The Career Talk and Peer Pressure in Marriage

It’s 11.42 pm on a Monday. I turned on the tap of my bathroom sink and the water was chillingly cold. I couldn’t help myself but smile. You see, it has been raining constantly during the weekend. Something that hasn’t happened in more than a few months. That could only mean one thing…the end of the dry season. Usually when I turned on the tap, be it 3 o’clock in the morning even, the water is at best warm. During the day time, well, let’s just say that I would not be surprised if I could boil an egg with it.

So, with the Earth finally beginning to distance itself a bit from the Sun, I must say I couldn’t be happier. Well, it’s more grey and wet nowadays but, hey, I much prefer it this way.

In exactly 7 days my ACCA program will commence. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the wheels are finally turning. In about time too. It’s been about 3 months I have been loitering and doing nothing. Well, not really nothing, just things that I find amusing and fun to do. Sometimes things are not that amusing but still I had to do. In any case, I’m feeling rather excited because lately the sense of boredom and loneliness has been settling in more frequently than I would like. It is an obvious indication that it is time I need something big to put in my life. An agenda. A sense of purpose. In this case financial management and taxation laws. All of previous students and even current ones that I have met has something bad to say about the program. Usually that it is difficult and take a lot of your free time. Erm, make that all of your free time. Still, despite all this, I am undeterred and sort of, dare I say it, motivated by it. I guess it began when Mr. Faiz, a partner at PWC, said these words:

“…after that, there is no end on how far you can go,”

“that” referring to succeeding in becoming a CPA. At that moment I thought, that’s the best damn plan I have ever heard of. Sure it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be stressful. It’s going to be long hours and hard work. Not to mention no social life. Relationships? Only with my colleagues if I’m lucky. But if it means an Aston Martin and an Avenue K apartment in the future, I’d say it’s worth a shot. Some people have doubts. I have ambition.

Now, moving on to other matters, yesterday while I was cruising at 70 km/h along the streets of Kuala Lumpur, one disturbing thought hit me. It concerns the matter pertaining the words ‘peer pressure’. What it means is you are pressured into doing something that you at first were not willing to do but since everybody else around you is doing it, you thought, what the hell, I’ll join in. Usually ignoring the fact whether it’s right or wrong. I have been subjected to numerous types of peer pressures during my teenage years. Fortunately though, I managed to keep myself away from the really bad ones. Meaning sex, drugs and alcohol. Hell I don’t even smoke. Ain’t I a pretty boy then? Tsk. Anyway, some less harmful influences I permit myself into such as going out illegally at night during my time at boarding school and watch Zahid and Co perform every weekend during a certain period last year. But all this is just mincemeat. I never really give them much thought because the matter of fact is, they were never significant issues in my life worth pondering about. That is, until yesterday when a certain word just suddenly popped into my head. It was the dreaded ‘M’ word…..Marriage.

Back then, when it was about a new bicycle, a red New York Yankee cap or SMS-ing your friend 10 times through because is still cheaper than actually calling him or her, those are all phases. Bicycles stored away when you learn to take public transport. Fred Durst suddenly became yesterday’s news and SMS is...well, still going strong I suppose. But marriage? Whoa, that one stays…forever. You see, I can deal if all my friends have IPods. I can deal if all of them had tried this fabulous new restaurant which I haven’t time to go to just yet and had a great time. I can deal if all of them visited Venice one way or another. But if all of them gets married. The only thing I can say is ‘Oh shait…’.

When people get married, they change. It’s a known fact. That’s why it’s called settling down because that’s what it is…settling down. The spouse or family becomes their number one priority. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that when you do get together, it becomes awkward because conversation topics of single people and married people differ too much. It’s like oil and water. If you can’t even agree on a decent conversation, don’t even think of going out together. It will only end in confusion.

But of course, it’s still bearable if only a couple of your friends were in that situation. But then one day you realize, more and more are getting married until someday you are left as the only one. You keep going to these people’s weddings and every time you attend them you get the Bridget Jones treatment. Soon enough you begin to despise weddings. But you can’t hate your friends. Their next steps in life cannot be perceived as poison in yours. So, the question is, when you are in that kind of situation, what do you do? It’s pretty daunting isn’t it? Scary even. Well, for one, you can get married too and have those lovely talks about your latest island vacation or the new schools you plan to enroll you children in. But wouldn’t that be you’re getting married because everyone else is doing it? What happened to the journey of finding true love? What if you’re marriage crumbles after 2 years because of incompatibility? Questions after questions after questions. There is no end you know. So far, I have yet to come to that situation thankfully. But the possibility of it coming one day is not far fetched. The problem is for me now is I’m not even slightly interested in marriage. But I do have friends who are in serious relationships and you would expect them to lead somewhere. Some even put a deadline on their days of being a bachelor. These are signs. Signs which are putting me in discomfort.

…

Well, I can tell you one thing though, I am spending too much time dwelling on this thought. Which makes even more sense for me to go out, meet new people and attract me to different things. Who knows, maybe I’ll meet someone. Someone’s who’s charming and beautiful and knows that the Louvre is not a name of a dessert. And maybe in the end, the one to start this entire peer pressure marriage thing is me. Now wouldn’t that be an interesting turn of events?