I grew up with twins. They have their own world — they connive, they plan and execute, or sometimes they plan to have no plan — the given is that they do everything together.
Whether you invite heartbreak or joy into your life, expect the other to come galloping by soon enough. They are what we Filipinos like to call “Buy one, take one.”
There is a pause button to the whole process, though. It happens when we become an outsider, an onlooker, and decide to stay out of the game.
We get a breather, either to sort through the mess, or refill the well.
Now going on night #7 in my new home, after a grueling two-year wait, and it feels surreal that I’m actually able to sit down and properly write again. Amidst the workload I have to do (business-wise, house cleaning-wise, creative-wise), I insist on this critical me time tonight to essay out my thoughts.
After being consumed by what’s practical for so long (i.e. daily hardware visits, weekly payroll, unending construction issues, furniture shopping, etc.), it is soooo refreshing to doodle away and let myself go…
Still very rusty with the writing knife though. I feel the hesitation and the urge to overdo…
But will sit through this until something comes out. Marathon post warning!
When we make time to distill what needs saying, a precious gift comes to us — a clear mind. That’s the superfood of the psychic world, I think. With a clear mind, anyone can be superman/woman.
No amount of brainwashing will make me endure slaving over money. I wish I could’ve been wired otherwise. I see ambition on friends’ faces and hearts and used to wonder if I felt envious, but my truth is not in that space. I know with certainty that I don’t belong there, and that I will have to start really believing that when we do what we love, we are most successful and consequently, most rewarded (i.e. the money will come).
…when a person is working in the area of his of her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss.
In Spanish, instead of asking someone you just met “What’s your work?” or “What do you do?”, the question is “A que te dedicas?” — To what are you dedicated?
The romantic in me would gladly volunteer “LOVE” as the answer, or maybe it would make more sense to answer with specific people to love …
But beyond this abstract motivation, what does get us out of bed in the morning? Is it to pay bills, to work to provide for our family, to put food on the table? Is it to count the hours until we get to go home and rest again, ready for the next day? Is it so we can meet up with friends after work, to unwind and watch a movie with our loved one, or to go on facebook and chismis the day away? Is it to pray and be accountable for our time and talents?
What’s your honest answer? Why did you get out of bed this morning?
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.
