know me and being sympathized and all. Some even insisted that I get used to it, which just makes me furious because they don’t even know a thing of what I’ve been through to HELP myself. They think it’s easy, they think that every human can get used to anything, flash news people, I’m as good as a Cyclops (not to be confused with the X-men character) or that pirate dude who wears a patch on his other eye.

It’s like hoping a legless guy to grow legs. Simply put, my chances of having a normal eye or even getting used to it is zero to none unless I become an instant billionaire and spend my life living on gene therapy (or so I think that’s the cure).

All this while, I just lived with it, I’ve never blamed anyone for this defect, just wished it never happened because I know that my life would be so much different had I not had this… weakness. I’ve been looking out for possible treatments, asking questions about it whenever I have the chance to speak to someone who might know something about it.

A dark realization grew in me, it tells me that I would just have to bear with it, that finding a cure for it is just futile, the end product is inevitable… useless. Guess just taking it in my stride in life is the best I can do for now.

Friendship, friends, good friends, best friends, girlfriends, boyfriends. Companionship is the one thing everyone has in common; no matter how recluse of a person one is all of us needs this relationship. It comes in many forms, it could be an emotional relationship with an inanimate object, a guitar for example, or with animals or pets but we are more susceptible towards having a relationship with another person.

Being a friend… it sort of gives you a responsibility to fulfill. Being a friend, it’s just natural to lend the ears needed to listen to all the woes, the problems, the worries, the disappointments, the laughter or even just a sigh. Being a friend holds you responsible for being there when everything seems to fall apart for your partner. I just feel that, being a friend, it is a duty to look for the right words during depressing times, to give the advice your friend need with his or her relationship, to keep your friend’s head high when he or she feel lost, to do everything in your power to alleviate that crushing pain in your friend. I have always believed that, when you befriend someone, you should always drop everything you have when your friend needs you.

But what happens when you see your friend in pain but you couldn’t figure out what to say to him or her? What should you do when nothing seems to work? You’re even having doubts on your next sentence, should you ask more? Should you comfort them? Should you relate your experience to them? Should you just be quiet? Should you just tell them that everything is going to be better? What should you do when even listening doesn’t work? When all that happens and you have no answer to it, are you still good enough to be a friend? It sort of gives this feeling of helplessness, it creates doubts about yourself, it makes you wonder; do you really know your friend as you thought you were?

Sometimes I feel that, the lack of experience in dealing with relationship problems or certain personal crises makes me unable to empathize. It’s depressing and painful when you see your friend going through troubled times and you wished that the least you could do is understand how they feel. But when they look around for a person who could understand how they feel, then it dawns on you that you have not the slightest feeling at all on how your friend emotions are. It makes you feel useless, incompetent, and stupid.

At some point also, your friend will look at you, hoping for an answer to their problems and manifestations. They would see you as that beacon of hope they need, that rope they needed to hold on to when everything seems wrong. But what happens when you’re not there when your friend needs support? What happens when you don’t even know what was or is happening? Just by grasping the fact that you were never there whenever your friend needed you,

it sort of tells you how much of a friend you really are don’t it?

I have to admit that life has been easy for me. The conflicts and problems I came across with, most of it had never involved me going against the world. Never had they been so devastating, so excruciating. None of them can be compared to what my friends went through. How am I to understand all that when I have never experienced them? It comes as a disadvantage for me that I have never experienced what my friends had.

I have always wished that I was there whenever my friends were in trouble because it seems to me that they had always face their problems on their own. I have always wished that I would always come out with the right words, the right facial expression, the right gestures at the right time, especially when my friends are going through times of sadness and woes. Adding on to the fact that I am a typical guy, I have failed countless times, to do what I was supposed to do; being a friend. Every time when I reflect back on the time spent with my friends, those days when I became the ears they needed, I keep wishing that I could do more back then, rather than listening.

To my friends, I’m sorry that I couldn’t be more of the friend I was supposed to be. I wished I could have done more; all I was ever good at was listening.

Human beings are very interesting creatures. If I was another sentient being, I would choose to spend my life observing them. The complexity of emotions, the body language, the way they choose to express themselves, all these makes them unique. But what makes human so... human? Why are they like that? It is so multifarious and at some point, confusing. How does this emotion mechanism works? What plays a role in the process of making a decision? Is it just a bunch of molecules and atoms working together in such a composite manner? If so, why express anger over disrupting these molecules from cooperating? Why bother if a person is killed? It's just that his or her molecules stopped working.

Anything wrong with that?

Love for example, gives a different meaning to each individual. One would say love is only a feeling when a person greatly cares for another or another individual might say it is a feeling of being happy when a person sees his or her special counterpart. But what makes something so simple, complex? Why must it differ from one person to another? Why don’t we love the same thing or everything? Do the molecules and atoms that make up our body have anything to do with this? Do hormone levels influence how we define love and make it unique to each individual?

It was proven that there are hormones that allows human to feel good which goes by the name of endorphin. Judging from this, we can presume that every single emotion that occurs within us is controlled by hormones. The question is, how and why? How does our brain define love, fear, comfort, anger? Such questions I seek for answer but alas, it seems almost impossible.

Another question would be what is freewill? How can something be called freewill if it is suppressed in a being or object as my friend cleverly asked. What defines freewill? The ability to choose whatever a person wants to do, whatever a person wishes to have or whatever a person wishes to be are these all freewill? Then it comes down to religion, if you were born say, a Muslim or a Christian, then surely you would be indoctrinate with their respective teachings. This would affect the way you view the world and the people around you, your judgment would be according to what you were taught and experienced. You never chose to follow that religion but you are affected by it, unwillingly or unconsciously. Even if you chose to not follow it, you become skeptical, because you grew up learning to not follow or go against it. In the end, it affects the way you choose things, the way you choose to express yourself and whatever not.

Humanity, mankind, moral, principles, religion, everything, what makes up all of these? Atoms and molecules? Hormones and neurons? I doubt there’ll be anyone who can answer all these in the distant future but it is human nature to ask and seek. But is it human nature to give answers?