I have got to write (WARNING: Long read)

Nothing wakes up my senses than writing. Nothing racks up my brain like writing. And nothing sets my life in perspective than writing.

Thirteen days to my board exam, I stand excited and lost. After six months of preparing for it, I'm only a heartbeat and a skip away from what most would deem as a prediction of my success in life. Fail the board exam and you might as well wish to have been born in a country away from the Philippines, unknown and unheard of of your relatives.

I do not know if it is a good thing that I do not feel anxious about this exam. I've had this peculiar belief since I was young that when one does not feel disturbed, or at least moved by a supposedly 'major' event, then something bad is bound to happen. I know it sounds really superstitious, but I certainly do think that fate has a lot of hand on how our lives turn out. Anyway it would just be another exam, and if ever I pass it, I would just be another nursing gradute. After which I would just be another unemployed, job less BSN, going around hospitals passing her resume with the hope of at least having her curriculum vitae read by the HR people. By then I would just be another person waiting in line, along with the thousand others, hoping to get their life started.

It is depressing that I am losing my sense of idealism. I wish I had the same wisdom and discernment as that of Rizal. He pronounced that the 'Youth is the hope of the nation', seeing that the vibrance of wanting change lies most radiant in the youth. I wish I still had the same fire burning in me, or even close to what I had before I learned about all the realities of life. With all its dire evils, seemingly hopeless situations, and a cycle of different, yet almost the same problems, life as we humans do it, or at least how I see it in the Philippines, is a murderer of dreams. Well if one would project life with how things are going in the Philippines, it would be a gloomy mirage, rendering the future bleak and depressing. Of course there is more to seeing our lives as governed by societal influences. After all, a society is only a collective label for a group of people and the dynamics they adopt. People make the society, they make its rules, and they haul it towards where they want it to be headed. Which then surfaces the truth that we affect each other. The decisions we make, and the actions we do, no matter how minute or big we think these are, affect other people and in turn reflexes back to our own lives. (Okay I am getting really really trivial now). But if you try to see the larger picture, fate, as we see it, may only be a sweep of all the little things that each person does, casting its effect in a more collective scale.

I wish I had that capacity to turn my trivial thoughts into something more practical. I know I make sense but I don't think it comes across other people as I relate it to them. Words are just words until they materialize into something tangible. Normally I would get the "Ah, ok", or "Hmm" or down right silence. Maybe I have to be clearer on what I'm saying. Or find someone who tunes out, than see the world in a microcosm. Hindi ako nakakatakot kausap, I'm just weird.

Anyway, this post made me realize to exert the best effort I can to be a productive and successful citizen. (Which is harder than it is said). It's time to save the flame in me which is going dimmer by the minute. But I wish it was clearer to me what I really want to do in life so that I might succeed in doing it. As of now, I really don't know where I am headed or where I am supposed to be. I should have feared first not knowing decisively what to do in life than not being successful at all.

When I was younger, I thought I was a cut above others because I did well in school and it seemed as if I had my life together for the next 70 years or so. But now it came to me that I am no different than the class rule-breaker which everybody believed had no idea of what to do in his life. After the board exam, I would be free from the bondage of a pre specified life course. Which makes me more anxious because I do not know what to do with my life. Should I throw it down the drain? Should I devote it to others? Should I shelve it until the next big opportunity comes along? Should I pursue Medicine? Should I go one with being a Nurse? Should I be a writer? The questions bogging my head are endless. At least now I am certain that I need help with discerning what I would like to do. I know I've always said that in the end everybody just wants to be happy. But the path to happiness is different for everyone.

I think I've just exhausted all the thoughts in my head. I must read my reviewers now, lest I fail my board exams and put my life in a halt for another six months. In thirteen days, I'll pass the boards.

2 comments:

Lai said...

You're not weird. You just think differently.

Anonymous said...

Biologically speaking, the only people who think differently are the left-handed ones (seriously, it has something to do with the problem-solving approach of their brains).

Linguistically speaking, Filipinos use the term weird far from its intended usage but as a funky substitute for "different".

Logically speaking, Aubrey is neither weird nor different. It's just that the people she makes contact with have not yet developed the capacity to even partially grasp what she considers "trivial thoughts".

You know your stupid when the trivial thoughts of another person is astronomically incomprehensible to you. Of course one would never realize his stupidity but in an effort to restore one's mental security, the "weird" person is merely labeled as such and dismissed like some roadside beggar. No wonder smart people look down upon the stupid. An eye for an eye.