The End Game

Hey you

Just thought about this today for a while, so wanted to jot this down somewhere.

End game refers to the final happily ever after moment. In Singaporean (Or conservation Asians' context), it simply means finding someone you (hopefully) love, get married, have a bunch of kids (Or actually just 2 in Singapore, preferably 1 girl and 1 boy). Nice little car, complete with a cosy 5-room HDB flat (Or Executive Condominium). There, perfect end game scenario.

Sounds familiar? Isn't this find someone, get married, produce a few kids the ultimate 'perfect ending' for life? Somewhere in those storybooks, somewhere at the final last episode of a drama serial, some musings of relatives (READ: Your parents). Since young, this is the image of perfect life instilled via all channels: that you ought to find someone, then you ought to get married, naturally raise kids.

Nothing wrong with that either. You can't expect the story to go 'live happily ever after... and then they realise they can't afford housing, and they couldn't conceive, have a strenous relationship with the in-laws...' It's too depressing, and dare-I-say, realistic. Painfully so. So it's reasonable to expect that to achieve this end game scenario ever since young.

But the funny thing is, people grow up. Our thinking outgrown some of these myth and hypothetical futures, least I hope.

When you're in Primary School, that's the end game that you faithfully envision, though that point of time the enormity and practicality of it all escapes your young and naive sight. Teenagers, secondary school. Puberty raged and you act cool by pretending you're not interested in such idealistic possibility, but deep down you still picture the end game as it is. Now, of legal drinking and smoking age, I guess most are informed and experienced enough to know that the end game is not an end by all means. It's merely one of several possibilities. But of course being Asian and family-oriented and all the what-have-you, somehow everyone expects you to eventually settle down, marry, raise kids, END.

I used to be this person who harbours such thoughts as well. It's easier to dream when you think that your life is ending when you're enlisted into The Forces. Haha. But I just don't believe in that anymore. Sure with my own experiences and family history, this is a TOTALLY biased source so to speak. Would I like the end game scenario? Sure why not. But let's not go pretending that that is the perfection all through. And please do not expect everyone to share the same end game scenario, because life is unpredictable. It brings along shit and challenges, some of us may not necessarily be where we originally set out to be.

In short, this is a post laughing at the absurdity of the end game scenario. More specifically, at my peers who think that end game is really end game for all.

It's really not.

- Domon