It certainly helps whenever I write about things; I always get a clearer insight from them.They used to ask us what does writing means to us, my friend said he will die without it; I answered, I will go insane if I stopped writing. Besides, writing is a whole cheaper than therapy, more so in our culture where depression is not tolerated. Is it because we are just so happy as a nation, we cannot accept being otherwise?
Anyway, back to my truth.My parents, 2006 and my books, though they have influence my disposition and where I am today, are not to be blamed. The truth is, I had to be where I had to be. My mistake is I let the situation entrapped me and it had been a struggle to escape. Throw in self-doubt and insecurity, I suddenly found myself in a hell hole I unconsciously made.I became afraid; if my relatively sheltered world had been so harsh, what more the real world?
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
I'm Done Blaming my Parents or 2006, so I'm Blaming the Books I've Read when I was Young Instead
Man, this whole fixing my life thing is hard.
****************
I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately, setting my life against those things I read and watch, It can be very depressing but I am so over crying so I'm just gonna write it down and digest it more. Of all the things I have watched, the opening sequence of Emir struck me the most; it presented the desperation of this country in a lively song and dance number. It was so sad but their spirit was so proud and strong, it makes me feel so little. Me, who had been so much luckier than most of my countrymen in a way that I don't have to work abroad for my family to live, had been living my life as if I am in early 19th century England instead of a third world country who had been struggling forever from poverty. I had been reading too many Austen. Yet by those kind of novel's standards, I have not even started living yet. I have not been away from a guardian's protection nor seriously entertained suitors for marriage, therefore have not started "life" yet. Should I take comfort from the study that adulthood no longer begins at 21? That more and more people from 20s to 30s are taking a longer time to finish school or get steady on their careers? This is ofcourse a study done in the U.S., it does not feel right to think that way here, it just sounds too bourgeois for the land of the masses. Taking a longer time to be an adult..pfft. Life does not wait for anyone, why would I be an exception?
There is just something in Adulthood that scares me big time! Even before, I was afraid of puberty. This might be too much information but I willed my boobs not to grow, clearly I regretted doing that. But then again during highschool, I were not that interested in looks because instead of reading magazines like my friends I was reading these books that while they praise beauty, they do not think it is as important as wit and good character. It turns out, as I found out when I liked a boy, wit and good character makes you their friend, boobs on the other hand make you belong to their opposite sex, therefore an object of their desire. Then again I were already in college by that time, exposed to so many liberal ideas that I refuse to be enslaved by such an outdated chauvinistic notion. It was also during that time that Dove lunched its true beauty campaign and I happen to love my body as it is. My boobs eventually reached a satisfactory size.
Another thing, I was also afraid of going to college. Not nervous, afraid. My excitement over finally cheering for a UAAP school that I officially belong to cannot lessen it. I still remember what UST AB Building looked to me on that first day, it looked like a metal monster, its gate a mouth with fangs waiting to swallow me. The grills are made of diamond shapes, which could also be seen as a triangle and fangs are shaped like triangles. What am I an eight year old boy, imagining metal monsters? Then ofcourse, I had a blast in college! Stupid fears.
Still, I feared undergoing OJT. I hated those Makati buildings, the epitome of capitalism in this country. Heartless, money-suckers. Suit-wearing asses under this tropical sun where a minimun-wage earning construction worker is working on a building where soon enough, somebody with an english twang is taking the complaints from a very irate customer living on the other side of the planet. Then I fell in love with advertising and how much influence they have over our lives, with elevators that are so spacey and goes so high, with jollyjeeps, with the underpass and sidewalks of Ayala.
At first I thought I was afraid of changes but no, I have done changes that have nothing to do with growing up and I have no problem with them. We had moved houses, changed hairstyles or whatnot, I'm ok with it. But I have a problem in changing the stage of life where I am in. I have heard of the Peter Pan syndrome, of people who did not want to grow up but then again, I don't want to be a kid forever and just play around. I want to be an adult but I don't know how and as I have noticed, I don't like doing things I don't know how. If I am going to do something new, I research about it and if possible watch a demonstration so I get an idea how it is done. Adulthood does not come with an instruction manual and the demonstrations I have seen, well they suck at it. However, there is something that I have put to heart the instructions of, and it is about not being an adult, a book titled "The Little Prince."
I first read it when I was about 8 or 9 in Filipino so I understood everything it said, perhaps not all of what it means to say but I got the main point. I reread the english version countless of times, even did a paper during college. I no longer know where both of the books are, but I still know its lessons. Adult people sucks, they cannot be trusted. They are so consumed by money, their job, their power; they forget what is important. I got that impression very young and it stayed with me. The Little Prince has a lot more wisdom concerning love,life and relationship that I discovered when I read it later but the whole adulthood sucks idea had been imprinted in my mind while it was just developing that I did not know that it was just an idea, I simply assumed it was a fact and so I hated the thought that I would be an adult someday and would eventually suck in life and forget everything that is important.
It just dawned on me, my mom, who is the closest adult person to me, is totally unlike all the grown-ups in the Little Prince. Why didn't I looked at her instead of those awful characters. She was even the one who gave me the book. (But I guess, we don't really see our mother as a person, but just as a mother.) So what now, The Little Prince screwed me up, what to do? Should I read it again, maybe now the adult people would not be so horrible because now I can deconstruct them and understand why they were that way? Should I really accept that a children's book, though very philosophical is the cause of all my restlessness? Am I no better than Catherine Morland who blurred reality from fiction? And if I answer all of these, would I finally have the courage to send out my resume, have a job, move myself from parental security and start my life? If I don't do anything, my life would turn out like a late 18th century English novel, I would enjoy reading it but not living it. Because seriously, would I wait for a hero to make my life better? I don't think so .
****************
I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately, setting my life against those things I read and watch, It can be very depressing but I am so over crying so I'm just gonna write it down and digest it more. Of all the things I have watched, the opening sequence of Emir struck me the most; it presented the desperation of this country in a lively song and dance number. It was so sad but their spirit was so proud and strong, it makes me feel so little. Me, who had been so much luckier than most of my countrymen in a way that I don't have to work abroad for my family to live, had been living my life as if I am in early 19th century England instead of a third world country who had been struggling forever from poverty. I had been reading too many Austen. Yet by those kind of novel's standards, I have not even started living yet. I have not been away from a guardian's protection nor seriously entertained suitors for marriage, therefore have not started "life" yet. Should I take comfort from the study that adulthood no longer begins at 21? That more and more people from 20s to 30s are taking a longer time to finish school or get steady on their careers? This is ofcourse a study done in the U.S., it does not feel right to think that way here, it just sounds too bourgeois for the land of the masses. Taking a longer time to be an adult..pfft. Life does not wait for anyone, why would I be an exception?
There is just something in Adulthood that scares me big time! Even before, I was afraid of puberty. This might be too much information but I willed my boobs not to grow, clearly I regretted doing that. But then again during highschool, I were not that interested in looks because instead of reading magazines like my friends I was reading these books that while they praise beauty, they do not think it is as important as wit and good character. It turns out, as I found out when I liked a boy, wit and good character makes you their friend, boobs on the other hand make you belong to their opposite sex, therefore an object of their desire. Then again I were already in college by that time, exposed to so many liberal ideas that I refuse to be enslaved by such an outdated chauvinistic notion. It was also during that time that Dove lunched its true beauty campaign and I happen to love my body as it is. My boobs eventually reached a satisfactory size.
Another thing, I was also afraid of going to college. Not nervous, afraid. My excitement over finally cheering for a UAAP school that I officially belong to cannot lessen it. I still remember what UST AB Building looked to me on that first day, it looked like a metal monster, its gate a mouth with fangs waiting to swallow me. The grills are made of diamond shapes, which could also be seen as a triangle and fangs are shaped like triangles. What am I an eight year old boy, imagining metal monsters? Then ofcourse, I had a blast in college! Stupid fears.
Still, I feared undergoing OJT. I hated those Makati buildings, the epitome of capitalism in this country. Heartless, money-suckers. Suit-wearing asses under this tropical sun where a minimun-wage earning construction worker is working on a building where soon enough, somebody with an english twang is taking the complaints from a very irate customer living on the other side of the planet. Then I fell in love with advertising and how much influence they have over our lives, with elevators that are so spacey and goes so high, with jollyjeeps, with the underpass and sidewalks of Ayala.
At first I thought I was afraid of changes but no, I have done changes that have nothing to do with growing up and I have no problem with them. We had moved houses, changed hairstyles or whatnot, I'm ok with it. But I have a problem in changing the stage of life where I am in. I have heard of the Peter Pan syndrome, of people who did not want to grow up but then again, I don't want to be a kid forever and just play around. I want to be an adult but I don't know how and as I have noticed, I don't like doing things I don't know how. If I am going to do something new, I research about it and if possible watch a demonstration so I get an idea how it is done. Adulthood does not come with an instruction manual and the demonstrations I have seen, well they suck at it. However, there is something that I have put to heart the instructions of, and it is about not being an adult, a book titled "The Little Prince."
I first read it when I was about 8 or 9 in Filipino so I understood everything it said, perhaps not all of what it means to say but I got the main point. I reread the english version countless of times, even did a paper during college. I no longer know where both of the books are, but I still know its lessons. Adult people sucks, they cannot be trusted. They are so consumed by money, their job, their power; they forget what is important. I got that impression very young and it stayed with me. The Little Prince has a lot more wisdom concerning love,life and relationship that I discovered when I read it later but the whole adulthood sucks idea had been imprinted in my mind while it was just developing that I did not know that it was just an idea, I simply assumed it was a fact and so I hated the thought that I would be an adult someday and would eventually suck in life and forget everything that is important.
It just dawned on me, my mom, who is the closest adult person to me, is totally unlike all the grown-ups in the Little Prince. Why didn't I looked at her instead of those awful characters. She was even the one who gave me the book. (But I guess, we don't really see our mother as a person, but just as a mother.) So what now, The Little Prince screwed me up, what to do? Should I read it again, maybe now the adult people would not be so horrible because now I can deconstruct them and understand why they were that way? Should I really accept that a children's book, though very philosophical is the cause of all my restlessness? Am I no better than Catherine Morland who blurred reality from fiction? And if I answer all of these, would I finally have the courage to send out my resume, have a job, move myself from parental security and start my life? If I don't do anything, my life would turn out like a late 18th century English novel, I would enjoy reading it but not living it. Because seriously, would I wait for a hero to make my life better? I don't think so .
