exist

three hours ago, i kissed my nephew goodnight.

rewind a few minutes before my mom cuddled and tickled him and prior to that, about an hour after eating dinner, there we were in my room, talking.

is existensialism embedded in the genetic code? or is faith something we imitate from our primary caregivers?

Anton voiced out a concern near the end of our conversation. he asked me with some anxiety and fear, tears staining his eyes, “tita ing, what if walay God and wala ta dire and wala ta naborn, maunsa lugar ta?” (tita ing, what if there’s no God and we weren’t here and we didn’t exist, what happens? what would we be and what would we do?)

religion is one issue i still haven’t come to terms with up until now. but since my nine year old nephew’s question, i’ve been asking urging myself to get a move on and to actually live up to my answers. but what if there is no eternity after all? and how could i have been optimistic enough to assure him that there is when i myself haven’t even established a concrete belief in either the non-existence or the existence of a higher deity? what a hypocrite.

how can i guide him to be hopeful and trusting when i myself can’t even hold up to my self-esteem and view the world with rose colored glasses? how can i help him be a better individual, able to empathize and act for change when i, the “role model” is still standing, walking, waiting on shaky ground?

he’s a smart and perceptive kid who knows how to care and how to follow rules. but i want to instill in him the faith that my parents imbued in me. i want him to have a beacon of hope for when the world becomes too much for him. i want that for him because no one deserves to feel afraid of ending up being nothing and to believe that our lives are of no significance. in the first place, our mere birth already means something, so we can’t be nothing now, can we? i need him to be whole and to be whole, he has to establish a firm belief in things that are beyond our hands, of a higher being who somehow governs our ways and how trusting in something incomprehensible can make all the difference in the world. but how will i do that if i’ve already began to strip off my wings feather by feather, long before the question was on the table?

three hours ago, i kissed my nephew goodnight.

his mom is currently out of the country, working for ten months now. his dad has another family while he juggles with my nephew’s school age and his younger son’s preschool activities. meanwhile, my nephew rallies back and forth between our house and his dad’s just to maximize family time.

look what he’s become now: midway through lethargic-psp-toting-basketball addict and a little scientist with his heart on his sleeves.

my place on his growth is crucial now. i have to hurry up before he climbs up to puberty where androgen and testosterone rule me out of his life. and i don’t want to mess this kid’s cognitive and moral development just because i passed on some morbid strain of DNA that enables him to think of life too much in the future. but what can i do? if i could, i would want to take that particular chromosome from his genetic make-up just so he could enjoy life better and be a normal kid. if it’s possible, i would like to have the gene surgically removed so he can be happy instead of ending up like his tita ing.

so every night before he sleeps, i think of all the nights an eight-year old girl once spent her nights lying on her bed, wondering about afterlife accompanied with a weird sensation in the pit of her stomach and tracing patterns on the leaves of the trees outside while her sister beside her dreams of rainy showers with dad and mud pie and beauty and the beast; and i end up angry with myself for not having been sociable enough to distract my imagination but more so for dragging a brilliant but broken nine year old kuya into my morbid labyrinth of miserable curiosity. or is it more of curious misery? pfft. i feel like Erik from the Phantom of the Opera.

why do people not succeed in being happy?

For all my years of living, I have come across countless books that made me aware of the fact that people are generally unhappy for various reasons. But why could this happen when our planet and our capable brains have already given us all the conveniences needed for survival? Let’s define the term first before we go any deeper. Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher believes that happiness is the proper end of man. He said that we should aim for it as it is a natural part of our existence. Yet, Webster simply describes it as a state of well-being and contentment. From these two, one can conclude that happiness is meant for hardworking humans. But it is more than that, for there are instances that left me thankful and satiated for unexplained reasons. I also believe that like love, happiness is something that we cannot have without consequence; it is elusive and uncommon. So why do people not succeed in being happy?

First, we are blind. We look for the wrong things and end up with nothing when it was already right there with us. What exactly blinds us? The beliefs and notions that we hold make us conclude that life is no more than material gain and making a name that will last through the centuries. It also causes us to assume, which for most simply means to expect. People assume too much and by the end, they’re the ones who get disappointed. This happens a lot, especially to me. I remember back a few years ago that I used to be an over-achiever. I was this kid who wanted to make her parents and family proud through recognition, there was nothing wrong with that, right? As the years mounted, I slowly turned sluggish and didn’t care as much for grades. This frustrated me. I used to look back and I would curse myself for not being enough. I assumed too that the people close to me thought of me that way. So I assured myself and my imaginary frustrated family, thinking that this was just a small break and I would eventually rise back up. But I never did. I found out later on that it was actually me who had set standards too high for me to grasp to compensate for the lost years when I wasn’t ‘enough’ in their eyes. All the while, my family kept telling me that it wasn’t the recognition or the achievements that were important but the lessons and the wisdom that we learn and practice along the way. So that explains why I was so angst-ridden in my early teenage years: I screened my vision of the person that I was and impaired my esteem all because I assumed wrongly that I would be happy and my parents would be happy IF I remained on top. I ended up expecting too much and became depressed.

Secondly, I think it also has to do with our connection with God. It is a common idea that we descended from God, the almighty father. So as children, we would naturally want to be gods ourselves. We wish to be infallible and immortal like him. This is manifested by the decaying bodies that we still keep and refuse to let go and all the efforts we do to attain flawless ivory skin. But humans attaining the same level as the father will never happen. We can only be gods by the perfect love that God shares with us and when we share that same love with others as well. From this theory comes another possibility: what if we were never meant to be happy in this life because we are incapable of being contented? We are after all, selfish beings by nature whose thirst for gratification is as deep as the ocean. To illustrate this argument, take a look at the dreams of the youth. Are they not huge ambitions which are too much for the size of the average adolescent? I won’t deny it: I do want more than my fair share; I too dream of stars that are far beyond my reach because I want to make my family stable.

The last theory that I have is my favorite. I have thought about this long and hard, and I play it over and over in my head to analyze it even more thoroughly. Maybe because of our busy but monotonous routines, we forget to be happy. Maybe once upon a time, all of earth enjoyed a state of profound happiness but then it eventually faded as soon as man invented work, standards and logic. Have you observed babies when they play and then compare their actions to people our age or much older people? Do you notice the light in their eyes, the curiosity shining through? As babies, man, I believe, is absorbed with excitement, wonder and smiles, requiring only the basic amenities (milk, food, water, love, rest and play) in order to survive. But as we age, we become more complicated and the sense of wonder and contentment dissipates in the background.

When I think of it, these three are interrelated somehow. And I believe that they hold some answers no matter if they are proven to be true or not. I really think humans forget to be happy because they have such high expectations due to their ambitions and their dreams of surpassing heaven. We blind ourselves with temporary elements to pass the time and to create a reason to forget. We forget how to be grateful and how to take happiness out of ourselves and spread it all around us. The issue isn’t so much as not succeeding to be happy but rather, to remember how to be complacent and grateful by living purely everyday.

if only

If only I could move closer to you for another moment and feel your tender breath on my neck. I would savor every second of it as I hold your beautiful skin and listen as you speak like a child for one more time. If only I would be able to hold you in my arms again and pretend once more that you belong to me.

If only time had been on our side and I could have loved you better.

***

If only

It has to be one of the most powerful statements in the world. It’s only three syllables long but those small words hold so much in them when uttered. They express the emotions that take us when we let things slip away, when we let people go, when we don’t do anything to make the situation better and they tell our innermost longings. I think it’s simply what makes nostalgia so contagious. Through it, we feel the weight of our choices and grieve for the end of our chance, the end of something that could have happened but will never return. Regrets only come by the time everything is said and done, but their impact can linger on for the entirety of our lifetimes.

And yet, we can still choose not to let those regrets control us. For one thing, we can avoid them by thinking things thoroughly and then take the risk. If we do just that, we may regret having done something out of proportion, but we wouldn’t regret so much because we knew we tried at least. But then, regrets can also take form in the actions we make. So I’m wondering, what hurts you more, doing or saying things that you wished you didn’t, or not doing anything at all when you had the chance?

If only.

If only we have the answers to all the questions; if only love was enough for people to be happy and to survive healthily; if only we would stop aiming for stars that are too far from our reach; If only we weren’t so curious; and if only we weren’t so apathetic and care more often, and then maybe we wouldn’t feel so burdened with our humanity and make excuses out of it.

damnum

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

One art by Elizabeth Bishop

~*~

it seems like i’m losing everything and anything that’s connected to me. from persons close to me,down to my cell phone that went missing without a lucid explanation for its disappearance, and the just-recently-acquired umbrella that mama brought me. i can name more but those will do for now.

i think i have a curse for losing things, or of people. but then when i think about it, it’s true that i am partly at fault becuase i do make less efforts in building bridges with people around me, and i don’t really bother these days to at least reconnect the neglected connections. so maybe it’s just part of who i am. maybe it’s my own disorder. or maybe, it’s just a manifestation of the fact that i can’t have everything; everything has a price, and i just have to get used to it.

since we’re talking about losses, i think i’ve had enough. i’ve had enough of losing myself to my temper, to apathy, to ambitions too huge to become a reality and to mistakes that have caused the people around me so much pain. i’ve also had enough of losing my time and my esteem to certain groups of people who pretend to be someone else but are actually very egotistic.

i should try to live more carefully.

there’s this question that’s bugging me this week though:
do we distract ourselves from reality, or does reality distract us from ourselves?

yep, i’m beginning to freak myself out with all this too. but it will pass.

Anyway, Preliminary exams are finally here, so there will be less time for the net and more for torture. agh. but I’ll live. :p

August 2 is around the corner! Breaking dawn, I’ll be waiting.

recount

(All these nonsense came to me in random moments. first parts are brief intros to topics. second portions are all me yapping in my head:)

According to Plato, there are three parts to a soul: 1.reason 2.spirit and 3.appetite.
So I conclude, sometimes we have to ignore our appetites for our souls to be full.

Ideas don’t die. People do.

Do we really have souls or are they just a pigment of our imagination?
Is an idea matter? Or is matter an idea?
How can we be sure that we have the only one soul? What if like our body, we are made of many souls connected together to make a whole?
What if memories are energies that splatter everywhere the moment the body dies?
And what if those same memories find their way back to its first host and jolts the new body and causes the de javu trance?
What if time is actually pages of a book and everything that happened and will happen in the world are all in the pages? So it’d be like while I’m here typing away, another part of me in another body is trying on her balloon party dress.
What if the sky that stretches wide is actually a tick to another dimension more vast than our own?
When we finally die, what happens to our thoughts? Do they rot away with us in oblivion? Or do we never stop wondering even as we lay six feet under?
When did time begin?
Does time exist or are we just control freaks trying to make sense of the array of troubles in our trivial life?
What is it about pain that makes us wise?
If reincarnation is real, can we be in the same body more than once?
How are souls made? Does God ever run out of them, or does he have fresh supplies stored somewhere?

i think I’ll keep some distance for a while. I can’t say I’d be able to do anything useful.
i have to recharge my batteries.

July 3′08