When I hit nineteen, I decided it was time to grow up. It wasn’t a specific, premeditated move. It was simply the next logical thing to do, like licking your fingers after finishing a bag of chips.
Learn to ride a bike. Become a movie star. Make the school team. Finish high school with honors. Go far away from home. Get a girl. Get any girl. Join a band. Major in drinking. Accomplished or otherwise, one after another I had ticked these things off in my mental calendar when it was time for me to take the next step in the sequentially-tailored path I had laid out for myself.
Growing up was now the next task at hand and I was expected to undertake it with the kind of unquestioning devotion common among holy men. Growing up meant shaping up, so I dumped the beer bottles, shopped for a brand new attitude, picked up a couple of programming books, and mastered the art of staying awake in class.
Following the track I had engineered, my grades went up and I soon found myself slowly inching towards the goals I had stacked up in life. As the year dragged on, however, I also found that I had to surrender more and more of my time to remain on track. Skimboarding gave way to study sessions. Get togethers with friends had to be scrapped because I needed more time to work on my projects. Reason told me it was the mature thing to do and I foolishly nodded my head in agreement.
Everything that didn’t fit into the plan found their way into the fast-growing trash heap and soon, under reason’s dictates, I had thrown my life out the window. Daily activities took on a mechanical tone and my days were forever tinted in the same shade of grey. Retaining what was absolutely necessary; I only ate to keep the machinery going. Rationing my energy among things that contributed to my academic growth, I sometimes forgot to shower.
In retrospect, I realize that I was not unlike a sorry lump of metal, cold and distant, orbiting the Earth in mechanical resignation, bound only by the lonely tug of gravity. I had lost my hold on life. But then, deep in my folly, my mind was clouded from any such realization.
It took a visit home to jumpstart senses that had gone dormant from inactivity. Sitting at the family table enjoying warm chicken soup and an unhurried conversation, I came to the realization I had needed all along. Life was suddenly more of a concept to me than a reality. The actual process of living was pushed aside in favor of a mere concept, something I constructed, polished and turned around within my head. But this concept was as hollow as the words on a dissertation paper, for it lacked the warmth of life, and that was what I needed at the moment.
With the realization, I saw myself for what I was, a kid running in circles. I came to realize I had my head propped towards the sky unendingly, not wanting to miss the promised fireworks that would turn the horizon aglow in a shower of colors. But I was doing this in the middle of June and there would be no fireworks display for another six months. I was waiting in vain. Meanwhile, in all its subtle beauty, life paraded by, as I stood dumbly staring at a blank sky that was a reflection of what my life had become.
Like a kid who couldn’t wait to get to the kiss, I had traipsed over everything else in a hurry. Laugh over the movie. Enjoy the conversation you have over dinner. Feel her warm hand in yours when you go strolling. And when its time to seal the night with a kiss, enjoy the kiss. Don’t forget the little things, for these are what bind us to our humanity.
Rewiring myself to what I once held dear was easy. It was what I had been doing all my life. It was living. Growing up? I still hope to get my act together, and when I graduate I am still headed for
Everything's easier said than done. Luckily, it's never too late to start living again. The last week was frantic, jumped on a plane to Diliman, read up on Algebra, Trigonometry, and Geometry, took the admission exam for ITTC, and I hope I get in, I hope I get in, I hope I get in (what's the tolerable number of times I get to repeat this phrase without sounding too desperate). If favorable winds pay me a visit, I guess I'll unfurl these old sails and set sail towards the fabled unknown one last time.
