Third World Writer

Continued.

So it’s 2009 and once again the year has changed, and every time this happens I feel a little confused. January 1 is such an arbitrary day, no different from any other, but celebrated as the beginning of the year just because Julius Caesar declared it a couple of thousand years ago. But nothing much happens on midnight on the first of January. The earth turns a little, moves around the sun a little, and fireworks go off. Big deal. I don’t get it. Every day should be a new year.

Still, because everyone else seems to treat each new set of 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds as a neatly delimited chapter in our lives, as though our lives come in segments with clear beginnings and ends, I’ve spent a little time this morning wondering about the things that happened in the last year.

I lost my job, which was sucky enough even without the conjunctivitis and having my phone die on me at the same time.

I moved back to Manila for work, effectively beginning a long-distance relationship with zee. Sucks.

I turned a quarter of a century old. My zee turned a year older.

My phone got stolen. A wonderful day.

My friends, Red and Tin, got “married”. The most fun wedding I’ve attended, and the only one with Wii, PS3 and ping pong on pre-wedding game night. Didn’t get to play Taboo officially (because our team won before my turn), but picked up a knack for it after the wedding. ^_^

Zee and I celebrated our four years together, apart.

I joined, and failed, NaNoWriMo, but gained a confidence that no attempt is ever made in vain. Made a mental list of things I want to try for a month, including putting up a website, learning the guitar, learning Rails, getting published, writing songs, etc.

I set up my website. Well, technically not yet, just relocated my blog to thirdworldwriter.com, but I’ll fix it soon enough.

My tau cross’s string broke.

And I met up with Girlie and April. Funny thing.

Here are two people I met in high school, was never really friends with either of them, and I think I might have hated April at one point (I hated all CAT officers, as a group, sorry ^^). I have almost no memory of them from those days, but met the older versions of themselves online via blogs. I find it pretty cool that we are able to do these sort of things now, forget people of no importance to us and discover them later in a new light. It makes the world just that much larger.

Among all the days in my life that I still remember, among the most significant is the Fifteenth of August, 2008. This is the day that my phone got stolen, and unlike most memorable days where only one or two significant events occur, this day had a whole bunch of important events that taught me something. And every once in a while, when the state of the world leaves me feeling really down, I look back to this day as a reminder that there is still hope.

I’m not gonna bore you with the details, but it involved losing a cellphone, not knowing the time, listening to the rain, following a foreigner and offering an umbrella without a word.

As you might guess, because I don’t believe in the concept of a “New Year”, I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. I believe people should contemplate how they’ve been living their lives more frequently than once a year, and resolve to improve themselves more often. It’s okay to set long-term goals for Earth’s next trip around the Sun, but it’s important to assess one’s self regularly. Improvement should not need to coincide with fireworks.

To be continued.

Well a lot of things have happened here and there and all of a sudden I haven’t been writing very much, which is quite frustrating because writing is one of the most enjoyable things in the world. And the more things happen the more I want to write, but I can’t because (a) things are happening, and (b) because I don’t have a laptop and my hand writing speed has no hope of keeping up with my thoughts. And because I haven’t been writing I have been keeping a mental list of all the things I’ve been intending to write (or write about), and now I have a huge backlog of things unwritten, which I will try to chisel down now. (And this is all the more difficult because things tend to keep happening even as you write.)

First of all, I must introduce Mr. Rootbeer. I met Mr. Rootbeer at KFC one day when he decided to complain to their customer service about a very little thing involving the use of styrofoam containers when he didn’t order take-out. It was a very silly thing, Mr. Rootbeer said, when plates were readily available, easily reusable and did not fill landfills. He did not like the unnecessary waste.

Mr. Rootbeer is what people like to call a “complainer”. He complains about everything, big and small, from shoddy government projects to traffic non-compliance to how a lot of people don’t seem to bother complaining about a lot of things they hate. They rant to their friends about being insulted by taxi drivers, and they blog their asses off about rude waitresses, but they never raise their complaints to the people who can change things. Mr. Rootbeer wants to change things.

Once in a while I will allow Mr. Rootbeer to write things on my site, but I’ll try to tuck him away in his own corner so that he doesn’t go shouting in your face. He means well, I’m sure, but he can be distressingly loud at times.

Mr. Rootbeer says “Hello.” But enough about him.

One of the few things I like about the holidays is that it’s the time of year when a lot of people don’t have classes or work and are able to meet each other for the first time since high school, allowing me the opportunity to check up on how my mice are doing. You see, Christmas is a time of high school reunions, when classmates meet for dinner after years apart, exchange pleasantries and recollections and greetings all while pretending they didn’t still hate each other’s guts or something. And even though the people who go to these things have never been my crowd, I attended one such Christmas reunion to observe. I watched for signs of progress and growth, from this group of people who used to go to the city’s premier Science High School. I wanted to see if education really gets anyone anywhere, in a good school or a good job at home or abroad. This group of people was my “Public Science High School” sample group. My mice.

From my little corner of the table I determined that I was stuck with the middle mice, the ones who were doing quite well, not bad, but not exceptional either. I hope to someday gather more information from the edges of the bell curve, because that’s where the more interesting stories are. And stories are one of the few things I enjoy as much as writing.

Some reunions I attend for fun. Away from expensive plates of unspecial dinners and DSLR cameras and dresses made for showing off, we gathered in a living room, talked geek, played Taboo, and ate pizza and ice cream and a wonderfully made cake. No pretense here, no one trying to one-up each other, no exchanging gifts. Here we’re just friends.

One other thing I haven’t done in a long while is dispense romantic advice like I was some expert on it, which is what I tend to do when I’m surrounded by a bunch of girls talking about their relationships or lack thereof. Zee calls this my Dr. Phil mode, but I’m no psychologist and really all I do is take the information revealed to me and translate it to simple, logical terms, unspoiled by anger or jealousy or pain, because I have the advantage of being a third party. And once in a while I explain a few of my “operating principles”, like how relationships are logical and not the senseless helpless heap of emotions a lot of people believe them to be.

Here’s a little piece of my “operating principles” I’d like to share right about now:

Don’t Take Advice.

Not from anyone, not even from me. Listen to advice, learn from it, take the things you agree with and discard the things you don’t. If unsure, keep that advice for later until you’re more able to dissect it. Any advice is offered with a limited understanding of your situation, because no matter how hard you try you will never be able to describe your problem in such a way that you get absolutely everything across. I will never be in your position because I am not you, and any advice I give is given with the knowledge that I will not be there to suffer any consequences that advice might bring. So please, think for yourself and don’t take anyone’s advice, especially not mine. I have a limited understanding of this world and how it works; don’t lean on me. Lean on yourself, and on your own understanding.

To be continued.

“Larakhel. When you look upon this tiny planet, tell me, what do you see?”

“I see the earth, my Lord. I see the wonder of your creations and the grandeur of your design.”

“My father’s asleep, Larakhel, there’s no need to kiss ass.”

“I see a bunch of people, my Lord.”

“That’s better.”

“Why do you ask?”

“A long, long time ago, my father created this world. He breathed life into nothingness and spawned its mountains, seas and skies. He labored for long days moulding its infinite variety of trees and creatures, including his most beautiful creation yet — people.”

“Yes?”

“And I may have ruined it.”

“Impossible!”

“Not so. Do you know what a soul is, Larakhel?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s.. uhm.. something like an undying part of humans, right?”

“It’s free will. The ability to function contrary to your design. You don’t have one so you wouldn’t understand it, but these humans, when my father gave them to me as a gift, I gave them souls. I gave them the ability to do things father hadn’t intended them to do. I messed with his design so that they could design their own fates. How stupid is that?”

“Uhm.. It’s.. ”

“Father was pissed. The one arbitraty rule he put in the garden I gave them the ability to break, and, wonder of wonders, they broke it. That’s why this garden is up here and not down there. And that’s why his patience for them is so short. Every little thing used to piss him off. Mock him and there’s a flood. Defile his image and it rains fire. Only when I went down there to save them did he finally stop lashing out at them. He was so afraid I’d go down there again.”

“What was it like down there?”

“It was terrible.. It was so, so scary..”

“But you’re God, right? How scary can it be?”

“I am God and the Son of God, I am the beginning and the end, but when I am down there I am human, and the son of humans.. Being God and Man at the same time, destined to die for them but wanting, by my free will, to live – it was all so very confusing. Not to mention this thing they call love..”

“Love? Don’t we have that up here too?”

“Not in the same way. The love we have up here – the love you show me and my father, the love we have for angels and humans – it is so much more understandable than what they have down there. Free will has enabled them to create a complex mix of emotions even they themselves don’t even understand. They have hate, desire, anger, lust, envy, jealousy, sorrow, and all these they mix into their little version of love. It amazes me that they are able to thrive on what little they know.. and it scares me that the reason they thrive might be because they know so little.”

“Uh.. Lord? Mind if I ask – ”

“Go ahead.”

“What’s with all the drama?”

“The day is fast approaching, Larakhel, when I will have to take these humans and present them to my father.. and I fear that when that day comes he will not find them worthy.”

“Oh.. Bummer.”

“Bummer indeed.”

“Can’t you fix them then?”

“I could. I very well could. I could command them in ways that would compel them to obey. But then they would be no different from the air, or the beasts, or even the rocks beneath their feet, mindless creations who know nothing but what I command. I don’t want that.”

“Haven’t you already given them a number of commandments though? Like when you visited them?”

“Just a few hints and tips, really. More like guidelines rather than real rules. A few of them have gotten my drift, thankfully, but a number of them have taken a lot of things out of context, or have taken to strictly enforcing them. It takes the freedom out of free will, which is sorely disappointing.”

“Huh.. ”

“Something on your mind?”

“Yeah.. Well, you see.. I’m confused. You want them to obey, yet you give them the freedom to disobey, and you worry that their disobedience will earn the disfavor of your father, and yet you insist on leaving them free to continually disobey.. I don’t get it. Do you want them saved or not?”

“Larakhel, let me ask you this. What if I were to ask a favor of you?”

“You need only command it, my lord.”

“And you would obey?”

“Of course.”

“No matter what I command?”

“Absolutely.”

“Why?”

“Hmm.. Because you command it.”

“Why else?”

“Uhh.. I don’t know. Do I need any other reasons?”

“No, you do not. And do you know why?”

“Because I was made that way?”

“Exactly. You would follow my command not because it is right and not because you respect me, but because my father designed you that way. Your ‘will’, your ‘purpose’ has been programmed into you, and you cannot even imagine an original desire of your own.”

“Huh?”

“You are a slave, Larakhel. When you follow my commands without knowing why, without caring why, and without deciding for yourself whether it is the right thing to do, you are a slave. ”

“Like the rocks beneath human feet?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say, quite frankly.”

“I know. And that is the reason why, no matter what awful things they do, I will never deny these humans their souls. They are children, struggling to define what is right and wrong, hurting themselves and others as they grow. But I would prefer for them to be my children rather than my slaves, although unfortunately slaves are what some of them have become.”

“Uhm.. Hmm.. ”

“Yes?”

“These children of yours.. How will they be judged? I mean, your father must have some sort of criteria, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know for sure. He may decide to pass them all, he may decide to fail them all on a whim. Or if he were me – which he is, really – he may decide to judge them according to what they have been given in the beginning, and what they still have in the end.”

“‘What they’ve been given in the beginning’.. You mean the world? You mean their souls?”

“Yes. And one more thing.”

“What?”

“Each other.”