By Yeo Jia Qi (15S03H)
We’ve all had that feeling before. When we follow the lead of perhaps a Councillor in shouting school cheers while watching our fellow schoolmates fight for glory on the sporting field, and find something stuck in our throat, something that prevents us from shouting at the top of our voices, something that we struggle to overcome. When we sit in the cinema and hear a touching or heartwarming line, intentionally scripted to be as impactful as possible by a scriptwriter we will never meet, and find ourselves trying to swallow back the tears welling in our eyes, as though in the darkness, others could see them. When we listened to Principal Mr Chan sharing his recovery journey from colon cancer, we laughed at his jokes about his ample girth, the usefulness of national campaigns, and swimming in the RI pool; but when he came to the real, raw and painful parts of his narrative, the fear of not waking up from the operating table or the turmoil of learning to cope with his diagnosis, surely at least some of us must have felt some discomfort.
