Post by dredpooh on Apr 17, 2006 8:17:19 GMT 8
Hiyeeh, Happy RK Day... and Easter too! 
April showers and May flowers
CHAMBERS By Korina Sanchez
The Philippine STAR 04/16/2006
"...Sun, sun, sun here it comes… Little Darling I feel the ice is slowly melting… Little Darling it seems like years since it’s been clear… Here comes the sun, Here comes the sun and I say, It’s alright…" - George Harrison (1943-2001)
Despair, grief, depression are, indeed, lonely words. We all use such words, often, to carelessly describe a fleeting moment. Yet who has truly known the depths of despair but those who have willingly thrown themselves into this pit, like a well of darkness, with its bottom beyond sight, and looked the devil in the eye to say, "No, even with all that you have done to seduce me into self-damnation, you may not have me?" Is it up to us?
It would be welcome for this immersion into our most barren of self-faith to become an elective. It is a stark, terrifying reality as it is apparent all the bad that come with the good confront us, trap us, inflict on us, challenge us – inevitably – and, many times, without warning. Man walks on the moon but has yet to discover the cure for cancer; has yet to invent the machine that predicts a tsunami and has yet to will the end of war and poverty. In the meantime, we suffer the innocent and possibly, unbeknownst to you and me, the innocent is us. We really wanted the marriage to work but we went ahead in separate ways. We never wanted losing the job but we did. We never wanted to get sick but we are. We never wanted the miscarriage but it happened. We really wanted the project to succeed but it didn’t. As we promote the idea of self-development, we also realize that hitting rock bottom may or may not be self-inflicted but that the other side of the spectrum of options is to know that it, too, shall pass.
I was in the wake for my Mom when a political columnist friend passed by to condole. I hadn’t seen Nelson in years and was heart warmed to receive his visit. He spoke to me with his own heart’s grief from the loss of his beloved mother. He spoke about how this loss was such a shattering experience and that he hadn’t snapped out of it completely. I offered him my own condolences, "When did she die, I wasn’t able to pay my respects?" I asked. Nelson was keeping his own tears from escaping the lower lids of his eyes, "Oh, that was seven years ago…." Certainly, Nelson was as functional as anyone could be expected to. Occasionally, we allow the portal of the pit to open and we stare. We stare at the depths of darkness of the well where water used to be and we ask, " I’ve been there before, do I want to go in again?" It’s no wonder when I read Nelson’s columns since then he is as brilliant as I always thought him to be.
Having lost her son to leukemia when he was only 19 years old, my mother spoke from her own depths of sorrow when she told me, "There is nothing you should even attempt to say to someone who has lost a loved one, especially a child, thinking you can make the bereaved feel better. Just say you’re sorry…" I wasn’t keen enough, then, to feel the strain of my mother’s struggle to survive the unnatural experience of losing her child. Or maybe I didn’t want to be too connected. Probably, by choice, I identified more with her decision to go back to school and take up a course in Bible studies and a few units in English literature. She was the source of joy and inspiration in her classes. Her classmates and instructors would have meetings in the house and I saw. I saw how she opened her eyes to look at the sun.
It is unfathomable to imagine grief or loss and despair beyond losing a child. Yet there are stories of emotional survival even for a man who was in Saudi Arabia working for his forthcoming marriage and for his family back in Tacloban. Only a couple of years into his work overseas, he received news his fiancé had succumbed to illness and he lost her. Hardly a year later, he received news of the landslides in Ginsaugon in Leyte. He came home to his entire family – buried under meters of land and rock. It is easier said to compare our lives to those who have nothing to even eat in Ethiopia and it is shameful, though real, that we often cannot even extract ourselves from our own sorrows when the stories from nearby neighbors should comfort us with the thought that no one is spared. Admit it. Our personal storms seem the worst. That’s them and this is ME. But the sun does shine again on even those who’ve been ravaged by the worst of it and driven to the brink of insanity. This man from Tacloban, last I heard, went through the rituals for his family and went back to Saudi Arabia, hopefully, to start fresh far from the memories.
I am a veteran of sorts myself. I know that sadness is a state where an incident happens – no one is happy about it, but it happens. The heart "sheds tears." As against disappointment. This is a product of the mind expecting a logical outcome and it doesn’t. You don’t feel disappointed. You are disappointed. As against loneliness. It isn’t just for the night. Or for the week without company. Loneliness can be felt even while in the middle of a crowd. It is a close relation to a feeling of abandonment and being unanchored. Some of us are more veteran of these various forms of pain than others. It might be unfair to compare our tragedy with someone else’s but we do find solace in the common truth that, at some point, misery is optional. There does exist the power that lies in us to be under the rain and to look for shelter until the sun shines again. I am a veteran of rehabilitation, reinvention and resurrection, too. I know that joy is a constant state – it is knowing you are loved and therefore the heart follows. As against ecstasy – which might be momentary but it is a rush of happiness – the fleeting kind but are of the moments that stay locked in some chamber of your heart forever. As against contentment. Contentment is not expecting for too many of those rushes but knowing you have a good thing going – knowing you have too much to be thankful for and too little time to give back.
Obviously for every fall, I’ve risen up to fight another day. And the battle is not for anything else but my own survival. You are what you believe. It is simply the yin and yang of our existence. I take advantage of the summer to go out, discover, bask in the wind and sunshine, smell the flowers, partake of the feasts and know that just as the enemy lurks in some corner somewhere it can’t rain forever. But it can in our heads if we wish it. The seasons tell us as much. We can’t control it. We prepare for it. We put up with it. We know there will be winter and life will die – temporarily. In the rain much of what gives us joy has to wait. We just have to wait. But resurrection is not just on Easter any more than Jesus, after 40 days of fasting, is the only one capable of winning over the temptation to go over the deep end. There is a Lazarus option for every time we die inside. There’s a time to mourn our disappointments and tragedies. And there is always the time to snap out of it and resist defeat. Is it really worth it – losing another day of summer full knowing winter and rain will go their own merry way back into our lives soon enough?
Summer comes whether you like it or not. Look for a window and chances are you’ll find one. Even in a deep dark well – all you have to do is look up in the daytime. Face it. The sun’s out. Even for you.
www.philstar.com/philstar/lifestyle200604169601.htm
April showers and May flowers
CHAMBERS By Korina Sanchez
The Philippine STAR 04/16/2006
"...Sun, sun, sun here it comes… Little Darling I feel the ice is slowly melting… Little Darling it seems like years since it’s been clear… Here comes the sun, Here comes the sun and I say, It’s alright…" - George Harrison (1943-2001)
Despair, grief, depression are, indeed, lonely words. We all use such words, often, to carelessly describe a fleeting moment. Yet who has truly known the depths of despair but those who have willingly thrown themselves into this pit, like a well of darkness, with its bottom beyond sight, and looked the devil in the eye to say, "No, even with all that you have done to seduce me into self-damnation, you may not have me?" Is it up to us?
It would be welcome for this immersion into our most barren of self-faith to become an elective. It is a stark, terrifying reality as it is apparent all the bad that come with the good confront us, trap us, inflict on us, challenge us – inevitably – and, many times, without warning. Man walks on the moon but has yet to discover the cure for cancer; has yet to invent the machine that predicts a tsunami and has yet to will the end of war and poverty. In the meantime, we suffer the innocent and possibly, unbeknownst to you and me, the innocent is us. We really wanted the marriage to work but we went ahead in separate ways. We never wanted losing the job but we did. We never wanted to get sick but we are. We never wanted the miscarriage but it happened. We really wanted the project to succeed but it didn’t. As we promote the idea of self-development, we also realize that hitting rock bottom may or may not be self-inflicted but that the other side of the spectrum of options is to know that it, too, shall pass.
I was in the wake for my Mom when a political columnist friend passed by to condole. I hadn’t seen Nelson in years and was heart warmed to receive his visit. He spoke to me with his own heart’s grief from the loss of his beloved mother. He spoke about how this loss was such a shattering experience and that he hadn’t snapped out of it completely. I offered him my own condolences, "When did she die, I wasn’t able to pay my respects?" I asked. Nelson was keeping his own tears from escaping the lower lids of his eyes, "Oh, that was seven years ago…." Certainly, Nelson was as functional as anyone could be expected to. Occasionally, we allow the portal of the pit to open and we stare. We stare at the depths of darkness of the well where water used to be and we ask, " I’ve been there before, do I want to go in again?" It’s no wonder when I read Nelson’s columns since then he is as brilliant as I always thought him to be.
Having lost her son to leukemia when he was only 19 years old, my mother spoke from her own depths of sorrow when she told me, "There is nothing you should even attempt to say to someone who has lost a loved one, especially a child, thinking you can make the bereaved feel better. Just say you’re sorry…" I wasn’t keen enough, then, to feel the strain of my mother’s struggle to survive the unnatural experience of losing her child. Or maybe I didn’t want to be too connected. Probably, by choice, I identified more with her decision to go back to school and take up a course in Bible studies and a few units in English literature. She was the source of joy and inspiration in her classes. Her classmates and instructors would have meetings in the house and I saw. I saw how she opened her eyes to look at the sun.
It is unfathomable to imagine grief or loss and despair beyond losing a child. Yet there are stories of emotional survival even for a man who was in Saudi Arabia working for his forthcoming marriage and for his family back in Tacloban. Only a couple of years into his work overseas, he received news his fiancé had succumbed to illness and he lost her. Hardly a year later, he received news of the landslides in Ginsaugon in Leyte. He came home to his entire family – buried under meters of land and rock. It is easier said to compare our lives to those who have nothing to even eat in Ethiopia and it is shameful, though real, that we often cannot even extract ourselves from our own sorrows when the stories from nearby neighbors should comfort us with the thought that no one is spared. Admit it. Our personal storms seem the worst. That’s them and this is ME. But the sun does shine again on even those who’ve been ravaged by the worst of it and driven to the brink of insanity. This man from Tacloban, last I heard, went through the rituals for his family and went back to Saudi Arabia, hopefully, to start fresh far from the memories.
I am a veteran of sorts myself. I know that sadness is a state where an incident happens – no one is happy about it, but it happens. The heart "sheds tears." As against disappointment. This is a product of the mind expecting a logical outcome and it doesn’t. You don’t feel disappointed. You are disappointed. As against loneliness. It isn’t just for the night. Or for the week without company. Loneliness can be felt even while in the middle of a crowd. It is a close relation to a feeling of abandonment and being unanchored. Some of us are more veteran of these various forms of pain than others. It might be unfair to compare our tragedy with someone else’s but we do find solace in the common truth that, at some point, misery is optional. There does exist the power that lies in us to be under the rain and to look for shelter until the sun shines again. I am a veteran of rehabilitation, reinvention and resurrection, too. I know that joy is a constant state – it is knowing you are loved and therefore the heart follows. As against ecstasy – which might be momentary but it is a rush of happiness – the fleeting kind but are of the moments that stay locked in some chamber of your heart forever. As against contentment. Contentment is not expecting for too many of those rushes but knowing you have a good thing going – knowing you have too much to be thankful for and too little time to give back.
Obviously for every fall, I’ve risen up to fight another day. And the battle is not for anything else but my own survival. You are what you believe. It is simply the yin and yang of our existence. I take advantage of the summer to go out, discover, bask in the wind and sunshine, smell the flowers, partake of the feasts and know that just as the enemy lurks in some corner somewhere it can’t rain forever. But it can in our heads if we wish it. The seasons tell us as much. We can’t control it. We prepare for it. We put up with it. We know there will be winter and life will die – temporarily. In the rain much of what gives us joy has to wait. We just have to wait. But resurrection is not just on Easter any more than Jesus, after 40 days of fasting, is the only one capable of winning over the temptation to go over the deep end. There is a Lazarus option for every time we die inside. There’s a time to mourn our disappointments and tragedies. And there is always the time to snap out of it and resist defeat. Is it really worth it – losing another day of summer full knowing winter and rain will go their own merry way back into our lives soon enough?
Summer comes whether you like it or not. Look for a window and chances are you’ll find one. Even in a deep dark well – all you have to do is look up in the daytime. Face it. The sun’s out. Even for you.
www.philstar.com/philstar/lifestyle200604169601.htm
