Somewhere in the Middle

Amidst the endless discussions of religion and philosophies and what-have-yous,
I am reminded yet again of my high school days, of boring afternoons spent in
gazebos and ledges, talking about our different faiths.

No way! I'm no athiest!

I am not an agnostic.

Really, I'm not.

I mean it.

Thus I have answered numerous inquiries regarding my faith. Despite my numerous explanations, though, it is still rare for people to just accept what I have to say, which is really unbelievable, given that my stand is not in the least bit controversial, that is of course unless you are a religious fanatic.

I was born into a Catholic family, and was raised as a Catholic. I spent three years in a Christian school and four years in a Catholic school, before entering a Science High School, where my first year homeroom teacher is a Jehovah's Witness, my fourth year homeroom teacher is a Born Again Christian pastor, and the principal for most of my stay there was a Mormon.

What did that do to my faith? Nothing really.

I was never religious, which is probably what makes it so difficult for me to wake up every Sunday morning to go to Church and to stay awake during the boring lectures of priests who rarely correlate their sermons with our everyday lives (at least this is the case in our Church). I cannot see the need to go to Church every Sunday as if it was the entire display of our faith. Once again, do not blame my religious influences, for I have held this belief since I was in Grade School, that to be a good person is better than to be an avid Church-goer.

I even remember that one of the lowest grades in an essay that I ever got was for the question "How do we show our love for God?" to which I responded, in a nutshell, being helpful to others, trying to be a positive influence, and every other good deed I could think of EXCEPT going to Church. I was quite disappointed that I did not get a "star" for what I thought was a really good answer.

I never liked going to Church, although when I was a little girl, I enjoyed going to Sunday School where I learned new songs and dances and, when I was a bit older, handing out cookies to the younger kids and participating in Medical Missions and singing in the choir. There was even a time when I served in my school's chapel and was one of the select few with the title of "Chapel Angel". Church was fine as long as I did not have to sit idly and listen.

Maybe it's the fault of my religion teachers, who insisted that we must try to convert others to our faith, because we are at the right, but not to be biased or show criticism to other people's religions. AT THE RIGHT? It just didn't seem at all "right" to me to convince my non-Catholic peers to shift their outlooks to mine just because we THINK we're at the right and are the ones going to heaven.

Some time in my high school days, I lost my faith in the Catholic Church. Though I do not wish to tell further of what took place, I must say that I can no longer stand by a religion whose leaders themselves do not follow what they preach. It was at this time that I began to "officially" open up to the idea of a new religion, though still under the Christian realm. Of course, I was leaning towards the more active faiths, the ones with the dancing and singing and open mindedness that some members of my religion did not possess. The only religious services I looked forward to then were ecumenical ones.

Yes, I believe in a God, but not necessarily our God. I am one of those who find the division of faiths nonsense, and that all the prophets and saints and Jesus Christs and Mohammads all come from just one higher being, not necessarily Yahweh, or Allah, or Brahma, or whoever. Whatever differences modern (and even ancient) religions have, it is because of human thought, which by the way is SO NOT infallible that it's pathetic to even rely on for something that has cost the lives of many over the years and has molded how we go about everything in this world.

No, I am not an agnostic. Like I said, I do believe in a God, or rather, in a higher being that to my religion is called God, and in order to show my praise for the great Creator, I remain a Catholic, in the faith I was brought up to believe in. Do I believe in all the Church's doctrines? Goodness, I don't even agree with a lot of them.

But if I were given a choice, I would rather have no religion at all, and that the whole world would be filled with athiests and agnostics with good hearts, all thinking of the greater good of everyone else. That way, even if we did not have religion, we would all be going to heaven (or whatever it is called in other religions) when we die.

If there is such a thing.

Another Monologue on Choices and Such

Apart from these words are things I'd never want to say. Still, I wonder, why can't I just say them?

We are people, and we make mistakes, but there are limits to everyone's patience, and once in a while, we must pay dearly for what we have, or have not, done. Must we wait until that time before we make any move?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his first discourse, defended his view that the restoration of arts and sciences has corrupted instead of purifying our morals. Harsh as it may seem, that what gives us so much pride and joy is what has brought us farther away from our natural goodwill, it's true, isn't it?

Funny how what we thought would be best for humanity has slowly taken away or humanity and turned us into nothing more than robots with no hearts, empty heads, and an appetite for knowledge.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not against the learning. In fact, I'm all for the learning. But still, being surrounded by people of varying degrees of intellect, I cannot help but notice that with every person I meet, a higher value of IQ means one or more "issue". While some of these people have some dark secret in their past, others are simply not as well-adjusted.

I remember one quotation from a TV show, "You can't be successful without being damaged." Think about it.

Personally, I actually believe this statement. I may not know much about anything, but I do know enough of myself to know that I wouldn't have gotten where I am right now if it wasn't for my past failures and disappointments. Isn't that how we are, people? We deal with our problems by focusing our energies on something, anything else. We work, and work, and work, until at the end of the day, we fall into dreamless sleep. We know it's not healthy, we know we have to face our issues sooner or later, but we do it anyway, and hope that our conflicts would be resolved on their own, but they never do.

Once in a while, we'd even encounter a person who is so immersed in his love for learning, that we can no longer see where the scholar ends and the human being begins - and we'd be jealous of these people, because they seem so at ease with how they deal with the world. So we strive to learn more, to be just like them. But shouldn't we be feeling sorry for them, and ourselves, instead? We have a beautiful world before us, though this beauty may be relative, and we fail to recognize the fact that we already know everything we need to know to live, and that everything else is just an added weight in our minds?

Now, maybe I just haven't been exposed to a vast enough network of people to say this for sure. But I'm pretty confident in concluding, at least for the crowd that I am familiar with, that indeed, it is what has hurt us that has made us want more from life, to make up for the damage that we took, and that as we work harder and harder, we forget to be ourselves and choose to be nothing more than robots.

Should this stop us from wanting to learn? No. But we must aim for a balance, a middle road between the Path of Learning and the Path of the Heart. We must choose to be in the middle position, because we have always had that choice.

Junior Kelloggs - A Brief Memoir -

from here until the next few posts, I will be
posting a few short tributes to my very special friends. i love you, guys.
*sniff, sniff*

This extra-sentimental memoir was brought about by Selah's e-mail and her comment on my friendster account and the brief chat we had earlier.

translation: if you find this post extra-corny, it's your fault. :p

It's quite flattering to find out that someone still reads my blog, aside from my professor who checks it once a week because he has to.

I started my last year in high school with very little confidence that I was going to make it through. After a very traumatic experience with this *insert any hurtful word here* classmate of mine, who's company I found out I had to suffer for yet another year, I really wasn't looking forward for classes to start again. What's more, I was told that there were a lot of people in my class that I predicted I wouldn't like. The noisy, rowdy, papansin kind of people with lots of attitude problems - people who think they're all that *very bitter tone*. Selah was one of those whom I expected to make my fourth year miserable. As you can see, I'm quite the optimist.

Oh, there were a few things that assured me I'd survive, I guess. Jigz (from LR[1]), Mikki (from FFG[1]) and Paulo (from 3B[1]) were going to be there, but the feeling of abandonment still remained when I found out that most of my third year barkada would either be classmates or would have the same breaks. I felt so isolated I wanted to die.

Of course, fourth year came and went.

Junior Kelloggs defined everything that meant anything to me in Becquerel -IV. It actually seemed quite fitting to be in a group of 4 in my fourth year of high school. There's me, Selah, Jigz and Miks. We had many annexes - being part of bigger groups and having different extra-curricular activities - but at the end of the day, we always turned to each other for comfort, or sometimes, we forced whoever had the problem to submit to being comforted.

Academically, I don't know if we actually did each other any good. We were more like partners-in-crime. We cut class or slept in class, failed to submit individual projects, cheated and let others cheat, and a million other offenses. (Mikki actually sent us text messages with a list of reasons why we should've been kicked out ages ago. :P) The funny thing was, we were all class officers and, surprisingly, were often key players in class presentations. This particular thing we gave us more reasons to cut, and our classmates often covered up for us - since we sometimes cut to take care of class projects, anyway.

Yeah, we got away with a couple of things. I cut class so much my physics teacher once asked, on a day when I was "sick" again, if I had already dropped from school.

Maybe you'd wonder why we stuck together. Sometimes I wonder too.

There was only one thing we all actually had in common: We didn't care. We hardly gave a damn what anybody thinks about us. (This particular attitude of mine actually sometimes caused me trouble with my parents, him, and other people. But hey, that's me, and they love me for it. ) We were so comfortable with one another we talked about the growsest stuff (we knew they were growse because other people were appalled by our conversations) and didn't mind.

We were each other's moral support, despite each of our emotional shortcomings. Selah was afraid of attachment, at the same time needing it. I desperately needed to feel. Jigz admitted to needing attention, Mikki needed to be understood. We all did. Individually we were so fragile, so easy to break and so easily tortured, but together, we were assured of having someone when all else failed.

Yes, we were a group, but instead of demanding time from one another, we understood each other's need for time alone. In fact, it was only with this particular barkada that I did not feel so much the desperation for their company, but was thankful whenever I could have it. The more I needed them, the more they leftme alone, until I would come to them asking for someone to catch me, which they'd do more than willingly. The Junior Kelloggs were the only females in my class who had the common sense not to impose their presence on me when I'm crying in the Fourth Floor CR's last cubicle. They were the only girls in my class who had any sense.

Some of our cutting sessions were spent like that. Choosing our individual brooding spots and ignoring each other, at other times pouring our hearts out or laughing loudly in the square gazebo or the English Reading Center, still at other times getting "sick" or sleeping wherever we could after a bad night.

No, I'm not saying we understood one another, I'm not sure we actually did. If there was anything I learned in high school, it was respect and unconditional love. Of course, other people might see it in another way.

[1] see next posts - soon to follow.

Hung-Over

Sometimes I wonder how in the world I got this far. Finally a college student, I thought that, at last, I'd be a responsible, mature young lady. So far, I've only succeeded in being young.

It's been two weeks since I officially became one of those most revered "Iskolar[s] ng Bayan" - not including the summer I spent taking up ROTC and continuing on with our OJT. By now, I should have been well-adapted to college life, but apparently, I'm still not.

It's the usual insecurities, I guess. No, I'm not worried about fitting in, I've already found my place in the vast expanse of University way before I was officially enrolled. I came to UP without even being afraid to make new friends, and in fact was very confident that I'd be able to have someone to talk to wherever I may be (due to being a CO, and having gone to several schools in my pre-college education). I didn't even feel the culture shock I'm supposed to be feeling right now. It's as if I'm just staying in a warped environment filled with Xientians, Knollers and people from my other not-so-known previous school.

Okay, fine. Maybe I am a bit frustrated with how almost all of my blockmates are conio or chinito or perky party people. But being used to not caring and being utterly approachable, at times to my disadvantage, the presence of these people and my daily interaction with them do not necessarily affect my life, and neither do I affect them significantly - which by the way, is absolutely fine by me.

I'm afraid, yes, not of the new things I'll have to experience, but the things I'll leave behind. The people. I've never been good with these kinds of things. Moving on and getting on with my life. There's always a sad ghost by my side of the friends who slowly drifted away from me, and I can't help but blame myself.

At least I have him to hold on to, but what about the others? I miss the old times so much, cutting class and hanging out with the Junior Kelloggs or The Ten or 3B or the Laudrichites, laughing away our worries and fears, as if there was no N (where N=no. of tests, projects and requirements for the next day). Those little moments of heaven that I get to spend with the very few people to whom I know I matter, and to whom I want to matter - the reasons for my existence.

Yes, it's time to move on, but I can't just let go, though I feel them slipping from my fingers, it doesn't make me want to keep them any bit less...

guess it's been a really long while.. and this isn't really the best time for me to be posting anything.. my brother's sick. anyway, here's just some song lyrics to an imogen heap song. it's really nice if you really read into it.

Leave Me To Love
Imogen Heap

Complications, more so I can say
Promises and deadlines make it hard to stay away.
All these strings are attaching to me,
And I can’t find the scissors.
Yeah
All I tell them 'I’m back' and I’m not.
I can’t remember where I was, I forgot.
Knitting it all, these holes that I need,
To crawl through a brick wall,
Is hard to say the least.

Where’s that thought, that thought uncomplicated things?
Where’s that peace of mind, that peace that made it easy?
Where’s that simple day, that simply made it nice to be in.
Where did it go? Where did it go? Where did it go?
Yeah.

I got you a murky light, tell me what can you see?
A huge cloud of shit, hanging over me.
Can you blow it all somewhere else?
It’s making it hell to distinguish myself.
Tired of the tyrants who only think they’re all business.
Pissed with their patience, they constantly agree.
'Yes sir, yes sir, three hundred bags full.'
It’s easier to say yes than to say no to a fool.

Where’s that thought, that thought uncomplicated things?
Where’s that peace of mind, that peace that made it easy?
Where’s that simple day, that simply made it nice to be in.
Where did it go? Where did it go? Where did it go?
Yeah.

Cover me in cyanide
Cover me in ink
Cover me in formaldehyde
And leave me here to think.
Cover me in carpet
Cover me in tile.
Cover me and evict me and put me in a file.

Strip me bare, don’t let me breathe.
Strip me to my skin.
Strip me so you can watch me clean off,
All these things I’ve been.
Strip me naked of these walls
Strip me of all my rules
Strip me boy and see how small I am without you.

Inseminate the good now
Inseminate the pure
Inseminate all the shit that I’ve forgotten how to whore.
Inseminate the natural
Inseminate the dirt
Inseminate the ineffectual
And leave me here to love.
Leave me here to love

Where’s that thought, that thought uncomplicated things?
Where’s that peace of mind, that peace that made it easy?
Where’s that simple day, that simply made it nice to be in.
Where did it go? Where did it go? Where did it go?
Yeah.
Leave me here to love.