What are birthdays for anyway?

Does my title sound so bitter? Heh... I hope not. I was just caught by this moment of reflection. I guess what has really brought me in to this is the clinging sentimentalism and romanticism passed on by our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on. You see, my mom had always taken me to a studio for my birthday picture since I was one year old. It lasted until I was seven. I used to have a children's party with my cousins and friends in the neighborhood. My birthday would not be complete without the blowing of candles on my birthday cake and receiving gifts from relatives. Well, those were the birthdays I had until I was seven years old.

Since then, I lost most of my birthday memories. I can't remember when was the year when I had dinner with my family in a Chinese restaurant, or when I just had a lot of drinks with friends. I can't even remember how I celebrated it last year, or did I?

But, there was one birthday that I couldn't forget. It was in the year 2000 when I celebrated it away from home, not even with my closest friends, but with the people I started to live with in some remote area in the island. That was when I chose to spend a few months with the peasants. They were good people. I lived with them, ate with them and even took a bath with them beside the flowing cold spring in the village. They slaughtered their native chicken for me, offered a lot of yellow bananas from their farm, and cooked the maja blanca with the ingredients sent by my parents from the city.

I just turned 17 years old at that time. That's the only birthday that remains so vivid in my memory. A celebration which had given me so much meaning to my existence and defined me as a wonderful human being.

In the next hour, I'll be officially 26 years old. I've been thinking that birthdays are just for kids. When you're still a kid, you always look forward to your birthdays because you wanted to be a big girl or boy so soon like your older siblings. When you're still a kid, you wanted to grow old sooner than a year so you could do things on your own, without asking permission from mom or asking money from dad.

But when you started to age like 25 or 26 (like me), you started to deliberately forget about your birthday. You wanted to stop aging and be like or look like a child again. When a new acquaintance asked me about my age, I asked them back what they think. Most of them said, I look like 19, 20, someone even said 16. I know most of them have similar answers because I have this conscious effort to look younger by staying cheerful and youthful.

I'm evasive in a way to tenaciously deny my true age. Unconsciously (of which now I'm conscious about), I deny this growing old because I don't think I have grown up. By coming out young, feeling young, I create my elusive world of less responsibilities. It's not that I hate responsibilities or that I don't want to be responsible enough. I just don't think I'm able to fight procrastination to move on and face the challenges of growing up or being mature in that sense.

I think that's the story behind all this "bitterness" on birthday. That's how I started to be practical and non-sentimental about it. I don't even celebrate it anymore nor ask for something special to happen to make it memorable just like owning a balloon that my parents bought from church after lighting some candles for a prayer.

It just dawned on me that I should still give this birthday some sentimental value especially that I've already passed a quarter of a hundred lifetime (or that I have 4 or 5 years left to complete the numbers in the calendar). I feel like shaking and chiding to myself: "Hey, don't you get it? You're already 26! Grow up! Make a life! Make a person out of yourself!"

I'd like to have a toast for that tomorrow! Happy Birthday to me!

Monetize

I was in the mood to customize the look of this blog when I noticed the MONETIZE tab next to layout. With a bit of compunction whether or not this will surely give me money, I tried it. Because I had seen almost everyone's blog has it, I followed the instructions and enabled third party cookies and java scripting. And, then I signed up for adsense account.

So, there I have it --- "Ads by google!" I hope I'm making sense (cents) here.

Procrastination

It's been three months since I came home.

Although it brings me back to the people I love, coming home is not actually a relief. In fact, it has given me a clearer picture of a life that I should have been ready to face and struggle through five or six years ago.

Going back home is facing the things I had evaded. Top of the list is financial responsibility. Being the eldest offspring gives me an automatic conscience to be aware of the needs of my family and to assume some vital tasks when my parents could no longer provide.

Things of this sort have preoccupied my mind since I came home. I would like to take a leap and materialize my plans. I would like to see the person I should be at this age and at this level of experiences.

Unfortunately, I feel that I am stranded. I landed on a wrong ground, not my niche.

I cannot focus and do the things to be done because of tormenting preoccupations. Preoccupations that are full of "What if?", "How to?" and "How I wish!"

I had been too much preoccupied. I didn't realize that I was procrastinating.

"Stay where you are"

I was reading Jostein Gaarden's "Solitaire Mystery" when I came across this line: "My advice to all those who are going to find themselves is: stay exactly where you are. Otherwise you are in great danger of losing yourself forever." It was Hans Thomas, whose mother left him when he was 4-year old.

When I was back home, what made me immediately decide to experience living away from my hometown was the common line of most undecided fellows: "Finding oneself."

Well, now that I'm here and about to go home, I've been thinking about what Hans Thomas said. And, I am now decided to go home and stay there because it's where I was.

Home

Joni Mitchell is right again with her "Big Yellow Taxi" that goes "...you don't know what you got till it's gone..."

But, my case is not exactly as pathetic as how this line would like to portray. It's not really too late for me because I suddenly realized the worth of my real home before I might totally lose it.

I just had realized that I was never at home here. I just missed my real home. And, I want to be home.

But, I remain with my stand that "regret" is a bankrupt idea. I never regret leaving my homeland to try a different environment. I somehow learned a thing or two from my experiences here.

First, I learned to deal with people who grew up with a culture apart from the ones in the South. Rubbing elbows with them in jeepneys or buses and being pushed by them in a line at MRT station have somehow taught me to be polite and patient amidst heavy traffic and pollution. But, the best part was being able to accept some outright expressions from people I expected the least.

Second, I learned what I really want. Recalling the reason why I came here in the first place, I reckoned that I needed this "escape" to know what I truly want. Sometimes, we really have to get out of the house to know that it is our home. It's not just the desire to sleep in the coziest place I've known since birth, but also the idea of being with the people I feel as comfortable as being in my family's house.

To stand with my decision is the last thing that I still have to prove. And, it would be so when I will have found myself in the arms of the special persons I have loved all along.

In a short while, I will be home...

Time

Look at how time flies! It seems so fast!

Things have been slowly filling in their own places as time goes by...

But, even if time has actually taken me into this new place, I still realized that a change of place can't just easily change anyone. Nothing has changed in me.

I'm still the sentimental romantic. I'm still easily obsessed with just anything or anyone and then I still easily forget about the obsession. Once the obsession was satisfied, I eventually succumb back to where I used to stand.

There's only one thing that I could not let go so easily -- the idea of obsession.

Oh my! I just need more sleep, I guess.

And so there are times like now

It's totally dark outside and I still haven't taken a bath. I've been the usual me in a lazy day. No one to talk with, alone in this tall house and nowhere to go.

I was supposed to watch Watchmen with friends, but I changed my mind. Oh my, my energy must have flown somewhere away from this body. Lethargic is my favorite word at this moment.

Still, Jack Johnson is playing right now, filling this lonesome atmosphere with his cool rhythms. I'm at least a bit fortunate to have something like this to keep my sanity.

In times like this, a lot of things visit my thoughts. For one, my grandmother just passed away earlier today. My mom just told me so. My dad said last night my lola could no longer talk and only the daily antibiotics and oxygen kept her heart beating.

She was 93 years old; had gone much through life. I guess, it's enough span to let go of such opportunity. I just hope she had taken much experiences from her chance. Her parting has been accepted and prepared for by her children. They had let her go not only because they were financially incapable to maintain her medications (well, they're not really medications but apparatuses to get a grip of the little life she had been left with), but also because of the fact that she did not want to go on living anymore.

From this point, I reaffirmed the fact that everything, even life itself, is revolving around choices. Even staying alive is a choice.

I hadn't known my lola Maxing much. She spent all her time in her small lot in the countryside of North Cotabato. I got to see her only every summer vacations, and sometimes Christmas. The only thing I remember about her is her stout appearance, despite her short height, her long hair, calloused hands and muscled arms. And, when she spoke, she could utter some lines in straight English.

I don't know what she had been in her youth and what her dreams were aside from seeing her children have their own families. She had not been a popular person, or somebody who is excellent in academic field. I bet she never became a career woman. I'm even quite sure that she never even dreamed to live outside her little barrio, despite the sounds of bombs and gunshots in her sleep, or missing cows and carabaos at night.

I guess, her only goal in life was simple, as simple as she was...

Dying in the age of 93 is quite a challenge. I haven't thought of staying in this planet for that long. Not because I'm a cynic like I don't see any hope in this cruel and chaotic world that I hurry to get out from here. Notwithstanding scientific studies of why humans in modern times have short life expectancies, I wanted to die young because I don't want to be the one left whom the new generations would blame for the worst conditions in this world. I also don't want to see them suffer more than these people I see now.

I don't want to stay here for as long as 93 years. But, I don't want to die yet. I still want to see flowers blooming under a bright sunny day. I still want to climb mountains and listen to crickets at night. I still want to jump off from a waterfall and swim through the sea with lots of corals like in Pantukan.

I still want to see my own eyes or nose or smile on a special little human being. I still want to see myself, my child and the man who has my heart in a picture framed to be hung on the wall.

I still want to find happiness somewhere while I still get the chance to stay here. I just have to learn to accept that this chance to live is not quite a picnic, and so there are times like now.