When I turned 26 I started asking for specific gifts for my birthday — romantic wishes, if you will — and for two years I was on a winning streak. I became a firm believer of “Ask and you shall receive,” just as much as “Be careful what you ask for.”
Time came when my birthday wish took on a more serious tone. I felt I was finally ready to plant seeds (some people call it “settle down”)– and immediately the reply was “He will find you by something you put out there.”
Over here, when flowers bloom and fruits are aplenty, we know that summer has come.
Not spring.
I’ve never lived through the four seasons, so what little I know of the changing weather patterns and life cycles of winter, spring, summer and fall, I know from movies and stolen visits to the US or Europe.
I experienced my first spring two years ago in the US, and the joy of the season was so palpable. I felt it in the trees, in the air, even in the buzz of the backwoods of Connecticut.
Possibility was palpable. Life was palpable.
Over here, we have no notion of spring, and perhaps the intentionality that it brings is also lost to us. As a people, bound by our geographic set-up, we don’t get the yearly alert to reawaken what was asleep or lost (or dead). The sun shines all the time in the Philippines, and I think this abundance is our undoing. It keeps us complacent, averse to disturbing the status quo, because we’re just not used to things literally dying and rebirthing.
What is dead in your life that needs to reawaken? There is no better time to act on it than now. Easter is coming.
I saw a TV feature on a Chinese painter the other night. Asked about his process, he said that everyday, he keeps quiet. He sets aside time to be quiet, then he paints. And he does these alone.
It’s a solitary act, to paint and create, and I’ve returned many times to the question of whether it’s an act for me, whether I’d be happy being solitary most of the time, every single day.
Honest answer: I found myself wishing for the same quiet time that that artist had. Honest-to-goodness quiet time, with no phones, no emails to answer, no urgency to attend to, no loose ends waiting for me to resolve, no one waiting for me to respond.
My ideal everyday would be spent quietly, with time for socials yes, but generally, it is a day spent slowly, without hurry or worry. My idea of “work”, which is really just a word for the most effective way to spend our most productive hours, is being alone, sometimes doing nothing but being alone. Because ironically it’s when I’m allowed my alone time that I’m able to be a better friend, sister, daughter, aunt. It’s when I’m able to see clearly, speak with weight, and create with courage. When everydays are noisy, all I can muster, when I do get to put anything out there, is a making-do, a pwede na.
A bridge maybe.
But bridges must lead to somewhere. And for now, that somewhere is the quiet. I want to get to the quiet.
Bridges are also what will get us to that somewhere, I know this. And for all of us who make do, who want more but also cherish what’s before and around us, I say thank you and good luck. There is courage too in bridging. It pushes us forward and gives a taste, of what’s to come.
When I was 23, I met a man who swept me off my feet. He was 29 and tall, had a warm smile, soft hands, and deep curious eyes. He was an economist who one day just packed his bags, went to the mountains and disappeared. I met him on a gap moment, when he literally came out of his cave to reconnect with society. To wide-eyed me, who’s never met a hippie before, he was beautiful.
He told me these words:
You can only hold me accountable for what I say and do, when I say and do it.
At that time, it didn’t make sense to me. How can you have friends that way? How can you love that way? With no one to hold you to your word, with no word to even be given. He was big on the NOW, on what’s present. I remember him catching me once with a faraway look, and he asked me what I was thinking. I said I remembered my family back home (I was away on a solo trip abroad then), and he asked me to just look at him, be 100% with him. The way he was with me.
Maybe that’s why it was so intoxicating to be around him–I had his whole attention. For the moments that he was with me, I had all of him.
I’ve only come to understand what all that meant, what it entailed from his end.
I used to think of it as selfish. When he was present, he was wholly present, but when he was gone, he was also wholly gone. Not letting people call on him, or expect anything from him was short of saying “I live for myself.”
But I’ve also come to see the truth in it, in enjoying and loving what’s before us, when it’s before us.
For one thing, it’s given me a deeper appreciation of impermanence. Everything passes.
Whether it’s for better or for worse that I now see and understand this, I’m still not sure. But here’s what’s been hovering over me lately: Talk is cheap. Promises are easy to say out loud, ideals easily laid out and put to words.
We say a lot of things we don’t mean. Most of us plead guilty to this when we do small talk. But how often do we do this to people who are dear to us? Sometimes, it’s better to just hold our tongue and let actions do the talking. Let how we give people our most valuable gift — our time — be the judge of what we really want to say.
Yes there is the exuberance of possibility, of something new and yet to be known.
But there is also the closing of something old, a passing or a leaving behind.
When we begin, we also automatically end, and this journey of the transition, and the call to see it through, makes such events so joyful, and demanding.
And if we pay attention and commit to moving forward, we’ll know where we’re supposed to go.
Been trying to answer this objectively, without emotional heaviness and without the musts and shoulds– what happens when you realize everything passes, everything ends?
WHAT I WANT TO BELIEVE:
You punch back with all your might, or with the might you have left, determined to believe that “everything begins just as much”. Yes you punch, because you’ve questioned, gotten angry and confused, maybe even complacent. You now need the build up that leads to the punch, the jolting release to “get back in the game”.
Society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Refuge as cheap. Safety in relationships as cheap.
I never thought to look at them that way.
I’ve always regarded friends as people we feel safe with, that it’s the number one factor that determines a friendship: Do we feel safe to be? To be honest and just be? Friends are sanctuaries not necessarily because they protect us from harm, but because they’re just there– no judgment, no demands. They listen, they understand, and sometimes they don’t even have to say anything. And we do the same for them.
But I never realized how hard it is to really have no demands. And to not demand even this safety in friendship.
One of the most hurtful things I’ve ever told a friend was “I don’t expect anything from you.” It came from a place of disappointment, of not wanting to be disappointed again, and it also hurt me to say it. When you don’t expect, you acknowledge a diminished regard for the other. And yes, some kind of safety sets in, because you’re not putting yourself out there anymore, you’ve already pulled back.
This isn’t the kind of refuge we want in relationships. Rilke calls it cheap and advises us to brave the difficult path of learning to say “No expectations” sincerely, up close and with zero bitterness, coming from a place of love.
Maybe it helps to ask, “What is refuge?” We often equate it with comfort or protection, maybe even a certain untouchability: I am comfortable at a safe distance. I feel safe when I don’t know you, or when I only touch you up to here, and when you only touch me up to there.
But I think true refuge is actually the opposite– it’s a drawing as near as possible, and also an opening as wide as possible, to someone, something: I am near but I am moving, we are both moving. And the time and place where we meet is also moving, adjusting to what it needs to do, what it needs us to do.
I am learning that friendship is movable, and that shifts are not endings. Safety is not presence or 24-7 availability. It’s not even loyalty — there is also a danger in over-loyalty. There is no promise of tomorrow or yesterday, only a sensitivity to what is and what is not, right here, right now.
I drew this only a few days ago, so much anger then. I woke up in the middle of the night and just put pen to paper and let it out. I even dreamt this scene in such vivid color I swore I was going to paint a whole series about burning bridges.
Now it’s making me chuckle, and that’s not a bad thing.
The cloud has passed, or has nearly passed, and wow. I’m slightly worried it went by so fast.
I haven’t paid attention to TV for over six years now, but today I couldn’t cast it aside so easily. What was on? Local news.
Talk of the water hyacinth invasion in Cotabato was worrisome and frustrating– 200,000 hectares of hardy plants on the offense, surely no match for 2 backhoes! It’s a real life attack-of-the-killer-bees/ants/corn and in a man-vs-nature scenario, what chance does man have, really? What more the ill-equipped Pinoy? Then news of shared classrooms came on– shared not between sections but between grade levels: grade 1 kids sitting almost next to grade 2 kids in small circles around their teachers. Who can learn in an environment like this, and especially when simply learning is not enough anymore, when what is needed is for children to learn well?
Switching channels got me to Willie’s show–and I realized I didn’t even know he was back on TV.
I’ve been so out of touch, thinking all this time that I was being responsible. I banished TV from my everyday life because it got too noisy, too cluttered, and I just assumed (or convinced myself) I wasn’t missing out. I still had the internet and twitter for news updates, and I got to stay “in touch” with the world through filters of my choosing.
But have I really been in touch? Six years of no TV (and no newspapers, no radio, no magazines) and how different have my everydays turned out?
When you retreat into a cave, you get to work on your inner circle–all the things within reach. But there comes a point when you realize your world has gotten so small, that keeping the noise out has become just a vain exercise. Maybe because you’ve recharged for so long, you have so much surplus energy, and you actually owe it to those who haven’t had your luxury to put it to good use “out there”.
The same old questions are still there– who will save the Philippines? What can I do?
“We are just passing through,” Acrylic on Paper, 2010
There are friendships we hold sacred– people who are our crutches or default, much like family. They’re just there, won’t go anywhere, no need for validation. Even when we fight and squabble (if we do), the thought of breaking ties or “losing” each other is non-existent.
Next to love or romance, friendships are stable, non-volatile. I once wrote about this in Love is not it, inspired by this line: “Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love.”
I used to think it’s because friendships, particularly soul friendships, last forever.
But what is forever?
Why do we find comfort in forever?
When something cannot be taken from us, we relax, we lose the “security” worry. We like the idea of unlimited anything– unlimited food, money, vacations. Why not unlimited time, or people, right?
Forever friends. Best friends. Travel-mates–people we brave our journeys with, whether we are on the same journey or not.
Having even just one person believe in us, understand us, be “just there”… it’s enough to empower us to conquer the world!
But many of those who truly seek, advise the opposite: to dwell on impermanence, that everything passes.
Forever is a distraction, a step away, and we must allow even the most sacred people in our lives breathing space to leave when it’s time to leave. And when it’s us who are being called to leave, we pray for the courage to do the same.
