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. 

The Consequence of Memory

I pulled an all-nighter for Elie Wiesel’s Night.

I have always thought that there are books that change us, and there are books that are able to reveal who we are. Night was both, and I had been fearful of it.

Two years ago, I attempted to read it, and I put it down nine pages later, terrified of what it could break in me. Last night, I picked it up again, and I was right to not underestimate its power.

 It was as harrowing as I expected it to be.

Night is not for the struggling faithful or for the non-believer. One should approach the book with care, because he emerges from it a changed person. Only the self-assured pseudo-religious would emerge from it unscathed, because they will have dismissed it as an example of condemnable writing.

Night is a slim volume of the firsthand account of a Holocaust survivor, written in very potent prose. It is a record of the worst that human beings could be, and I feared that when I read it, I might see things I cannot un-see.

Yet, I emerged from Night without having been as provoked as I had expected to be. I did not get out of it angry, or confused, or accusing. If anything, I accepted that I was not asking the wrong questions. I do not know how this was possible. Perhaps because I had grown up, had grown wiser in the span of time that I waited, and the part of my soul that was vulnerable, in all its fragility, had created for itself a semblance of defense.

Or perhaps because I had lost what I had been struggling to protect in me, two years back, when I decided I couldn’t get past the book's first nine pages. I had lost this part of my soul in the two years that I waited, and because it is no longer there, there is nothing to protect nor to destroy.

Had I insisted on reading it then, I would have fallen into a pit from which there is no saving. Like Night's Eliezar, I would have found it futile to guard my faith when all there was to see were abandonment and disillusionment. Like him, I, too, would have found it easy to condemn and impossible to forgive. My fear had been my very salvation. Because I waited, I am saved.

Elie (for I shall call him that) ended his memoir in three pages. The conclusion of an unspeakable journey, in three pages.

It was an epilogue devoid of drama, devoid of questions or answers. It did not glorify the redemption that came in the end.

If anything, the conclusion was written only like it was a duty he owed to the story he told—like it was the consequence of living, the consequence of memory.

In the Tiger's Eyes

I remember how the eponymous lad in Life of Pi wailed inconsolably when he was finally found along the Mexican shore by people—members of his own species, he said—after a long ordeal and a struggle to survive with a Bengal tiger, which like him, had survived a shipwreck. He was wailing, much to the confusion of the people who were saving him, because his heart broke when the tiger left him--so unceremoniously.

This tiger, for whom he has learned to feel responsible and by whom he felt valued and needed, jumped out of the boat, all thin and famished, and walked on towards the forest without looking back. It just walked, literally, out of his life. So unceremoniously.

Time and time again, we are Pi, calling out and wailing for the tiger that left so unceremoniously, it broke our heart. I’ve been realizing how it is truly a miracle to find people who value us, when, as it happens sometimes, a moment so clear comes when we realize our insignificance in certain relationships we value. The moment would be so clear that the epiphany would almost seem like a betrayal. How could we have been missing it until now? How could we not have seen how little we mattered?

Pi’s father is right: we see in the tiger’s eyes only our own emotions reflected back to us.

But those emotions were ours. And despite them inadvertently hurting us in the end, looking straight on couldn't be a mistake.

So, we allow ourselves to be saved by the epiphany, we grieve for the tiger who left so unceremoniously and perhaps, when we are healed, we will try again.

This Business of Untangling

I used to look forward to epiphanies that begin with “at the end of the day…” but lately, they have been escaping even before I could acknowledge them, perhaps because they are too many or perhaps because there is no “end” of the day anymore. Lately, it seems as though the conclusions of each day are reduced into a quiet dwindling— a dot, dot, dot—no longer the definitive closure brought about by a deep sigh and then, sleep.

 There is no lull inside my head, even in that thin strip between wakefulness and sleep. There is a singular forceful thought that squirms and complains, “There is too much untangling to do”. I often yield, and lie awake, for hours and hours, buried deep in this business of untangling.

There is too much untangling to do. There are too many thoughts about people, thoughts about people’s reactions, and thoughts about people’s reactions to reactions, thoughts about wrong reactions, quick reactions, fake reactions, right people, mean people, friendly people, thoughts running around, thoughts staying put, thoughts covering other thoughts, fantastic thoughts, practical thoughts, blasphemous thoughts, thoughts about lists, thoughts about lies, big lies, small lies, big brains, tiny brains, loud people, proud people, dancing people, sick people, fat people, people with shiny heads, poor people, old people, dead people, crazy people, people with diabetes, people with tangled hair, people with tangled, tangled hair, thoughts about people with too many judgments to assign, many, many, many judgments waiting for their turn, judgments raising their hands, judgments jumping up and down, me, me, pick me, ruthless judgments, people with judgments, always with judgments in spite of their tangled thoughts tangled with feelings tangled with fears tangled with insecuritiestangledwithfrustrationstangledwithsickpeoplewithtangledhair. 

 Eventually, though, I manage to tire myself out only to slip into dreaming. Once, days after we buried her, I dreamed of my dead grandma, wanting to come inside the house. She was knocking on the front door very persistently (which was very un-ghostly when you think of it). She was in her favorite white shirt and her loose black pants, and some of her hair strayed to her face as she knocked and knocked. I woke up in a fit of mirthless laughter. I found it really preposterous that I conjured her in my dream with untangled hair. When my grandma had become too sick to get out of bed, her hair became so tangled it became a stubborn solid mass of white and gray. We couldn’t undo it no matter what we did. When she died, we buried her in the lacy white dress I bought her, and her tangled hair.

 The truth is I have developed a fear of tangled things. Several weeks ago, when my mom fell ill, her hair became so tangled too. I tried for days to untangle it. It was a chore devoid of method or order, but I would do it anyway. I would pull a chair by her bed and I would patiently loosen the tangled mess. As my fingers worked in the foreign roughness, my mind would sift through the thoughts in my head.

And the business of untangling would begin again.