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Apr. 27, 2005 Right here, right now, I have something to relate about how I have been in this preoccupation called life. I am jobless right now. Maria called me up this evening, saying she wanted to see me. She said she wants to see me. So she asked me whether I am going to Manila before she leaves for Iloilo for the Christmas vacation. She joins her father and her brother for the holidays. I am sorry; I am sorry. I am tired. I have to look for a job definitely because I have to survive. I have to feed myself through my own means. I will have to go on with my life while I am alive. I will have to serve other people through my own efforts and undertakings. Life here in my part of the world would be simple most probably if I would just task myself to help other people besides helping myself, or instead of helping myself. The paradox that says it is in giving that we receive, or extremely—t is in dying that we will forever live—inspires me much. Someone’s life, like mine, for instance, can be devoted in support of others, the lives of so many others. That is simply the essence of the life of that simple guy from Nazareth who dies on the cross one dark afternoon. This is the essence of my life here on earth, if I were to make use of this gift called life. As far as I am concerned, how have I made use of the life given to me? In my twenty-five years, I have lived a simple life in that there have not been many complications. Most important, I have lived a stark human life, sustaining countless trials and tribulations, and overcoming obstacles and harsh circumstances that plague me everyday, along with other people—those people I love, the people close to me, and the people fond of me, everyone around. I have had a happy life, generally-not because I only want to say I have but because I indeed have, more so that I am hurting bad right now. I am hurting much, the pain itself has exhausted me do not have the energy to articulate it. These words can just perhaps say something about it, but not really describe it. I have been a good person. I am a very good person. When I was young, I had the notion that I was a bad person. I was a bad boy. I lied many times to my mother. I lied many times to my parents. I took things which were not mine. I quarreled a lot with my sister and my brothers. I disobeyed them and always argued about what they would tell me to do. I always argued about anything. I always did argue. I always complained about what they would tell me. I whined about anything they said. These events are clear to me. I do not know why I did those things. Perhaps I was hooked to seeking other things that I long thought people had no right to tell me what to do because I was excelling in school. I just could not reconcile the achievements in school were separate or even disparate from my role at home—as a son, brother, grandson, or cousin. I had no clear notion on the difference between these roles, that perhaps all along, I must have boasted about what I had been achieving in school. I must have felt people around me would never have the right to tell me (what I had to do), or about what I had been doing about my life. Plainly it was a matter of just realizing on my own part that I could have not achieved anything in school without having been molded in and by a domestic environment where I freely moved about. Call it ingratitude, or vainglory. Ingratitude because I was not at all grateful for what I had been given or what I have been receiving. I was not at all aware that such achievements are blessings; that these things make me live further. Vainglory because I was hooked on seeking more recognition in the community through my achievements in school—class honors, leadership and participation in organizations, and other activities. Plainly, vainglory. Honestly, I am stubborn; still honestly, however, I am not stubborn. I am stubborn because sometimes I do not agree with what I am told, whether in a discussion or plain conversation. Eventually I consider most conversations as argumentation. My sister tells me I should be a lawyer because I love to argue. I love to discuss. I love to interrogate. And I love to question. I do not know why I question every time, why I doubt every time. Perhaps I only want to say many things. I only have many things to say—based on what I read, what I get to read, or what I know, what I get to know (from books and other sources of knowledge like stories of people, big and small alike). A discussion can always do good to me. In discussions I can articulate things the best way I can because I get to clarify and explicate a lot of them, without being conscious I am proving something to people or not. I am being honest actually when I say these things about myself because that is how you can discover me, that is how you can find out many other things about me, whoever you are. I am a good person in that I recognize the good and bad. I can distinguish one from the other. Also, I am not a good person because sometimes after distinguishing the good from evil, I prefer the latter because I realize it is not just good but even better for me to do it at certain moments. And I surely delight in it. I was scanning a ten-year old journal of mine which I wrote in my junior year in high school. Our English teacher asked us to free write on a notebook that was not graded. I noticed that even then, I was already asking many questions about life and existence, in lousier grammar you know, many, many things my purpose in life, how I am doing, etc. In my journal I always would have said or insinuated that there would really be no answers to my questions vague and too vague as they were. Every question I was asking, rhetorically perhaps, will have no answers. They were questions on bigger things—about humanity and life itself. Plainly I found it hard, looking for answers on what I wanted to do, what my life purpose is, splabberdy, splabberdah. On my funeral what would people remember me for? In case they would pray for me in the afterlife? These are simpler questions I hope to categorically answer and they are not at least confusing me because they are more specific, smaller questions. I should at least be feeling blessed because I am able to acknowledge such lack of meaning, such answerlessness of things. Right now I look forward to one fine day when I will have no questions, one day when I will have no doubts about anything. I will have no doubts on any single thing, in that I will move about during the day without any question—just plain actions, no qualms, no misgivings, you know—no reluctance, not a hint of it, not a notion of it. I will engage in plain simple activities which will fill my day. And I will go through the day smiling, content with what I am doing, feeling light, very light—like dolphins jumping on hoops; very light, like paper flying with the wind, being flown by the wind. That will be a good day because at the very least, God will be pleased with me: I will have no doubts, I will have no inhibitions. I will always feel like running away, towards the seashore, feel the warm seawater on my feet, the sand sucking my toes, the sea intimating my entire being—I am being soothed, being soothed; I am being refreshed, being renewed. Right now I have been thinking of God. Most of the time, I have been thinking of God. I have also been thinking about my future. I always get to think of my future in times like this because I do not have anything much to do—besides doing the tasks of the day—washing my own clothes, making my bed, reading, watching television, and taking a bath. I am not aware I seem to always forget God who is the essence of all things—this and that and God knows what else. I am aware, though, there is a certain day when I will die and will get to face this God I am talking about; this God whose existence some people doubt; this God whose nonexistence inspires some other people. It is a great life after all. It is a good thing to be alive on earth, if at all. Take for example this silence that overwhelms me right now and the elements of nature that break such silence, or render a lot of it, much of it— the lizards, the crickets, the mosquitoes, the night insects. Silent spaces are enormous insects that devour every solitary person who is made awake by the night, and whose better being commences with the dark. I want to meet people, lovely people and I do not mean other people. I want to meet the same people around me and my task is to discover their loveliness, their beauty. The beauty I am talking about is something that resides in their hearts. It must be something that I can elicit from them through my own beautiful words, gestures, and deeds. It must be something that I can make out through my initiative. Seeking this beauty will start from me, in that it will depend on me. I can actually find beauty in every person if I just want to. I think I have been doing a lot of seeking for lovely people right now: when a person makes a bad remark about me or what id do or what I am as a person, I try hard to understand. I seek first to understand them. I do not say a word. I react by barely looking at them. I do not say a word. I shut my mouth. I keep silent, turn away for a while; I make them aware I am silent. I regain their attention by not reacting in my silence. I am aware this is one form of prayer after all— keeping silent after a harsh remark. Seeking silence to compose myself is actually praying, allowing Somebody I know to fill whatever space is left between being hurt and being enraged. Silence is actually everything good, at least now. Silence is most probably good, being soothing as itself, light as its wordlessness, pure as its emptiness. ------------ About the author: Niño Saavedra Manaog reads the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Luis Cabalquinto, Kenneth Rexroth, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. He also delights in the fictions of F. Sionil Jose, Sidney Sheldon, and Leoncio Deriada. Email: ninomanaog@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. 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