Right Opinions

Written on February 9, 2011, when everybody had an opinion about Angelo Reyes’s suicide

It disgusts me— the way we always have something to say to explain other people’s actions or inactions; the way we encapsulate a lifetime into a sentence; the way we reduce a person into a Right Opinion.

Today, I do not care about Right Opinions.

I am saddened by Angelo Reyes’s suicide. I do not care if he was guilty or not. I do not care about the politics that backdrops his death. All I care about is that he belonged to someone. All I care to imagine is the pain that his death is causing the people to whom he belonged. Damn everything else.

I remember a similar feeling I had almost six months ago with Rolando Mendoza, the hostage-taker in the infamous bus hostage crisis. I still remember how the media cornered his poor father and how they feasted on his reactions. Damn those insensitive bastards.

I cried for Mendoza’s father that night. His reaction to his son’s terrible death was unforgivingly captured by the media that brought the news. That moment was in the midst of so many things to be said, of so many facts that would happily back up opinions, of so many justifiable opportunities to reduce, to trivialize, to mock.

However, that moment should not have been like all the rest. It should have been a moment for pause, for feeling. And because it was so delicate a moment, it needed to be seized—to be felt—right then. At that fleeting moment, all we should have cared about was the poor old man in his flimsy shirt, wailing like a heart-broken child, for the son who belonged to him. Damn everything else.

In the next morning, that moment will have drowned in a sea of Right Opinions. In the next morning, it will not have been a Right Opinion to feel sad for Mendoza or for his father.

Sometimes I fear that we couldn't stop long enough to second-guess ourselves. We are all so proud—and so right—all the time. Couldn't we just sit down and feel? For a while? Couldn't we allow ourselves to just be sad, for a moment, because something is sad?

I do not care so much about Right Opinions today. I only care that my heart is in the Right Place. Damn everything else.

The Murakami Experience

I remember how I struggled with Murakami the first time I picked up "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman". I complained about the unresolved conflicts, the denouements that never came and the non-concluding conclusions. He has a way of building up his plot until he reaches a certain height and then he stops. All of a sudden, I was reading the conclusion. Before I realized I was there, I had missed the ending.

There has always been something I felt I was missing when I read him—something that kept me from making sense of the stories he told. It was easy to feel like an outsider from Murakami’s world. I felt unwelcome and as a result, I was always lost.

Strangely, though, the stories manage to make me feel comfortable with my confusion. At some point after I put the book down, the frustration and the confusion will have left, and what lingers, surprisingly, is the impression of an experience. What remains are memories of the loneliness of spaghetti, of chocolates melting in the sun, of a moving kidney-shaped stone, of a sole firefly against the vastness of a black sky. I remember them, and the emotions they carry, as if they were my own memories.

As for Murakami, I could only attempt to make sense of him in the single way that I know how. I became aware that I was—and still am—constrained by a Way of Seeing that requires me to label, to consult, to anticipate. Because of this, I necessarily live in a world that refuses to perceive what it does not recognize.

And still, in a peculiar Murakami-esque way, it is only when I give up trying to comprehend the Strange Things, that I begin to appreciate what I could not understand. Just as in magic, there are things we see only when we don't.



This un-seeing, I have come to realize, is a Way of Seeing.

A Piece of the Divine

May 29, 2014. Maya Angelou died today.

She also thought there is a place in our souls we have to struggle to keep from getting corrupted. I've been calling it A Piece of the Divine--the place that allows us--despite ourselves--to forgive, to sympathize, to walk away, to hold on, to build again, to dream anew.

Maya Angelou says it is what we protect when we say, "Back off. You are not allowed to hurt me beyond this point." She says it is also where we retreat to reconnect with everything divine. I, myself, believe it is where the rawest sense of what is right resides--stripped off of any social impositions or personal entitlement.

The courage one is able to summon in order to protect it has never ceased to surprise me, just as it has never ceased to fascinate me how much of that strength stems from its very fragility.

To discover someone else in this world describe it in precisely the way I reckon it had been a comfort. Today, with her passing, it feels like I am suffering a personal loss, and I grieve with those who, like me, have once been comforted.

When Friends are Silent

There are only a handful of hurts that would compare to that of a friend's silence. Martin Luther King was right: it is not the words of our enemies we remember but the silence of our friends. When a friend is being hurt in front of our eyes, no matter the reason, and we refuse to say anything, are we not saying that we are permitting the hurting to happen?  Whether he deserved it or not is beside the point; this is our friend to whom it is being done, and our silence shouts, Go ahead, this is okay with me. And to us, to whom the hurting was being done, there is little memory of the incident at all--it is the silence we remember. And every time we do, it is always like it had been the first time: the betrayal crashes like a wave against us, and it becomes painful to breathe.

God forbid I become the kind of person who denies her voice for a friend.

Growing up I have learned that all we get are chances, opportunities for offering ourselves to a task, to a difficult situation, to a grieving friend. I have been taught that to wait to be asked for help was to deny help; that to wait was to be arrogant. Doesn’t the Bible remind us that it is horrible: if you see that your neighbour needs help, do not wait for him to come to you; and when he does, do not tell him to come back the next day, for you will be responsible for the sorrow in his heart? I seem to have learned this too well, so much so that at the most inconvenient of times, I am unable to deny help even when it is I who badly need helping.

I know that eventually, the crisis will sort itself out, and when it does, it is I who will have been denied the opportunity to participate, to contribute, to help. One day, the crisis will be over, my friend’s heart will have healed, and I will not have been around for her.    

                But we do forgive, even despite ourselves. And it is during these moments when I am certain that we are made with a piece of the divine in our souls—moments when we have resolved with all our hearts that we will never forgive the people who fail us, and yet we do. Despite ourselves, we do.

I used to refuse any version of forgiveness that falls short of giving the Forgiven a perfect second chance. I don’t know if I believe this still, and I do not know whether this doubt is wisdom unperfected or the beginning of the corruption of a heart. Whatever it is, I have been learning lately that forgiving is a conscious decision that we commit to day after day after day, until we can look the other person in the eye and not look away anymore when we remember that his silence was not because we have pushed him away, like he says, but because he gave up too soon.   

            God forbid I become the friend who gives up too soon.

 

It is a tricky thing, forgiveness. It eases itself in with the acceptance of the other person’s limitations just as much as the acceptance of our own—our tendencies to assume falsely, to assume too much, and to assume too soon. About people, I’ve been learning one shouldn’t assume at all.

While we wrestle with the forgiving of a silent friend and more importantly, of ourselves, we tread around slowly, careful that we are neither pushing them away, nor letting them in once again. One day, we might have a change of heart, but right now we know we cannot let them in anymore. They will have to keep to the side lines this time, where they chose to stand when we needed them the most.

Yet, like a paradox, people whom we thought stood only in the side lines, become the ones who look out for us, and like an answered prayer, they become the ones who see us through. If only for them, I would want to be better, so I can one day get the divine chance to be the same to someone, as selflessly as these people have been to me.     

Disappointing Expectations, Expecting Disappointments

To pull our expectations down because of the belief that less expectations create less disappointments--that is to unfairly devalue our human tendencies.

It is not right to keep ourselves from trusting people enough to believe that they can deliver.

Sure, we hear stories.

But, until how long would we attribute somebody’s hurt to an irrational expectation? Up to how low do we allow ourselves to pull our expectations down? Wouldn’t that result to an irreversible degradation of our standards, of our value? We will be less disappointed, sure, but we also will have dragged our value down so low, the things we uphold--and even our own selves--would not be worth anything anymore. All for what? For keeping away a little disappointment?

What is so terrible about disappointment anyway?

Isn’t it proof, at least, that we believed there was an Ideal that can be had? That at some point, before we learned of infidelities and betrayals of trust, it was unthinkable that we could possibly be let down; that it was unthinkable that love will not suffice.

If disappointment is proof of that, then shouldn't disappointment be valued?

If it isn't, shouldn't it be valued still if it jolts us awake from the false reality we may foolishly be creating around us?

Disappointment keeps in check what we think our place is in each other’s lives; it keeps us aware of our own participation in the connections we struggle to create, every day. It is a blunt reminder that life nudges us with, every once in a while: “Look where you’re heading…” So, we look up and heed the disappointment, no matter the cost.

Believing that less expectations yield less disappointments is taking the passive, quieter route and I don’t think we should always choose to be less passionate, especially when it comes to nurturing relationships.

Shouldn’t we create room for expectation, our own, and the other person’s, even though we make ourselves vulnerable to disappointment? Shouldn’t we say, “I am your friend and your expectations of me validate my place in your life.”?

The absence of expectations should be depressing and frightening.  

It is not wise at all to believe that we should create less expectations. Rather, it is a shameful scapegoat we find convenient at the moment when we should be asking for more. Believing that having no expectation saves us from hurting, is a tempting nook we discover when we are inconvenienced by love, into which we curl like a coward and where we wait until it is safe to emerge, so that we can walk away and pretend we are unscathed. 

I say we raise the expectations, and if they must, let the disappointments come, because we cannot always yield to the fear of being hurt, and settle for less than we ourselves dare to give.  

Can, Cannot and Everything in Between

Tonight, after rereading conversations and messages, I re-realized, for I have forgotten horribly, that we are always more than we are at any single point in our lives. We are more than our lousiest mistake or our most brilliant achievement. Our anger is not who we are; neither is our hurt, our grief or our pride. To be reminded of these, I have to pay dearly, but if only to acquire this wisdom, which cannot be hurried, I will be grateful. 

Tonight I am thinking about the capacity of our human soul. I am thinking not along the categories of Can and Cannot, but of the infinite possibilities that may fall in between—

Our capacity to endure

To wait, to hope, to accept, to let go

To destroy, to hoard, to deceive

To regret, to grieve, to hurt

To forgive

To stop

To try again, to remember, to forget, to imagine, to create

To give, to fight, to dream, to celebrate

To love

            To be happy, to be whole, to Become

            To Be.

Fairies and Lions, Too

My sister is taking her first plane ride, and she is taking it all on her own, to a metropolis that does not know her. It is her first seminar, her first hotel stay and her first travel all alone. In my mind, she is still a child, not the Chemical engineer she had made herself become, and in my mind, she, like my brother, will always need protecting against the world. 

This would seem trite, to those used to travelling, and especially to those who have traveled since they were small, but for us, who have to strive in order to make it happen for ourselves, it is a testament, once again, of dreams becoming true.

This must be how parents feel, as their children make their dreams real, because of them, or, in some unfortunate cases, despite them. It feels strange, like I had been left out of an experience, which, in reality, could have never been mine anyway.

Perhaps, I have always thought that I would be there during my brother and my sister’s first plane ride. I have not imagined a scenario of them doing it alone or with other people. I had always thought that I had to make it happen for them: this thing imaginable only as a luxury when we were children, as we sprawled, belly-down, on our parents’ bed and on our daydreams.

Too soon, we have stopped dreaming of becoming princesses and warriors, just when kids our age started believing they can be fairies or lions. In the stead of wild childish imaginings, we dreamed of grown versions of ourselves, in important luncheon meetings, or in pilot cockpits. We talked too long about plane rides and hotel rooms, instead of wands and swords, of huge beds and hot and cold showers instead of superpowers and wings.

There were times when I wished we had it like other children did, but this—this unknowable triumph we share only with those who are like Us—this is irreplaceable. It escapes language and is articulated only by the glitter of tiaras, pixie dust and shining armors.

We do not mind if our first plane ride happened fifteen years too late into our lifetimes. This does not change a thing. Plane rides and hotel rooms are made of similar stuff as princesses or warriors, of fairies and lions, too.