Halfway to obscurity, but we’ll be fine.

There is a song that I always listened to almost every morning when I went to school in 10th grade. The song was pretty new back then, and the album became one of the soundtracks of my high school years.

The 15-year-old me didn’t really care about the lyrics. All I cared about was the melody and how the song affected my mood.

Recently, I stumbled upon the song again. It was a random morning on the bus, and all of a sudden, the melody popped into my mind. I added it to my queue to listen to it once more. Just like when I listened to it on the way to school, the only difference is that now I listen to it on my way to work.

It was a total flashback. I still remembered some of the lyrics; I mouthed all the lines and mumbled whenever I forgot one.

Then came the line that I have never forgotten in my entire life, or at least in the 7 years since this song was released:

“We got old, but we’re not as young as we used to be” “Halfway to obscurity, but we feel fine”

I mouthed those lines successfully, although I continued mumbling after that.

Then I stopped. Remembering those lines made me think,

“Seems familiar, doesn’t it?”

So many things seem to change when you begin to have full control of your life. Relationships now seem built on formality and benefit rather than on the genuine and abstract things we were used to.

What about the friends we made during the spring of our years?

They are changing.

Priorities change; goals change.

There are times when I text my friends just to hang out on the weekend, only to sit alone in a park watching people interact, while texts like “I have plans with my girlfriend,” “I have work to do,” or “I am at my hometown every weekend” appear on my phone screen.

But thankfully, it isn’t like that all the time.

There are times when I actually end up sitting with my friends, having a real interaction with my phone turned off just to be fully present. When I am asked about what is going on in my life, it is a good feeling, but I find myself wondering whether we are still involved in each other’s lives as much as we used to be, as the words come out of my mouth.

Sometimes I cannot find myself and the people around me on the same page of life. Or perhaps we are not in the same book anymore.

Times like these make me wonder where I actually belong. They make me sit in various places I have never been and observe the people there just to find out whether I fit in.

There are times I find familiar faces while observing. Most of the time I am the first to realize it, and often I am the only one who does. It is funny to think that you might find a person you went to school with in your hometown.

Maybe that is just how it goes. We grow up, and things do not seem like they used to be.

The world felt bigger, yet circles felt smaller. Or maybe, because the world is a much bigger place, we’re just about to realize how small we are. Maybe we’re going to see less of each other, or maybe we’re becoming obscure and strangers to people we once knew.

We’re halfway to obscurity. But hey, at least I know that we will be fine.