I simply love the title of my selected read for our school's book club; "battle hymn" instinctively brings back nostalgia, the good times I used to reminisce about. The war cry we crooned in tune as a group, our personal hakka which rang in harmony to the pride and prestige we carried on our chests. The growing years when I was an immature cub, frolicking in the endless sea unaware of its depths. Those moments where I spat the wrong words out and held my stand, those times where I dreamed of becoming the head of the clan, leading the herd into the safari and raiding our prey. And those recollections where the once vivid and fantasy-like dreams submerged in a wisp of fire, buried alongside the ugly past I sometimes want to forget. I struggle with force against oppression because I don't want to remember; I don't want to admit that I was once small, weak and yet dreamed of things past my potential; I don't want to live in the past, when my glib tongue was hooked unto the fetish for insulting, and I was the bane.
All this before, but every Tiger matures.
And under the camouflaged skin, therein lies the same cowering cub, hiding behind the thick fortress of my past and still harboring immature, unrealistic conceptions:
That maybe, this was impregnable; from the inside, and the outside.
Someway or another, I was meant to discuss Amy Chua and her wonder masterpiece but just as she unexpectedly underwent a mental paradigm shift, I recall my affinity with Tigers.
The same ferocity coupled with immense strength and fearful power; and once I crumbled at the feet of such temptations.
The same haste and desire to get what you want, regardless of the outcome.
The same beast characterized by its possessive nature.
And that same Tiger,
who does all this out of love.
