a walking contradiction

December 31, 2008

With the end of the year in a few hours and upon reading a comic book in a first-person perspective, which is to me a discourse of ideas that seemed to agree with my own system of ideologies and opinions that are, for now, trivial nevertheless interesting, I found my brain shooting with thoughts zigzagging each other in a spontaneous manner.

 

In an effort to put coherence to these thoughts, I am scribbling them down here. However, I believed neither that I could organize them into meaningful patterns nor frame them in a larger perspective. Perhaps they are just a state of mind at such a depressing planet with various social upheavals and moral dilemmas or a state of mind of someone trying to analyze the life, the world, and the self to give meaning to her existence. That these thoughts are occurring to me now, I only have the yearend and the comic book to blame or thank.

 

Knowing a person inside out is impossible. Consciously or not, our personalities change, in different degrees, when we’re with different people. I don’t quite understand the saying, “Tell me who your friends are, I’ll tell you who you are.” Do we transform to the personality of those near us? Or do they transform to something like us? Who decides? It is true though that most groups have similar attitudes. There are those who are rich, who are pretty, who are shy, who are intelligent, and who are funny. In most cases, the forming of a group of friends is not planned. Rather, individuals seem to magnet each other and eventually become friends. But that the people in a group are the same is superficial. We are always unique. More unique in the sense that we are like a chameleon changing attitude toward different people. This may not be for survival, but definitely for harmony, sometimes forced harmony. What I am really trying to say is, we don’t really truly know a person to his or her core. The psychologists’ analysis is nothing but an analysis.

 

I remember not so long ago being furious with someone because that someone was saying things as if he knew everything about me. Well, he was wrong. Always, there is something beneath a person. Although not always dark, but there is something else. What you see is what you get is rarely the case. That is my theory. Even in blogs, a person may entirely be different from his or her writings. Jessica Zafra said, in a seemingly contemptuous way, to the person who introduced her to the audience, mostly of praises, that she should never say that one’s life is an open book and that her writings say things about who she is. I share her opinion. One cannot always assume an absolute truth. Even these thoughts may or may not be me. Truth is only for toddlers, when fear is not yet known.

 

That I am childish in many ways may be a reflection of how happy and easy it is to be a child. I am still fascinated over fireworks and lights and in Jollibee dancing around. It gets me to thinking that I would have stopped time if I can when I was still a child. Life is simpler, beautiful, better. Then again, I like having a purpose in life. Or do I just need to have one since I’m no longer a child?

 

I will still do our family’s pamahiin. I will still shake loud my coin bank when the clock strikes 12 for a bountiful year and start the engine of the car and beep continuously until 2009 comes. This contradicts my belief in destiny. Will luck come if it hears that I have many coins? I don’t know, but somehow I always thought this may work. Is this a sign of a losing hope in the future or optimism in things unknown?

 

For someone who hates waiting, I wait a lot. I wait and wait and dare not change course for fear of missing something good that might come. People say I’m brave. I try to act as if I am. There’s no difference really. I long for change, yet I’m afraid of it. I don’t like it when friends talk so loud that everyone notices, but the howl of the wind is more deafening.

 

I believe that the long and effortful search for that lost remote control is futile. It will appear when you are no longer searching.

 

There. My thoughts. Happy new year. Really. I wish all of you have a great year ahead!