Doing it with passion

Youth is synonymous with energy, and with it, the passion of doing things, of having  energy rush  for every new adventure.  The infant is bewildered with the world around him, the same sense of awe that drives him to experience anything new.  The unknown is always a source of adventure.

As a child, I watched my elder sister play hide-and-seek during full moon, in a place that had no electricity then.  When I was six, and my parents allowed me to play during full moon,  I counted the days the day right  after the full moon, the start of the wait  for  another moon cycle, so I could go out and be lost into  the night.

The river in our place caught my fascination that I would cut classes so I could swim in the then pristine waters.  One time, I brought along with me my two younger brothers, to swim, and when my father discovered it, he punished the three of us to kneel for hours before an altar.  But that never deterred me.  The wonders of the river always beckoned me, even with the punishment.

When we grow older, we tend to do things sans the element of adventure but of our ideas about the activity.  Having had previous experiences, we know already the feeling, and understood the reasons for the activity.  Somehow, we get detached from the activity because at the back of our mind is the mental picture of the activity.  We thus tend to be more cerebral than emotional when we tackle the activity. It is not   the heart that dominates but the reason why an activity has to be done.

When I became a lawyer, civic groups invited me, and joining is a must, as any lawyer should, if he intends to establish a network of friends who are prospective clients.  At the age of 25, months after passing the BAR exams, a prestigious fraternity opened its otherwise secretive gates for me to enter, the FREE MASON.  I was already in the venue where the “raising”  (or formal start of the initiation) was held,  but my heart was not beating fast for that fraternity – there was no fascination nor wonder in joining the group.  Before the gates were opened, I left hurriedly.

At the age of five, I was playing competitive chess.  I played for long hours every day, honing my skill, competing with players much older than me. I could then play chess in my mind. Every chess game was an adventure.  But when I was already playing top level chess, the passion suddenly went pfftt. The need to be a champion took away the adventure the game once had. Chess ceased to be an adventure but a duty to practice daily to be a champion. One day, I could not find in my heart the sense of adventure when I played chess.  The fire was spent. At the young age of 13, I stopped playing chess.

I tried golf, and shooting, and went competitive, and was quite successful. After learning the ropes of the game, the passion was just gone.

What caught my passion early on in my professional life was the handheld radio.  That was in 1993, when cell phones and internet were yet unheard of in our country.  There was thrill in talking to people from distant places, of dismantling the radio set to analyze its parts, and studying for the licensure exam for radio communicators.  That was the time when I designed, and made my own radio antennae to compete with other enthusiasts.  The passion lasted for almost three years.  It was so short but the radio group I founded swelled to 1,500 members that everyday there was always a birthday celebration I had to attend, or in some instances, to visit the sick, dying, or deceased member.  The cell phone crazed naturally supplanted radio communication but the friendship among the members last even up to today.

When I was thirty years old, I got injured in a basketball game that I was limping for almost six months.  Though the spirit was still throbbing for basketball yet the bones were becoming brittle and the muscles, atrophying.

Accidently, while recuperating from my injury, I saw a tennis clinic for beginners.  At first, I thought the game is easy until I borrowed a tennis racket and tried to hit the ball and never to hit one correctly until more than ten attempts.  Secretly, I trained on my own, at the wall of church.  That secret training, without my knowing it, defined my life – from 1996 up to the present, not only my life but that of my family and the people who have been involved in the tennis movement in this part of the region.

Admittedly, the passion for lawyering has always been burning inside. Despite the experiences of how justice can be bought, or squandered by the sheer ignorance of a judge, the court scene is always never the same; it is always something new, and therefore, a possible source of infinite wonder and awe. But the profession is just too taxing for the mind and body that already, I am thinking on going into another field – politics.

Tennis is another story.  Almost every day, when my lawyering schedule permits, my family and I would be in a tennis court, to play tennis, or just to talk and drink with tennis buddies who are like extended families to me already. Every time I play tennis, the passion is still burning.  Maybe, this too will not last.

When we engage in activities with child-like fascination, we often excel and are generally fulfilled. But the moment the passion is lost, we search for other concerns, a new experience  to explore, and to unravel its thrill – the search may be endless.

Happily though for me, my writing for passion still throbs inside, to chronicle the varied concerns I have devoted my time into.  May be the fire for writing will one day end, when my heart does not seek anymore for a new field, a concern, a sport, or an activity.  That time perhaps will coincide when the candle of life ends.

connectivity

My physics teacher way back in high school, for all his antics, struck me with a realization when he exclaimed: “ An ocean is never the same when you drop a pebble”. He was explaining of course the principle of kinetic energy, that is, an object once in motion never stops until another object absorbs the energy. But the absorbing object gathers explosive energy that may later on translate into another form of energy, ad infinitum.

 

 

That was in 1982 then, when aside from tv, radio, game and watch, cinema, and betamax, we did not have any other optical entertainment. The Inconvenient Truth was still an idea but Al Gore did not have an idea that it would shape in a digitalized form. Then, the weather patterns were so regular that in the Philippines, rain was expected from June to February, and the leaves would fall early March presaging the summer heat of April and May. Lives and activities were then planned according to the weather patterns.

 

 

My physics teacher may have unwittingly nuanced his kinetic energy with the idea of connectivity, an inevitable interaction between man and nature, and amongst men.

 

 

For every boon there is the embryonic bane. The turbines which powered engines of trains and industries have propelled industrial revolution when civilization relied on synthetic products fashioned out of raw materials. Before the turbines, we had to hunt then cook the meat. Later, life is made convenient by processed meat, fast foods, machine-controlled temperature, etc.

 

 

Little did way realize, or shall we say, refuse to realize that for the convenience the inventions have offered us, a trade off with the environment is getting apparent. All through these years of seeming conveniences that we marvel, the atmosphere is thickened with particles, the ozone layer punctured, the seas littered with toxic wastes. In fine, for making our life easier than the hunting nomads, we sacrifice our environment, mother earth, which now threatens not only our way of life but life in general, with tsunamis, typhoons, dry spell, la nina and el nino. The notebook upon which I store my blog, and the cellphone that I use to greet my love ones, may make life here on earth meaningful, but years from now, when the batteries are drained, and the gadgets unusable, I would have to add, and this is ironic, to the threat of human extinction.

 

 

Connectivity. Everything, we do invariably affects the great cosmos. If we throw a pebble into the ocean, this is a connectivity which alters life and nature but does not really threaten earth and the earthlings. But threw a plastic in the ocean, in time, vulnerable sea creatures die, the fishermen lose their livelihood, their children, wallowing in poverty, migrate to the cities to become the scourges of urban living. And the government has to spend more for the policing of the cities, thereby draining financial resource which could have been well-spent in other productive ventures.

 

 

Logic 101 escapes me every time a head of state proclaims that the climatic changes do not threaten human existence. But the politicians, for their narrow vested interests, will always see white instead of black, wherever their interests would lead them. After all, between prostitutes and politicians, the only difference is the pursuit for power in the later, and the need to survive, in case of the former. But what is troubling is the pronouncement of some scientists, ( or pseudo-scientists?), that the environmental changes are not at all threatening. One may lack the scientific formulations, but at times, the basic form of knowledge, common sense, explains better than hypothesis and theorems. How else can you explain the respiratory diseases and allergies due to dust particles? Typhoon in the Philippines during the summer months of April and May? Inundation even for a moderate rainfall? If these scientists are the only ones to suffer the wrath of nature, one would not bother to raise an eyebrow for their “oh” very scientific conclusions. When the arguments become too complex, God beckons us to use common sense.

 

 

At another level of connectivity is in terms of human relation. In biblical sense, God is found in every man’s face, that we are all but manifestations of the divine, and hence, we are all members of the same family. But in these times, connectivity amongst men is shown with the information superhighway.

 

 

Information is a harbinger of change. During the cold war, the iron curtain was pierced with the shortwave radio broadcasting where liberal ideas were heard in communists areas. Years after, the liberal ideas became movements for change, and eventually, the overthrew of communist regimes from within. John Howard, the former Australian Prime Minister, was defeated due to two issues: environment and Iraq. Environmental issues henceforth will factor in elections of national leaders. As always, the battle starts in the mind, and the internet plays a major role in bringing a sea change in the way we treat the environment, and relate to fellow humans.

 

 

 

As I post this blog, like a pebble dropped in the ocean, its effects in the landscape of the human mind, may be precisely, only a pebble, hopefully not feeble. Yet, the energy of the pebble is unstoppable; it goes on ad infinitum.

Tags: environment, belonging, inconvenienttruth, internet, blogging, earth

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living and writing

English is not a native tongue of the Filipinos. It takes reading, speaking, writing, and mastering English before one is able to express truly unfetterred with the language barrier. It is not easy to translate your experiences and the ideas in a foreign tongue.

When I was still in my elementary years, I knew then I had a passion for reading, and writing, but my penchant for playing kid’s games took the better of me. In a word, English was my handicap.

I went on to study in Jesuit-run school in my secondary studies, the phase of learning in which St. Ignatius de Loyola described to be formative, and hence critical. The first year was horrible. I was doing well in Math and Science, but I had a 78 grade in English. That was a bitter pill to swallow.

The rest of my high school years were spent in either basketball or reading; I had a passion for reading as well as basketball. I joined this Bibliophile Club where members were privileged to borrow books from the school library for a month, without any fine. My classmates used to tease me because during the second semester of my first year high school, I was still reading the Hardy Boys series while they finished reading the series in grade six. But I resolved to read those books nonetheless rather than reading James Michener or Sydney Sheldon or the Last Samurai. The long journey, as it were, must start from the single step.

There was this Short Story Writing contest when I was in second year high school. Still afraid to reveal my writing skill or the lack of it, I hid in my pseudonym, TIMOPA burala. The chairperson was searching for the real name of the writer, but I never came out in the open. I continued writing in that pseudonym. I did not have the guts to come out in the open during my entire secondary course.

Reading, when it becomes a habit, just like an addiction, is something you cannot just get rid of. I did not spend my nights studying my lessons but of reading novels, history, science, and any reading material my eyes could lay on. Then came the moment. My English teacher who gave me a 78 in my first year was our teacher in fourth year wherein we spent our time reading literary materials and classical novels. We were required to choose a classical novel, summarize every chapter, then at the end of the semester, come out with an extensive literary review.

I had to prove this teacher wrong. I chose the novel Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. That year, I lost my 20-20 vision. I had to wear eye-glasses as I poured over voluminous reading materials ranging from the history of the United States of America, the Mississippi river where the novel was set, literary criticism, the life of Mark Twain, ad infinitum. The high school library was not enough; I was in the bigger playground, the college library. Yes, reading was a foreplay, and writing was the orgasm; for me then, the whole thing was a play, effortless and blissful.

I always believed that efforts will have always its fruits. My English teacher gave me a final grade of 98, and everytime we meet, even up to now, she always take pride that she had never given a final grade of 98 except to me.

My real romance with reading and writing blossomed since then. I went to college brimming with confidence. I abandoned my pseudonym to carry my by-line as I wrote and edited the official student publication of our university, THE CRUSADER. My college years were productive of both literary and journalistic outputs.

After college though, the studies of law took all my time for another four years and six months of intensive review. The language of law leaves no room for imagination, while literary writing precisely titillates the senses. For four years, I did not have even one literary piece. My romance with writing took a backseat as I read law books after law books, which are written, in a language that is barren and frigid, a challenge to sheer comprehension but not the imagination.

I thought it was only four years. After I passed the bar exams in 1990, and before I was introduced to blogging in the internet, I was suffering from what others call, literary infertility. It was absolute zero in terms of literary piece. And gosh, it was only last year that I started writing aside from legal briefs. Counting the years, it was twenty long years since I wrote something literary.

Now, coming back to the title , Living and Writing. A lawyer’s planner is always full, and yet here I am blogging, pouring out innermost thoughts for the others to swallow or spit out, absorb or discard. Writing, is a way of life, (or is it not life itself?). Afterall, living is sharing one’s self to others. An individual is not only a speck in the sea of humanity. He is a parcel of humanity; and man is characterized by what he has contributed to the definition of man, or by what he has taken away from the noble idea of what it is to be truly human. Writing humanizes; killing dehumanizes.

Is it the need to share, to feel the heartbeats of fellow humans even if the bloggers live continents apart, that I blog here? I may never know the true , pure and undiluted answer. But as I am finishing this blog, even though I am still struggling to shake off from my legalese tendencies, I realize that after the foreplay of reading, and experiencing life, I am unleashing, through this writing, the searing energies of orgasm, which fulfills me, and therefore, makes me more human and truly alive.