There may be few people who can be so uncompromising during these times, and I wish I could be one of them. But the fact is, I am not there. I am here. I have made choices and I feel more real than imagining that I could be more real if I happen to be somewhere else. While I try to pull the few different strings that hold up my life, I should let lose of a few others to sail through.
In a few days, I have to make a decision, go back out there and earn once more a different experience, even if, somehow the experience seem predictable. Just being here now at the comfort of solitude most wives perhaps would have been through, I realised that I can just stop at that and see that I am still so connected to the world that runs outside, because basically the production of life is always concerned about home. In fact, I can see more of how the world runs its mundane role every day here than when I am outside. Maybe because I see the dirt of the world gets piled up at home. As cliché as it may sound, we will never know what things really mean unless we are there, right in the middle of experience, our great, great teacher.
The times I feel disconnected though are those that when I take a walk in the park and see the flowers that never wither or grass that's always freshly trimmed. No matter how beautiful the sun sets against this backdrop, I feel like I am living in such an artificial place. Perhaps, because I just don't admit that at times I miss the discomfort of Manila. The news that matters here are certainly far from the news that matters at home. I feel like an outsider watching a desert city come to life. The beauty becomes so numbing, like an art in a floating world. And then I begin to descend in the feeling of unworthiness of my search. I know, a bad thing to say.
Reality, if we really want to see them, will always try to buckle down our armors. Hope at times are very difficult to find. And for people like us who love to take comfort among words, it's always nice to end with this flicker:
"But the lamb looked at me and spoke to me through his eyes. He said that I should forget forever my unworthiness because the power had been reborn in me, in the same way that it could be reborn in all people who devoted their lives to the good fight. A day would come--said the lamb's eyes--when people would once again take pride in themselves, and then all of nature would praise the awakening of the God that had been sleeping with them." -- The Pilgrimage, Paulo Coehlo
