There is a general silence all around. A silence that is broken only by muted conversations by and among street-denizens, and the rumblings on the TV set below. Oh, yes, the purring of my electric fan breaks the monotony of the pounding keys of this laptop in my room. It’s a dark room, by circumstance. It has been two weeks since the switch of my overhead fluorescent light busted out. I don’t know when I’ll have it fixed, if ever I will. The light from my desk lamp satisfies my needs anyhow.
I feel the urge to write -- an essay, a short story, a novel or a poem – anything. My mind races to and fro, like a tennis ball between two ace players. It can’t settle on anything worthy to write about. Re-reading my postings in my blog, I find some inspiration. Yet, just as soon as I begin, the idea doesn’t seem too enticing to explore beyond the walls of my imagination, much less to share.
Thirty-six years! Wow! It’s cliché but I can’t help but say it, “How fast time indeed flies?” In four years, I’d be embracing another cliché, “Life begins at forty.” Unbelievable! Yet, there is no guarantee I’d get to live those four years, right. I don’t even know if I will get to appreciate tomorrow’s sunrise. Which makes me regret having missed today’s.
Birthdays are for kids. Yeah, at least those types where you invite friends over and mom cooks a round-table full of buffet meals. There is an overflowing of soda, juice and all types of drinks. At the end of the day, the floor is filled with discarded gift wrappers and boxes. The whole house is practically re-arranged. Chairs that once were limited to the dining table, now find themselves in the front yard. One leans on the wall, missing a leg. The balloons that once adorned each have all been taken home by the guests not after a few squabbling on who-gets-what. Of course, the celebrant is assured of his – the biggest and most strikingly colored. One goes to bed feeling like a king on his coronation day. The rest of the household is preoccupied with restoring order to the house.
The day after is left-over day. Guests who failed to come last night manage to relive the festive atmosphere of the prior day through the stories untiringly told and re-told. At the very least, they share the same food, right. It’s the next best thing to having been there. Better than left-over food, the celebrant receives an after-birthday gift! More often than not, the best gifts come via this route. The best gift is not necessarily the biggest and best wrapped. This was to be the first lesson in “big things come from small packages.” Indeed.
Those days are now gone. Today, hardly anyone remembered. Outside the immediate family, there were only three people who remembered. They are enough reason to smile and be happy. Only true and dear friends remember. Of course, I have to grant a degree of doubt to others who have remembered but have not an idea of how to get in touch. Mea culpa! I have changed my numbers too often, too soon. As I have said, the three who remembered are more than enough. The first greeting came in at six minutes past
Yet, birthdays are not for others to remember, but is a reminder for the celebrant. The silent question stares me on the face – “What have I done with the years I had been fortunate enough to live through?” The answer evades me at the moment. Or maybe, I am avoiding it for the stark truthful answer is “practically nothing.”
I am but an image of who I want to be. Yet, far from the image I had when I was a kid. My generation grew up wanting to be doctors, priests, engineers, architects and the most popular of all – a successful businessman. Only a few of my peers actually became so. Most had to settle for a career they never even dreamed of back then – myself included.
I must have been influenced by the nuns and priests at early school that I first thought of becoming a priest. I recall pretending to be one using a white blanket as my priestly garb with my invisible parishioners intently listening to my sermon. Well, it actually amounted to nothing but a reading from whatever page of the bible I opened to. Understanding it then was an entirely different matter.
Yet, when I began to find about the life priests “supposedly” lived, my dreams self-destructed. I couldn’t imagine such a constricted life. Or at least that’s the way I thought it was. So I trained my sights to being a doctor. To my young mind, all doctors made money. No need to find employment. It was a career that kind of drew in the money, rather than searching for them. Everyone gets sick at one time right? All one needs is a clinic outside the home and presto! The cash register sings.
In 1983, Sen. Aquino was assassinated. The public outcry amazed me. I had not known a stronger personality than Ferdinand Marcos until then. How his death galvanized an entire nation to unshackle the chains of fear and unleash their hatred still confounds me today. Yet it was enough to set me on a new path. Finding out the reasons for the murder and the ensuing outcry that eventually led to 1986, served as my motivation to brave a new world erstwhile unknown outside the confines of classroom discussion of current events – filtered though they were. I wanted to become a lawyer. As articulate as Ninoy was, as intelligent as Marcos, yet as compassionate as the Pope….if such combination was ever possible.
Thus at the crossroads of post-secondary school, my mind was set on becoming a lawyer. Yet my parents choices were limited to either architecture (my elder sister enrolled the course at UST) or Medicine. To give both equal chances, I took entrance examinations at both UST and UP. I passed all. I decided to go to UP with a silent vow to concentrate on academics and not be hypnotized by the cadence of marches headed towards the Palace and Mendiola shouting anti-institution slogans. Suffice it to say, or sing, broken vow.
My involvement in politics and political organizing traces back to my sophomore year when I was elected College Student Council Secretary, the youngest on record. The following year, I was elected as Chairperson, by a landslide against a “moneyed” opponent. Unlike national politics however, it was a fair and clean fight. There were a few “dirty” tricks here and there, but it was a friendly race, generally. I remember spending the night in our candidate for Secretary’s house in Dalandanan with the full-slate, preparing hand printed campaign posters and other hand-outs. This was the same year that I joined the volunteer group for the Jovy Salonga presidential campaign. We may have lost the election badly but we all came out victors – rich with experience, a first hand look at what politics was at the ground.
(to be continued on my next birthday)
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