diary entry 20: we don’t want this

 I hate it when I’m sick. When I’m sick I become triply sensitive than my normal self. My defenses are down and I’m at my most vulnerable state. I feel weak. And I can’t afford to be weak especially nowadays that I’m living on the edge – figuratively and literally speaking.

 

    There is a possibility that we would be evicted from our flat anytime this week… well, not just us actually, but all the people in the entire building. A government agency will do an inspection and if they see that the building is overcrowded, we can be all evicted, the building will be closed down and the owner will pay a 50K penalty. Some of my flatmates are starting to feel panicky, so are my sister and cousin. I’m also starting to feel that way too but one of us should or at the very least, pretend to remain calm. I’ve been doing quite a good job so far. But I can only go on for so long since my defenses are down. I’ve remained quiet but lots of questions have been playing on my mind…questions like where would we go in this short notice, how would we be able to relocate fast with so many stuff, would we find a good place, can we afford it,  and where would we get the money for 1 month advanced, 1 month deposit! With me feeling this weak, it’s gonna be hard for me to act cool. It’s just not fair. I don’t believe we’re doing anything wrong. The rent for an entire flat is staggeringly expensive. The cost of a year rent for a typical flat here is more than a million peso… we could buy a house in a subdivision with that amount! Since we can’t afford to rent the entire flat, we have no choice but to share it with other people…people that most of time, we don’t know but can surely pay rent. Of course, living with strangers is not always harmonious. We come home after a tiring day to a noisy, crowded, cramped place! In the morning we wake up early, go the bathroom to do our thing as fast as we could because we’re just allotted certain minutes and someone will use is next…And sometimes we have to go pee but we can’t because someone is using it.  We can’t even cook in the kitchen anytime we want because we must for our turn. And before putting food inside the ref, we have to label it with our names otherwise others would eat it! And almost all our activities are done inside our respective rooms. In spite of all, we still pay costly rent for a very small space!  I don’t wat to talk about how maddening that is… that’s not the topic here…All I’m trying to say is we don’t want this kind of lifestyle! We don’t have much freedom in our “homes”. Who wants to live with strangers? Who wants to live in a crowded place? We don’t choose this. We just have no other options. Don’t they know how difficult it is to live like this? Life abroad is hard. If only people back home knew the real living condition here, they probably wouldn’t be considering coming here.

getting what we want

It’s not having what you want —it’s wanting what you’ve got.” I heard this a thousand of times.  Is this the real answer to lifelong quest for happiness? Is this the key to a satisfied life? Not quite, researchers say. In a new study I’ve seen on the net, psychologists found that “happiness is both having what you want and wanting what you have”. I agree. As humans, wanting is innate. It’s in our nature to have something to yearn for. It’s the by product of God’s gift of free will –- freedom to choose, freedom to want. We want different things in life but the common denominator is we all want something. It can be as grand as ruling the whole world or as simple as collecting seashells. Even newly born babies want something, and they cry to get it. To want, to yearn, or to desire or whatever we call it is as natural as breathing.  So if we deny ourselves of having something we want and getting it, it’s like going against every grain of our nature.

 

I have always had doubts with “It’s not having what you want —it’s wanting what you got”. Sorry for those people who use this as their guiding principle… but what a crap! I do not think it’s possible. Maybe this adage was made in good faith. I mean maybe its real implication is to stop people from being insatiable and to find contentment for what we have… But if this statement is to be taken as it is, I see a huge error in its sentence structure. To me it translates as “stop wanting—stop dreaming, this is your life, deal with it!” How can a person live with that? It doesn’t make sense. What really makes sense to me is “it’s having what you want and wanting what you’ve got”. The operative word there is and. I think wanting something else than what we already have is not wrong. I think what dissatisfaction is. Getting what we want is essential to us. Pursuing our dreams, our purpose is what keeps us going, makes us move forward, and gives us the driving force to live life. It’s just a matter of knowing when to stop and learning to embrace what you’ve already got.

 

 I don’t recall great men and women in history became great by simply wanting whey got. Can you imagine if they did? There will no discoveries, invention, technology, science, philosophy, etc…there will be no history at all.  We would be just millions of Homo sapiens with no desire but to eat and procreate… We would be as good as dead. So is that happiness? Is that a satisfied life? That is not a life at all! And as a Christian, I believe that God intended us to be this way, to want, to dream… even salvation is free, but still we have to want it first – accept it first… but that’s all a different topic. All I’m trying to say is, it’s getting what want is like our fuel, it’s what keeps us going, it’s what makes us believe that there’s more to life. But then again, we must also learn to draw a line between wanting and lusting. And that there comes “happiness is both having what you want and wanting what you have”…because to be able to want what we have, we must first have what we want…

diary entry 19: i feel lifeless

I’ve been trying to think of something intellectual or perhaps inspiring to write here on my blog…Since there isn’t so much exciting happening in my life, maybe I could just blog about some of my smart or inspiring thoughts so that someday when I look back and read my blog I’d would reminisce on how smart or deep I was. But there isn’t so much to reminisce because all I have so far are cluttered thoughts. No intellectual opinion, no inspiring words, much less exciting real life events. My life is way past mundane.  My goodness! I’ve never felt this lifeless… It’s like I wake up each morning just to witness time drags on. I’ve never been this detached from people… so detached that I don’t let people get close to me.  I’ve never been this so uncaring about my surroundings. I laugh, but doesn’t mean am happy. I smile, but doesn’t mean am fine. Enduring the day suddenly became my purpose. Numbing my self became my armor. Sometimes I ask myself if things in my life are in reality hard or I’m just making them so… I don’t know. Maybe I’m being such a drama queen. As a person who belongs to a third world country where people suffer from hunger and poverty, where working overseas is most people’s dream, my depression can be considered as utter vanity.  My discontentment despite of having a job can be a sign of ungratefulness. My unhappiness despite of being employed abroad is simply capriciousness. I’m so tired of my endless grumblings. It’s not that I’m not thankful for whatever I have because I am. I just refuse to believe that I’m destined to lead a typical apathetic life. God didn’t lay down His life just for me to live this way. I just really hope that this is only a phase… a phase that soon shall pass. Well, I just hope someday, when I look back to this phase of my life I would see that there wasn’t really something to grumble about… that my lifelessness was just all self made, that I was just looking at it wrongly, that I was just merely being vain, ungrateful, and capricious. Or better yet, I hope someday I’d be grateful that I went through what I’m presently experiencing now no matter how hard I deem to be, that someday God will help me realize that underneath it all, there is a great life lesson to be learned.

dream or nightmare or whatsoever

Everything seemed to be all too familiar. It felt like it was something that we had been doing for quite some time. We seemed so comfortable with each other. It seemed we were so accustomed to everything. We acted as if it was just something we normally did. “Bad day?” he asked with a genuine concern on his face. I answered him with a sigh. He reached over and took my hand. I just looked down. He put his arm around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder. He moved a little closer to kiss my forehead. Without any words spoken… and with those simple gestures, reassurance took over my apprehension … His embrace set me at peace. I felt that everything was going to be fine…that there was nothing to be afraid of or worry about…it felt like nothing in the world was wrong. I lowered my head and pressed it against his chest. I could hear his heartbeat. It felt incredible being close to him. And he said something under his breath, and then we started laughing our heads off. It was amazing how this person easily put me at ease. It felt great. It felt so wonderful. It felt real…except that it wasn’t. All of this never happened…None of this will ever happen. It was just a dream…a dream closer to a nightmare…Nightmare, because every time I dream about him, I woke up crying.

I don’t frequently blog about my lovelife for two simple reasons…first because I don’t feel like talking about it. Second, there isn’t so much to tell… But for once and for all, for the sake of letting it out, I’ll blog about it with the hope that it would bring me sheer liberation from all of this, and to finally leave everything (about us) where it should belong…to the past.

What I went through a couple of months ago was way past grueling. I now blatantly admit that. I was more hurt than I projected to be. I was more devastated about it than I ever thought I could be. I don’t know if it was pride or whatsoever…or maybe I just didn’t want others to know how affected I was…or maybe it was just my way of protecting myself…maybe I didn’t allow myself to know how awful I really felt about it because of so much things going on in my life and the last thing I need was (is) to deal with a broken heart.

Melodramatic as it may sound, I actually thought I wouldn’t be able to laugh again. A lot of times I questioned my decision. I felt that I made a mistake. I couldn’t think clearly. I was badly hurt. But my senses always got hold of me telling me that I did the right thing. But being reminded that I did the right thing didn’t alleviate the pain. It hurt all the same. There were times that I wished I could rip out my heart from my chest just to have a momentary relief from everything. There were times that the only thing I wanted to do was to sleep, because only then I could stop thinking about him. But when he invaded my dream that when it hurt the most…because I thought my dreams were the only place I found refuge from my pain…the only place where the hurtful truth of us not being together couldn’t penetrate…But the dream itself wasn’t the hardest part I had to go through…it was waking up and realizing that everything was only a plain dream no matter how real it felt like.

it’s all in the mind

 

When I was a lot younger, I once read on a book that the greatest battle you will ever encounter is with your own self. And as a kid who hadn’t read much quotation, that statement struck me to the core. haha. I deemed it as something so profound (Well, I actually still do). As a kid, I clearly understood what that statement meant. But not until I reached my 20’s when only I understood the weight of that statement carries.

 

This morning, during my quiet time I read that sometimes that pain we experience is self-induced pain.  But even before reading this, I have known for a long time that some people, my self included, go through unnecessary pain that we unknowingly inflict on our own selves. There are so many things beyond our control…Things that we can only do so much…Things we can never change. On the other hand, there are things that remain in our control… that is to say, our thoughts…our perception…

 

 It’s all in the mind, people say. I heard this as frequent as life’s hard. Darn! These sayings can’t get more clichéd, can they?  Haha. Anyway, going back… It’s all in the mind … this has been one of my mantras. When I feel like my mind’s playing trick on me…when I hear voices in my head telling me thing I don’t want to hear…I go and tell myself that it’s all in my head. Breathe in, breathe out.

 

When unexpected turn of horrible events happen, they are out of my control, but the way I deal with them is. When people say things, I can’t control their opinion nor can I make them shut up. But I always have the option to choose whom and which to ignore or listen to. It’s always about how I perceive things… it’s all in the mind. Just masters your thoughts and you will surely win your battle. (Sigh) I just hope doing this is as easy as plainly writing about it.