I used to have this one quirk that girls would find cute. Either that, or they’d slowly back away from me before turning around and running. See, I remember someone telling me that if you caught a hundred airplanes and kept them in your hand, you’d get to make a wish. For years, I thought it was my cousin who taught me that, but when she caught me reaching up into the sky and pretending to catch a passing airplane with my hand, well... let’s just say she didn’t find it cute.
I carried on that small game well into my college years, and a little beyond that. So long as I heard the din of an airplane engine, I’d look to the sky and search for the source. If I found it, I’d catch it and say what number that plane was, just to remind myself of how many more I needed for a wish.
I’ve caught enough airplanes in my life to make three wishes, and they’ve all come true. My first hundred-airplane wish was, quite sappily, made for my girlfriend. I wished for her happiness. Considering that the girl is my ex now, I probably should’ve just wished for a Playstation 3.
The next two wishes were more of a reflection of my life and troubles. Going to college without any way of paying the tuition is a really tough thing to do, even with scholarships that improved from partial ones to a full one. There came a time when my family was having trouble scrounging up 5000 pesos to pay for my tuition backlog from my partial scholarship days. It was pretty depressing, realizing that the thing I wished most for was the chance to enrol for the coming semester. Thankfully, though, things worked out and I got through college.
I don’t really catch airplanes anymore. I still do it occasionally, but I never hunt down the planes I hear in the sky. And when I do, I’m never really that sure about how many I’ve caught since my last hundred a year ago. It’s always somewhere around 74-77, give or take a couple of planes.
I was thinking about why I don’t catch airplanes anymore, when it hit me – I would do it in times of unhappiness. I mean, although my ex really is a nice person, she was making me unhappy with myself. She never really let me be the goofy, quirky, corny geek that I am. In fact, she made me feel ashamed of it, mostly because she was ashamed of me. I never really admit it to myself until recently, but the way she was trying to turn me into a douche to “make me better” spoke volumes about how she didn’t really like who I was as a person. Deep inside, I think I knew that for most of the time we were together. My wish for her, if I remember right, went something like this – “I wish for her happiness, even if it didn’t include me”. I imagine I thought myself selfless at the time, but maybe there was more to that thought than I realized.
The other two hundred were self-explanatory. There are few things that are as depressing as being in education limbo, never knowing if you were still going to school until days after the regular enrolment period. I swear my children (if I ever have them) will never, ever have to go through what I had to go through.
Maybe I’m overthinking my past here, but it kinda makes sense to me. I mean, don't we all make wishes when we want something missing from our lives? Maybe I was subconsciously wishing for some actual happiness. I’ll probably never really know why I started catching those airplanes when I did. I’ll never know for certain if I really was doing it to maximize my chances of finding happiness, or if I’m just making these connections up because I’m way too introspective for my own good. I can’t go back in time and ask my old self about this.
I can, however, pinpoint the time where I cut down on the airplane-catching – sometime between January and February 2009. If you know me and my story, you’ll probably see why.
Showing posts with label Marco is a Big Kid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marco is a Big Kid. Show all posts
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
How Not Completely Growing Up Made Me a Better Adult
I’m pretty different from the person that I was back when I was a kid. Back then, I was one of the class shrimps, posing in front of pictures ‘cause I was the among the shortest. Now, I stand a little bit taller than the average Filipino. When I was younger, I had the straightest, most manageable head of hair, the envy of women and wannabe shampoo commercial models. Now, I shave off the tangled dead animal I pass off as hair. I was one of the school’s top students back when I was a kid. Now, I’m the poster boy for academic underachievement. Yessiree, the person I am now barely resembles the boy who used to wear my too-short shorts.
There’s one thing, though, that I’ve never matured from. And I’m glad I never did.
If you manage to hunt down my elementary school yearbook, you’ll find a bunch of prepubescent boys with quotes following their names. That was because we were asked to submit what we thought were mottos for our lives. While most kids dived into the quote books and dug out the sayings they most identified with (I’ll never understand those who picked “Time is Gold”. Really? That’s your motto in life?), I chose to go the pretentious route and make up my own quote. It just felt right to me if your motto in life was something you believed in because you lived it. Following what someone else thought was the right way of life just didn’t make sense to me – everyone is different, so why would someone else’s words characterize how you live?
And so I took some time to really reflect on what I felt would define my approach to life. This isn’t something a 12-year-old should be trying, but again, I was a pretentious little bugger. After much thought, I came up with something, and I pretty much fell in love with it. I’m not sure what the exact words are anymore, but it went something like this:
“Respect, trust, and love are things earned when they’re given.”
It’s a pretty naïve outlook towards life, if you think about it. What I was trying to say in those 10 simple words was that so long as you respect, trust, and love people, you’re going to be respected, trusted, and loved back. If you’re going to follow this advice in the sense that I meant all those years ago, you’ve got to do this unconditionally. To make it even more naïve, I also meant that you should follow this tidbit with all your heart.
Of course, I never realized back then that this was the kind of thinking that left someone open to abuse. How many people hold the utmost respect for others only to be bullied by them? How many people have given others their complete trust, only to be betrayed? How many people out there have loved someone fearlessly and dearly, only to find that love unreciprocated? It happens to everyone, and it just plain sucks when it does.
And yet, as I grew up, I found myself following my own advice, despite my increased maturity. I still approached people this way to the best of my ability, and it’s damaged me. I’ve been disrespected by people I’ve held in high regard more times than I’d care to remember. I’ve trusted a bunch of people with too many things, but I’ve had that trust broken again and again. Love? I’ve loved someone with all my heart, and she dumped me after three years.
But I stood by my motto. With my heart in overdrive, I’ve made myself vulnerable to all the emotional pain that I’ve endured so far. I should be jaded, but I’m not. Why the hell do I continue to follow the motto of a 12-year-old, then? Because despite all the hardships I’ve endured by exposing myself like that, I truly believe it works if you stick with it. It’s all a matter of how you look at it.
Sure, people disrespect other people. And yes, some individuals are just undeserving of respect. It’s the hardest thing to do, to find respect for those who show a complete lack of regard for you. I myself haven’t really followed this completely. But when I do, I find that the respect doesn’t necessarily have to come from those people. If you still find the ability to respect those you should despise, you find a newfound respect for yourself. You’ve just made yourself the bigger man. And honestly, self-respect is a vastly-underrated virtue. What’s so great about it is that not only do you end up liking yourself more as a person, but people will see that in you and respect you for that.
Trust is the same. The good thing about trust is that it’s got a reflective nature – show people that you trust them, and they have reason to trust you. Not only that, but acting in a trustworthy fashion helps you trust yourself. It shouldn’t matter if your trust is broken; you’re someone people can trust, and that’s something to be proud of.
Last, but definitely not the least (especially to a sap like me), is love. Of the three things I mentioned in that quote, this is the one that leaves you open to the worst pain. I’m a fucking romantic. I believe the only love worth feeling is when you completely give yourself into the emotion, and so I know how wonderful it can feel to love someone with everything you are. I also know how soul-crushing it can feel when the person you give your overflowing heart to takes it for granted.
That’s the thing about love, though – you really just have to put yourself out there. You can’t expect to be loved if you don’t love someone. And if you want it to be of any real value, you’ve got to love with everything you can muster. You’re going to get your heart broken, yes, and you’re going to set yourself up for more. But when you find that someone who doesn’t break your heart, and who loves you back, it’s just… overwhelming. Love, when reciprocated, is happiness; throw-yourself-into-it love that’s reciprocated is bliss, and that’s the kind of love you want to earn.
I don’t really care if people think I’m just being idealistic. I don't care if this is a poorly-written testimony to my naïveté. I don't even care if this all makes sense or not. I’m blissful right now.
That's right - this is all a thousand-word declaration that I'M IN LOVE!!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I HAVE WASTED YOUR TIME WITH MY RANDOM SAPPERY!!!
*cough*
My 12-year-old self's motto is awesome.
There’s one thing, though, that I’ve never matured from. And I’m glad I never did.
If you manage to hunt down my elementary school yearbook, you’ll find a bunch of prepubescent boys with quotes following their names. That was because we were asked to submit what we thought were mottos for our lives. While most kids dived into the quote books and dug out the sayings they most identified with (I’ll never understand those who picked “Time is Gold”. Really? That’s your motto in life?), I chose to go the pretentious route and make up my own quote. It just felt right to me if your motto in life was something you believed in because you lived it. Following what someone else thought was the right way of life just didn’t make sense to me – everyone is different, so why would someone else’s words characterize how you live?
And so I took some time to really reflect on what I felt would define my approach to life. This isn’t something a 12-year-old should be trying, but again, I was a pretentious little bugger. After much thought, I came up with something, and I pretty much fell in love with it. I’m not sure what the exact words are anymore, but it went something like this:
“Respect, trust, and love are things earned when they’re given.”
It’s a pretty naïve outlook towards life, if you think about it. What I was trying to say in those 10 simple words was that so long as you respect, trust, and love people, you’re going to be respected, trusted, and loved back. If you’re going to follow this advice in the sense that I meant all those years ago, you’ve got to do this unconditionally. To make it even more naïve, I also meant that you should follow this tidbit with all your heart.
Of course, I never realized back then that this was the kind of thinking that left someone open to abuse. How many people hold the utmost respect for others only to be bullied by them? How many people have given others their complete trust, only to be betrayed? How many people out there have loved someone fearlessly and dearly, only to find that love unreciprocated? It happens to everyone, and it just plain sucks when it does.
And yet, as I grew up, I found myself following my own advice, despite my increased maturity. I still approached people this way to the best of my ability, and it’s damaged me. I’ve been disrespected by people I’ve held in high regard more times than I’d care to remember. I’ve trusted a bunch of people with too many things, but I’ve had that trust broken again and again. Love? I’ve loved someone with all my heart, and she dumped me after three years.
But I stood by my motto. With my heart in overdrive, I’ve made myself vulnerable to all the emotional pain that I’ve endured so far. I should be jaded, but I’m not. Why the hell do I continue to follow the motto of a 12-year-old, then? Because despite all the hardships I’ve endured by exposing myself like that, I truly believe it works if you stick with it. It’s all a matter of how you look at it.
Sure, people disrespect other people. And yes, some individuals are just undeserving of respect. It’s the hardest thing to do, to find respect for those who show a complete lack of regard for you. I myself haven’t really followed this completely. But when I do, I find that the respect doesn’t necessarily have to come from those people. If you still find the ability to respect those you should despise, you find a newfound respect for yourself. You’ve just made yourself the bigger man. And honestly, self-respect is a vastly-underrated virtue. What’s so great about it is that not only do you end up liking yourself more as a person, but people will see that in you and respect you for that.
Trust is the same. The good thing about trust is that it’s got a reflective nature – show people that you trust them, and they have reason to trust you. Not only that, but acting in a trustworthy fashion helps you trust yourself. It shouldn’t matter if your trust is broken; you’re someone people can trust, and that’s something to be proud of.
Last, but definitely not the least (especially to a sap like me), is love. Of the three things I mentioned in that quote, this is the one that leaves you open to the worst pain. I’m a fucking romantic. I believe the only love worth feeling is when you completely give yourself into the emotion, and so I know how wonderful it can feel to love someone with everything you are. I also know how soul-crushing it can feel when the person you give your overflowing heart to takes it for granted.
That’s the thing about love, though – you really just have to put yourself out there. You can’t expect to be loved if you don’t love someone. And if you want it to be of any real value, you’ve got to love with everything you can muster. You’re going to get your heart broken, yes, and you’re going to set yourself up for more. But when you find that someone who doesn’t break your heart, and who loves you back, it’s just… overwhelming. Love, when reciprocated, is happiness; throw-yourself-into-it love that’s reciprocated is bliss, and that’s the kind of love you want to earn.
I don’t really care if people think I’m just being idealistic. I don't care if this is a poorly-written testimony to my naïveté. I don't even care if this all makes sense or not. I’m blissful right now.
That's right - this is all a thousand-word declaration that I'M IN LOVE!!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I HAVE WASTED YOUR TIME WITH MY RANDOM SAPPERY!!!
*cough*
My 12-year-old self's motto is awesome.
Monday, June 22, 2009
I Have Seen the Anti-Christ
Sometime around high school, a friend had shown me irrefutable proof that Barney, the Big Purple Dinosaur who’d lull me to sleep with his hypnotic singing voice, was in fact a Satanic figurehead for the corruption of children. I always thought the creature’s bizarre rituals were akin to a child molester's training video, and so this claim piqued my interest. How so, oh dear high school friend, was the big old Pedosaurus Satan’s gift to the world? “Simple,” he said, grabbing a pen. “Barney is
A CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR”
It pleased me to note that my friend’s keen sense of observation was as astute as ever. Go on, I urged him.
“Now waaaay back in Ancient Roman times, there was no letter U. The letter V was used in its place, making Barney
A CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR”
I stopped to think for a moment what those fiddle-playing pasta eaters had to do with Barney, but quickly remembered that this was high school logic playing out. And so my friend continued:
“Since we’re talking about Ancient Rome, let’s isolate the Roman numerals in that phrase, shall we? That leaves us with
C V V L D I V”
“Now add it all up,” he said. I promptly brought out my Roman Numeral Calculator and did the conversions:
I = 1
V = 5
L = 50
C = 100
D = 500
So
C + V + V + L + D + I + V = 100 + 5 + 5 + 50 + 500 + 1 + 5 = 666!
HOLY CRAP! BARNEY IS 666!
Of course, that was completely pointless. It does illustrate, however, that with enough stretches of the imagination, people can find whatever they want to find in just about anything. If you look hard enough for the devil, you can find him (or her) in the most mundane things.
So why bring this up? It’s because I’ve been playing a bunch of Pokemon recently, which is the second of two things I’ve enjoyed that were accused of being Satanic material (the first being Magic: the Gathering). Now, Magic, I can understand – in its early days, the art was a lot less censored, and there was even a pentagram depicted in the card Unholy Strength. But Pokemon? Cute little furry critters that you catch in tiny balls? Oh please. I find it hard to believe that a creature named “Jigglypuff” will lead to the eternal damnation of my soul.
And yet I’ve read of others who were convinced that Pokemon were infernal spawns of evil sent forth to defile the souls of all mankind. I remember getting an email from a concerned parent back when Pokemania was running rampant that warned of demonic possession taking hold of her Pokemon-crazed son. She was terrified to discover her child speaking in a raspy almost-whisper, uttering a word unheard of in any language. “Bubba-zoar, bubba-zoar,” he said, clearly taken over by a malicious force from the depths of Hell. The kid, of course, was just copying the Pokemon Bulbasaur who, in the anime, has a tiny little raspy voice and can only speak his name. If the mother had just freaking been watching what her kid was watching, she’d have known that before breaking into a fundamentalist Christian panic.
I know that when I do become a parent, I’m going to spend actual time with my kids and watch what they like to watch. I’m not going to be like that mother who probably was too busy with her own life to get to know the things her kid liked. You’re going to see me chilling out with my kids in front of the TV, laughing along to their generation’s equivalent of Spongebob Squarepants. Why? Because I’ll actually give a damn about my kids. Shame on you, fundamentalist Christian mother who’s out of touch with her own son; shame on you.
And yes, I realize I’m far too old to still be playing Pokemon. I’m also a little too old to be watching Chowder and Ben 10. But you know what? It’s fun keeping in touch with your inner child. It sure as hell makes relating with tomorrow’s leaders a whole lot more interesting.
P.S. Two straight posts without cursing! Fuck yeah!
P.P.S. Oh shit.
A CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR”
It pleased me to note that my friend’s keen sense of observation was as astute as ever. Go on, I urged him.
“Now waaaay back in Ancient Roman times, there was no letter U. The letter V was used in its place, making Barney
A CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR”
I stopped to think for a moment what those fiddle-playing pasta eaters had to do with Barney, but quickly remembered that this was high school logic playing out. And so my friend continued:
“Since we’re talking about Ancient Rome, let’s isolate the Roman numerals in that phrase, shall we? That leaves us with
C V V L D I V”
“Now add it all up,” he said. I promptly brought out my Roman Numeral Calculator and did the conversions:
I = 1
V = 5
L = 50
C = 100
D = 500
So
C + V + V + L + D + I + V = 100 + 5 + 5 + 50 + 500 + 1 + 5 = 666!
HOLY CRAP! BARNEY IS 666!
Of course, that was completely pointless. It does illustrate, however, that with enough stretches of the imagination, people can find whatever they want to find in just about anything. If you look hard enough for the devil, you can find him (or her) in the most mundane things.
So why bring this up? It’s because I’ve been playing a bunch of Pokemon recently, which is the second of two things I’ve enjoyed that were accused of being Satanic material (the first being Magic: the Gathering). Now, Magic, I can understand – in its early days, the art was a lot less censored, and there was even a pentagram depicted in the card Unholy Strength. But Pokemon? Cute little furry critters that you catch in tiny balls? Oh please. I find it hard to believe that a creature named “Jigglypuff” will lead to the eternal damnation of my soul.
And yet I’ve read of others who were convinced that Pokemon were infernal spawns of evil sent forth to defile the souls of all mankind. I remember getting an email from a concerned parent back when Pokemania was running rampant that warned of demonic possession taking hold of her Pokemon-crazed son. She was terrified to discover her child speaking in a raspy almost-whisper, uttering a word unheard of in any language. “Bubba-zoar, bubba-zoar,” he said, clearly taken over by a malicious force from the depths of Hell. The kid, of course, was just copying the Pokemon Bulbasaur who, in the anime, has a tiny little raspy voice and can only speak his name. If the mother had just freaking been watching what her kid was watching, she’d have known that before breaking into a fundamentalist Christian panic.
I know that when I do become a parent, I’m going to spend actual time with my kids and watch what they like to watch. I’m not going to be like that mother who probably was too busy with her own life to get to know the things her kid liked. You’re going to see me chilling out with my kids in front of the TV, laughing along to their generation’s equivalent of Spongebob Squarepants. Why? Because I’ll actually give a damn about my kids. Shame on you, fundamentalist Christian mother who’s out of touch with her own son; shame on you.
And yes, I realize I’m far too old to still be playing Pokemon. I’m also a little too old to be watching Chowder and Ben 10. But you know what? It’s fun keeping in touch with your inner child. It sure as hell makes relating with tomorrow’s leaders a whole lot more interesting.
P.S. Two straight posts without cursing! Fuck yeah!
P.P.S. Oh shit.
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