And so it begins...

I was in Grade 9 when it happened. It was a normal afternoon at school and I was sitting in Social Studies, my last class for the day. Mr. Foster, as per usual, was going through current events in a way only he did. He would stand up in front of the class behind this aged wooden podium and just casually ask

so what's new?

He was the kind of person who would care for you deeply, but would never state it explicitly. His caring and his love showed through the way he challenged us, continually pushing our comfort zones. For all the years I knew him, I remember he always had the same two posters neatly pinned to the wall by his desk - one poster with the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven too small to read across the room and the other of the Montreal Canadiens logo with all the years they had earned Lord Stanley's Cup printed below.

So it was at some point in the middle of Mr. Foster putting one of us on the spot to comment on the repercussions of The Troubles on Northern Ireland, that my mind gradually began to race. Well it actually started off as more of a light jog, but its intensity kept climbing.

When the clock quietly flicked on exactly at 3:11 - yeah we didn't have bells at our school, we had televisions that hung from the classroom corners, weird I know - I threw my army-green Five-Star binder into my backpack and just walked straight out the classroom door, turned right, and pushed through the painted steel exit doors towards the sunshine.

The thoughts in my mind kept accelerating as I walked. Upon reaching home, I remember hugging my thadi ji and then going straight to my room, dropping my backpack while closing the door, and just sitting with my legs crossed on my bed. I just sat and gazed right into my bookshelf - which back then held more novelties than it did novels - and tried to catch up with my thoughts.

For the first time, I could feel myself becoming aware of the life that I was living. I could no longer absentmindedly just soar along, my feet were about to touch the ground. All at once, I was roughly jerked from automatic to manual transmission - and not only was I unaware of where the clutch was, I didn't even know there was one.

So that's it.

That was the pinpointed moment when everything altered. I guess it was at that specific moment while attempting to comprehend my racing mind that I somehow became truly aware of myself. I became aware of the fact that I was in control of my body's limbs and of each of the words that I shaped with my mouth and of each of the emotions with which I could choose to react. I'm still not sure what exactly happened that afternoon. All I know is that I can't really recall how exactly I used to perceive life before that day.

While normally I've always known growth to occur gradually over time, usually not even realizing the changes until looking back, this is the one moment of my life when something just clicked. And unlike switching on today's compact fluorescent light bulbs that lazily awaken, this enlightening happened in the way of the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs - all at once.