The World Is Changing

I’ve not had the words for days now. I’m still so overwhelmed, letting it all sink in.

My friend Chi, all the way in Dubai, who reads my blogs regularly (“cracks the whip” is actually the more accurate description of what she does with me regarding this blog) demanded over Facebook last week: “Tweet Sering, where is this week’s?”

I promised I would upload a new one. But at that time, with the US election just days away, I couldn’t sit still long enough to organize my thoughts on my computer. I was too excited. And too scared, actually. What if—shudder--Obama doesn’t win? The idea was as horrific as Gotham City without Batman. Except with this, I couldn’t walk out of the darkness of the movie theatre afterwards—I’d still have to live in a world that was beginning to plunge ever deeper into hopelessness and chaos and darkness.

I’m still so buzzed. This has been an amazing week. My sister Jof, the new island girl (she’s now working in Boracay, lucky biyatch) texted me this the day after: “The world is changing! J I’m so excited. Obama rocks!”

Many people have wanted to “change the world”—and, in fact, many have been and still are changing the world. But the election to the highest office in the most powerful country in the world of an African American--the race that, only four decades ago, was fighting to rid itself of the last vestiges of slavery, was such a resounding, dramatic proof that the world is changing, that the human race is evolving--despite the wars and the poverty and the environmental degradation and the climate crisis that suggest otherwise. Yes, there is that. And it would be downright dangerous to even think that that part is getting better because it is, in fact, getting worse.

But what the Obama win showed was that the wars, the poverty, the environmental degradation and the climate crisis are not all that is left in the world. It’s not all hopelessness and cynicism and apathy. Obama’s triumph showed that there is still enough hope and passion and a sense of responsibility left; at least, that there are people who still have these in them enough to get him—the unlikeliest candidate, but the one with the strong message of hope and change—elected…by a landslide. There are still enough people fired up to, as Angelina Jolie put it, “roll up [their] sleeves and take on what [they] care about”. There are still a great number of people who, like John F. Kennedy, fervently believe that “our problems are man-made. Therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe they can do it again.”

All together now: “Yes, we can!” J

I’ve been camping in front of the TV, hungry for more news and analyses on the historic event because, as with some of the most profound experiences—as this one definitely was—I have been at a loss for words. So I’ve been letting other people’s words—the CNN, BBC, Bloomberg and Al-Jazeera anchors and political analysts (what, no Fox News? Hehe), the nytimes.com columnists, Oprah on her website, my friends from all around the world with their giddy e-mails and Facebook posts—wash over me. I just wanted to take it all in and sit with it. About the most articulate thing that came out of my mouth the past days was “AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”

Today, I progressed to “AAAAHHHHHHH LAAAAAVEHHHHHHHT!!!”

Which, thankfully for me (Chi, eto na!), paved the way for the above entry.

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Some of the words from other people that I sat with the longest and savored the most:

“As he looked out Tuesday night through the bulletproof glass, in a park named for a Civil War general, he had to see the truth on people’s faces. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, he liked to say, but people were waiting for him, waiting for someone to finish what a King began.”– Nancy Gibbs, Time Magazine, as quoted by Gayle King on Oprah.com

“I was sobered by his calmness when he came out. Because he didn’t walk out triumphant. He was humbled and steady.”--Oprah on Oprah.com

"The most important thing that Barack Obama brings to the presidency is his willingness to reason. He won his presidency not as a black American but as a reasoning American who happens to be black."--Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize-winning economist, in TIME magazine

"Early-voting lines in Atlanta were 10 hours long, and still people waited, as though their vote was their most precious and personal possession at a moment when everything else seemed to be losing its value."--Nancy Gibbs, TIME magazine

“Hope has to keep winning.”--David Gergen, CNN Senior Political Analyst on Oprah.com

"We felt we could have talked burgers--and places and books--with him all day. But you expect that of a politician, whose livelihood depends on winning hearts. The more remarkable thing, we both felt, was that this sparkling stranger was so much like the kind of people we meet in Paris, in Hong Kong, in the Middle East: difficult to place and connected to everywhere."--Pico Iyer, writing in TIME magazine about a chance encounter with then Sen. Barack Obama in Hawaii in late 2006, a week before the new President-elect joined the presidential race. Iyer was with traveler and writer Paul Theroux.

"Never will an American election have excited in the rest of the world a hope at once so crazy and so reasoned." -- Bernard-Henri Levy, French writer and philosopher in TIME magazine

"My brother is not supposed to accomplish even half of what he has. It's meant to be impossible. It makes you wonder. Is this some force at work, the dynamics of nature and life? Is it God? We divided the world after 9/11. And the world said no. And through my brother, we can all connect again." -- Malik Obama, Barack's Kenyan half-brother, TIME magazine

"I believe Mr. Obama exhibits many of the best characteristics of our species in terms of intelligence, sensitivity, resolve and a willingness to reason." -- Richard Leakey, Kenyan conservationist, TIME magazine

"Obama's election is not an event we can comprehend fully right now. It portends a shift whose magnitude will only be realized as my daughter's generation comes of age. But it will change, forever, our assumptions of who can become what in this world." -- Ellis Cose, Newsweek

Back to Zero

In Yoga, there is a concept called “going back to zero”, which means going back to a state of rest, of stillness. Yogis believe that this state is a way of wiping the slate clean, erasing past regrets and “mistakes” as well as fears and anxieties about the future; there is no yesterday nor “earlier”, no tomorrow nor “later”. There is only today, “now”, the present moment—also known in metaphysics as “the point of power” or the point at which we are able to make things happen.

Like a blank canvas, focusing on the present, in the “now” (as in, “What do I feel now? What do I think now? What would I like to do now? Who would I like to be with now?) or “zero”, is a necessary state for creation to begin—for something new and vital to emerge. Nay, more: it makes creation inevitable.

Put more simply: If we just STOP for a moment—you know, just stop whatever it is we’ve been feverishly pursuing, incessantly occupying our minds with (that promotion, that salary increase, the esteem of our colleagues, the girl or guy of our dreams, the attention of our spouses, the respect of our parents and children…), we might actually see that we’re just trying too damn hard and we may proceed or start up again in a more relaxed, more intelligent, less do-or-die fashion. As Salma Hayek once said, “The universe doesn’t operate on desperation.” (As the lead and producer of the difficult-to-make Frida, she would know.)

Last year, without realizing it, I went back to this zero in a big way: Tired (OK, exhausted) from years of trying to live my ideal of the strong, independent, self-sufficient woman, I finally decided to give the whole thing—and myself—a much-needed rest. At thirty-four, I gave up my independent single-girl life in the city and temporarily moved back with my parents in the suburban south of Metro Manila. At that time, I already had a feeling that this homecoming was different from all the other ones in the past, when I’d show up at my parents’ door, bags of clothes and boxes of books in tow, feeling every bit the way my brother had summed me up: “Para ka’ng OFW na di pumatok sa Saudi.” 

Well.

All the elements of the big production called Tweet’s Return were still there—the bags, the boxes, my brother’s pang-asar—except for one conspicuous thing: the huge Balikbayan-box sense of failure at not having made it out there that I also used to lug home on such occasions.

As soon as I moved back into my old room in November last year, I marveled at how different everything felt. Instead of feeling smothered and defensive, I was surprised at how right it felt to be at my parents’ house--the house I’d been forever plotting to leave, to escape from. Although I suspected something like this would happen the moment I decided to go home, it was still something of a shock to realize how truly happy I was to be at the place that, as Pico Iyer called it, I had “always longed to flee.”

I was hyper aware of how grateful I was that breakfast would be on the table when I woke up, that I had no rent and utilities to pay and to stress over, that a laundry woman comes to the house every Friday to wash our clothes, that I have family to sit with me at the table and who I know will be there, ready to join me for tea and boiled bananas, when I emerge from my room after a day of writing. It struck me as silly that I had spent most of my supposed adult years running away from my family, pulling myself free of their clutches because they had seemed to stand in the way of my pursuit of complete freedom. But I suppose that was necessary then. My family seemed to have changed a great deal. I no longer felt them encroaching on my space, of feeling entitled to my time or sucking out my energy.

But while I knew something had definitely changed, I didn’t have the words for it then.

It wasn’t until I had been back in my old room for five months that a whole new way of looking at zero—that it didn’t necessarily equate “loser”--was introduced in Yoga class and I realized that something of a miracle had taken place: My mind had changed. (Woooow.) And so I had changed. That was it! While the act of coming home was the same as all the other times in the past, I was no longer the same person. No longer the same person who walked in her parents’ door with the long face of someone who felt and acted as if she were there by no choice of hers. No longer the same person who lay in bed sighing heavily, feeling the walls close in on her as if she were a prisoner. No longer the same feeling-kawawz girl who spent her days wondering when and how she’d be able to leave her parents’ house again.

Somehow, my perspective had shifted so that instead of looking at my situation as the depressing dead-end it always had seemed to me and, thus, was always something I was desperately trying to get out of, I now saw it as a beginning, a starting point. Of what, I wasn’t so sure. I only knew that I wanted to approach my family and my role in it differently. I didn’t want the old drama playing in my head, anymore. It was definitely time for a new script. 

Hmm…what was it about this place that made me want to escape it so much? What was it about my family that stirred up such strong mixed emotions? Why did I have such a great need to prove my strength, independence and self-sufficiency? Was I not convinced of it?

 Soon, it became clearer to me why I really came home: I wanted to stop running—running away from people, circumstances and feelings I didn’t like, on one hand, and running towards my ideal, on the other. I wanted to just stop and catch my breath for a while. To learn to be happy just sitting still, enjoying the calm. But old habits do die hard and I complained about this a lot in my journal. In an August entry, for instance, I complained about an unwieldy tendency: “Sometimes I still find myself looking for something to do, as if I don’t have enough to do at the moment. As if I’m not in the middle of a project. We really do tend to seek out the obvious highs and lows, and are suspicious about cruising calmly along. Some people are lucky enough to trust the calm. I’ve wanted to be one of those people for some years now…” I found it both poetic and practical that I learn to do that in the one place I had, for the longest time, been trying to get away from because I just couldn’t be peaceful in it.

It turns out that by coming home, by “going back to zero”—a place and a state of being that many of us have learned to fear and try so hard to avoid--I was actually, if subconsciously, setting the stage for new things to happen to me. Nay, more: I had made myself a blank canvas on which the creation of a new and vital (a.k.a. more mature) life now seemed inevitable.

 

The Personal Is Political

I’m feeling it. The November 4 US presidential election has got me nail-bitingly excited that I sometimes find myself having to walk off excess energy around the house, my mind swirling with fabulous images of an Obama presidency and all the amazing, ground-breaking effects that will have for the rest of the world.

It’s such an optimistic time. Even for someone like me from the Third World Philippines. For some reason, this election is very personal to me, especially when I began reading Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope”. I had become quite intrigued with the charismatic African American who was giving my girl Hillary Clinton some stiff competition and I wanted to know more. (When Hillary announced her candidacy with the now famous line, “I’m IN to WIN!” I thought her nomination was in the bag.) Soon, I found out I had more in common with this man than even Hillary, whose struggle to break glass ceilings I’ve always admired and cheered on and tried to emulate. (Although I really, really think she should have left Bill; he’s the one that’s bringing her down).    

Before Barack Obama, the only other political figure I felt this personally connected to wasn’t even officially in politics yet—Eddie Villanueva, during his bid for the Philippine presidency in 2004.

As his campaign platform, Villanueva called for a “revolution of the heart”. And while many people rolled their eyes at this, wondering what the hell kind of sappy Hallmark Channel call-to-action this was, I remember a strange feeling coursing through me and ending in my brain with this thought: This guy is the real thing. We have a true leader here.

So for the first time in my voter’s life, I found a candidate who I would not only vote for but would actively campaign for. OK, maybe “actively” is being slightly off the mark here because the truth was that I was rabidly campaigning for the man. I became one of those annoying people who had discovered something “so astig, tangina!” that they just couldn’t stop talking about it to anyone who’d listen—or to anyone who did not actually tell them point-blank to shut up.

And I wouldn’t shut up. I talked about Eddie Villanueva during meals, parties, gallery openings, and, when I mustered enough nerve, to some commuters on the MRT who probably thought I was some overworked yuppy who had experienced a meltdown and had gone mad. A friend and another Villanueva die-hard and I would hop in and out of MRT trains and stand outside bus terminals to hand out campaign flyers and brochures—all on our own dime. When we’d run out of campaign materials, we’d go to the Villanueva campaign office in Makati, get some more and efficiently walk out the door to continue our work. I even constructed a long impassioned letter, urging people to go to his website and read about him. I was sure that once they found out more about him, they’d feel exactly as I did.

The biggest stumbling block many people encountered about Eddie Villanueva was the fact that he was a pastor and the founder of a Catholic charismatic group, Jesus is Lord. I admit that my initial reaction to the news that a “Brother Eddie” was running for president was, What the hell--? Just when you think things couldn’t get any more bizarre in the Philippines…

But I also heard that this “Brother Eddie” accepted an invitation to a presidential debate organized by UP-Diliman and that he showed up alone as all the other candidates canceled their appearances. He could have left. And people were going to understand because he came for a debate, after all, yet there was no one to debate with. Instead of leaving, though, he bravely—and honestly, I heard—fielded questions from the notoriously cerebral, non-religious, skeptical UP student body until there were no more questions. Many in the audience were converted, I was told. (Not to the Jesus is Lord group or Christianity--let’s just make that clear--but to the idea of Eddie Villanueva as a real contender for the presidency.) One of them was my then boyfriend, an archaeologist and UP professor who was one of the biggest skeptics of organized religion—and politics--I’ve ever met. Yet when he came from that debate-turned-Q&A, it was clear the evangelist had made quite an impression on him. “Galing ‘yung Eddie Villanueva na ‘yun, ah,” I remember him saying in amazement. Which is what drove me to find out as much as I could about the man.

Obviously, what I discovered had me hooked. A former labor leader who resorted to armed struggle, he was on Marcos’ hit list, which drove him to the mountains. It was while he was in hiding that he began to question everything that he was fighting for, as well as the means by which he was trying to achieve them. Cliché as the following may sound (again, hello Hallmark Channel), but this is when he began to “turn to God” via the words of the Bible. He took those words to heart and because it was those words that “saved” him from his despair and sense of hopelessness, these were the words he wanted to save people with. And with the same energy that I imagine he must have shown when he tried to free laborers from oppressive labor practices, he went on and tried to free people from their own oppressive, limiting mindsets and their crippling fears. Indeed, as I once read, no one exhibits more zeal than the convert.

So when he spoke of the need for a “revolution of the heart”—or, as Gloria Steinem once put it, a “revolution from within”--these weren’t hollow words; they weren’t just a campaign strategy the way that most pronouncements during election time are nothing more than weightless words--I knew that he knew exactly what that meant. He had lived—and was living—those words. He embodied them.

Which is why I completely understood people’s skepticism about him—an overwhelming number of people who pepper their words with “God” or “Praise Jesus”  or “Amen” (sans irony) do not embody their words. They’re the ones at whom so-called “thinking” people roll their eyes exasperatedly. Their thoughts, words and actions have nothing at all to do with one another. They say one thing, mean another and do still yet another thing. The same goes for politicians--which is why nobody who isn’t on their payroll really trusts them. Eddie Villanueva’s running, then, seemed like a double-whammy.

Many of my friends and family questioned my choice of candidate, especially when there was another intellectual in the fray—the late Senator Raul Roco, a close friend and admirer of Eddie Villanueva. Both men took the same stance on most of the important issues (not that Philippine politics has ever been about issues; perhaps it was in the very very distant past, but certainly not when I was old enough to vote), but, at least, Roco was NOT an evangelist—and this last word was usually spat out, in disdain.

I’ve never seen the wisdom is separating my politics from my personal life. I believe that what you do in your daily life even when no one is looking is what you stand for, and what you stand for—that’s your politics. So when someone who shares what you stand for runs for public office, that’s who you should vote for. Not because of what the surveys or your religious affiliation or your family says. Michelle Obama, soon-to-be U.S. First Lady (please, Lord!) said in a magazine interview that “if folks don’t like what we stand for, then they shouldn’t vote for us.”

Between Roco and Villanueva, it was what the latter stood for that I loved and related to more. To my mind, electing him into office would bring to government everything I most value: decency, a healthy self-esteem, a belief in individuals—and individual growth and transformation--as the basis and driving force of any country’s growth and transformation, thoughtfulness and introspection, an openness to new and unprecedented things (a willingness to step outside convention and conventional thought), independent thought, a commitment to go out there and do what needs to be done, sacredness, living or practicing what you preach but never requiring anyone else to believe in what you believe.

This has once again affirmed to me that the ties that really bind people go deep. They go deeper than gender (I am a woman but I do not relate at all to our current woman president nor to the female vice presidential candidate of the US Republican party), than race (Barack Obama is African-American, so is Oprah Winfrey; Angelina Jolie, my girl, is white; yet I totally relate and connect to these people), than social and economic class (I’m middle-class and, obviously, the above three people are way out of my league in terms of economic status), than religious affiliation (I was raised Catholic, but the spiritual leader I most love, along with Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa, is His Holiness the Dalai Lama). It’s shared values and dreams and vision that most holds us together.

Politics, I believe, should be as intensely personal as that. 

 

The Newest Member of A.B.E.R.

My youngest sister left yesterday morning to start her new job at a spa in Boracay--and, thereby, becoming an official member of A.B.E.R. (Asosasyon ng mga Babaeng um-Eskapo sa Realidad). At least, that is how my brother and his friends see it.

The unofficial group started when my brother and his guy friends noticed a pattern among their female friends: burned by a romantic relationship, the girls would flee to Boracay to recoup and would invariably quit their jobs (and their city life), find work in the island and relocate there. When enough girls from my brother's circle of friends had done this, the boys lumped the girls together and called them A.B.E.R. (pronounced ah-bear).  

I recently met one of the group's "pioneers" (the young woman that my brother's friend jokingly pinpointed as my sister's "recruiter") at a restaurant one evening when she had just returned from a trip to India for a Yoga teacher's training at an ashram. Tanned, toned and lithe, the A.B.E.R. grand dame glowed with a luminosity and vitality that I don't get to see very often. She had a lovely smile that she flashed generously, lighting up her pretty face so that my sister and I found ourselves naturally drawn to her like teenage girls to a Topshop store.

When she spoke of her India experience, her voice rang with barely contained excitement and her eyes twinkled (twinkled!) like those of a fairy tale princess talking about the prince she had met at the palace ball. My sister and I were transfixed. I thought, This girl don't look like no escapist to me. If anything, she looked like she went after something, brought it home with her, boiled it, chopped and pureed it, added some mint and honey and crushed ice and, I don't know, drank the stuff. She looked like somebody who was concocting her own life, her own "realidad", and deriving immense pleasure from it. She didn't just take it as it was--she was adding her own flair, making it into a palatable thing for her and was taking it all in, so that there she was in her thin-strapped dress and sandals, brimming with the effect of her own special concoction and inspiring at least two women at the table simply by being her fabulous self. My sister and I couldn't take our eyes off her. For my part, I wanted to fold her up, stuff her in my bag and prop her on my shelf at home.

People who are creating their own life in a way that makes it reflect who they are inside glow with an incandescent quality that stretches out and seems to switch on the light in others. I feel my own light switch on and grow brighter when I'm with such people, many of whom I'm lucky enough to call my friends. And that girl, with her wry humor and refreshing earnestness, did switch on some pretty bright lights in my sister and me that night at the restaurant so that we were glowing like...OK, a couple of scary Jack O' Lanterns. But still.  

If there were any lingering doubts in my sister's mind regarding her decision to step off the paved road of her burgeoning fashion design career and walk down one little dirt path just because it looked interesting, that night chatting with the Astigirl erased all of it.

There is always that kind of worry that is reserved for the youngest child who tries to strike out on her own, no matter how much self-sufficiency and level-headedness that child may exhibit. But perhaps because we're so much older now (that sister is 25, hardly a "child")--and my parents have gotten used to us doing what we will, anyway--the worry over my sister's move has been almost imperceptible. Still, it's there. So as an older sister, I'm glad to know she's in Boracay with that Astigirl and driven to the island by reasons that I suspect aren't that different from when the latter left the comfortable familiarity of her own city life years ago.

Perhaps people who up and leave a life that they are used to are escaping reality. But I think it's the "reality" of others--that is, other people's idea of what life is supposed to be and how it's supposed to be lived--that they are actually shedding, so that they can make space for the kind of life, a way of living, that takes into consideration the things that they most value. A life, in other words, that reflects who they really are.

I speak as a proud ate when I say I'm glad to see that my sister is making space for that kind of life now. ;)  

The List

Four years ago, in 2004, when my first novel came out, a surprising number of young women wrote me to say how much they related to the story, especially to a part in it that I call The List--a detailed, numbered rundown of qualities the heroine of the story wanted in a romantic partner.

A guy friend, who assumed that the list was actually mine, chided me about it, saying how exacting my standards were. I remember smiling and thinking, “Oh, you have nooo idea.” Because the fact was that, my real list, was actually longer—more exacting—than the one I lent my fiction.

I’ve been thinking about that list recently—the real one, because it was due for an update--and how anxious I was about sharing it with anyone for two reasons: one, I was afraid I would come off as, exactly like my friend said, too exacting (like, ang OA! Who the hell does she think she is?) and two, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stick to it, anyway.

But after four serious relationships (lasting three years, five years, eight months, and three years, respectively), in which I routinely closed my eyes at many of my partner requirements (and even chucked out some of them after rationalizing that I was being “too idealistic”) in the name of making the relationship “work”—giving “flexibility” a whole new cartoon-like meaning--I do believe I’ve developed the kind of forgiving self-awareness and sturdy backbone that only hard-core experience makes, to say, “This is my list. I’ve earned it. I am no longer going to contort myself into impossible freakish poses just so I can be in a romantic relationship and continue to stay there.” It does not help anyone—not me nor the guy, who was always wonderful until I tried to make him do the same contortions I was making so that our relationship could fit the mold of my ideal. And I’m so lucky to have been blessed with really wonderful boyfriends who treated we well—or as well as they could given that there was a crazed love-addict contortionist in their midst.

But I know this now: If a guy doesn’t fit ALL the requirements—no matter how much you love his laugh or his little-boy grin—then he JUST. AIN’T. IT. Quit trying too hard already. Stick to your convictions. And leave the poor dear alone.

So, in the spirit of my new-found conviction to hold out for what I really, truly want (a conviction that gets stronger with the sad end of one more relationship), I’m putting out my real, unabridged, bahala-na-kung-ma-old-maid list here as a reminder to myself. With friends and family—and even strangers—as witnesses. I’ve done the whole “compromise” route, which really just means “I don’t think I’m worth the man of my dreams”—a cop-out mindset that women can only afford to nurture in their 20’s (and ok, early 30’s), but I think is one we all should be able to outgrow…at a certain point, preferably in this lifetime.

I think I may have reached that point. (Ay, thank God!)

Things I Really, Truly Want in a Partner (reinforced and updated, in no particular order)

1. Someone with a crazy sense of humor

2. Sweet and malambing, loves to touch and hold me all the time

3. Has a profound, very personal spirituality and sense of sacredness

4. Passionate about his work

5. Courageous enough to pursue his dreams

6. Doesn’t smoke

7. Loves to eat good and healthy food

8. A little boy at heart, has a child’s innate trust in the world and humanity

9. Sweet to his mother

10. Fits in well or tries to (but not too hard) with my family

11. Appreciates my friends

12. Someone I can talk to about a wide range of subjects

13. Well-read, loves books

14. Loves to travel with me and see the world

15. Smells good

16. Has original ideas and is not afraid to share them

17. Remembers things I say, even ones I’ve already forgotten I said

18. Knows how to talk to--or to just be with—children; nurturing

19. “Heroically romantic”

20. “Romantically heroic”

21. Loves to make love and knows how to connect sexually

22. Loves to give me backrubs and foot rubs

23. Socially and ecologically aware and mindful

24. Fiercely loyal and trustworthy

25. Cares a great deal about “making the world a better place”, beginning with himself

26. Has a great deal of respect for women

27. Someone who openly considers me his best friend

28. Secure and comfortable with himself, can feel at home in any environment

29. Always looks after my welfare

30. Open-minded and inclusive

31. Inspires me to be the best I can be

32. Values integrity, truth, learning, freedom, family, friendship, compassion

33. Has a strong moral core, but is not moralistic, self-righteous, judgmental and/or preachy

34. Gives me peace of mind just knowing he is there

35. Lives out the idea that “attention is the most basic form of love”

36. Cultivates and nurtures a healthy self-love (as opposed to narcissism)

37. Someone I can trust wholly and wholeheartedly

38. Someone who actively tries to live a kinder, saner, more grounded, balanced life

39. Someone who can take care of himself and doesn’t need me to take care of him

40. Someone who gets it

41. Someone I know for sure will love me progressively as we grow older and who I know for sure I will love progressively

42. Thinks me the girl of his dreams ;)

So there.

I know. Good luck to me…;)

The Last Sweet Roro

A dear cousin is going through a long-drawn-out break-up. I only realized how deep into it she still is when, after declaring, “That’s it, I’m done” in the way that 22-year-olds channeling wise, worldly 35-year-olds (yeah, that’s me) tend to do, she camps in front of her TV set with a bottle of red wine in the hopes of drowning out the shameful, shameful thing she just did earlier that evening: She was in her room, going through old scrapbooks when she came upon photos of her ex—the one she was supposedly “done” with—which brought back old memories. Which weren’t that bad, apparently, because they prompted her to send him—gasp!--a text message. And—bigger gasp!—he didn’t reply. Kapow!

Indeed, how does one recover from such a blow?

A few years ago, I would have told her that the only solution would be to “stay strong, stay firm, cut him out of your life, erase his name and all contact details from your directory, pack up everything he’s ever given you (unless it’s an iPod or a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone or a Zara cocktail dress) and stuff that reminds you of him and throw it out. Then take up kick-boxing. Or jujitsu.”

But when you’ve become a more mature, more balanced woman (yup, still me), you now know better. You now know that while the aforementioned method is still a personal favorite (because it uses rage—a lovely emotion that gives your cheeks a nice, healthy reddish tinge and, as a bonus, keeps out unwanted company), there are, in fact, a wide range of getting-over-him/it weapons at your disposal, with yet more in product development. All you have to do is ask a woman. The older she is, the more she will likely have in her arsenal. And you are most welcome to employ any or all of them.

For my heartbroken cousin, I shared one of my favorites—a wonderful and surprisingly effective tool: a story. My girlfriends and I have come to know this story as The Last Sweet Roro. Two years ago, as I was in the throes of my own long-running, di-pa-rin-ba-tapos-yan??? break-up saga, my friend Kat told this story to me, which was told to her (during Kat's own dark days) by the story’s main protagonist herself, another good friend of ours. Like a precious family heirloom, I’ve passed on this story to my sisters and girlfriends, hoping that they would derive the same comfort and magic and sense of hope that I felt when it was handed down to me.

Here goes:

Once upon a time, in the south of the Philippines, my girlfriend was in a long-term relationship with her high school sweetheart. Then she got accepted into her first-choice university, which happened to be in Manila, and so off she went. As a wide-eyed, impressionable freshman, she caught the eye of an upper classman. He was smart, sophisticated, older—and on his way to taking up law. The girl was, naturally, flattered and quite impressed. When he asked if she would like to be his girlfriend, she promptly broke it off with her boyfriend and took up with the future lawyer.

Alas, two weeks into this new relationship, the girl realized that she was, quite possibly, with the biggest narcissist in the metropolis—the kind of guy who hooks up with much younger girls because they were the easiest to brainwash into becoming adoring fans/groupies. The “relationship” was all about him. And the guy just couldn’t stop yakking about himself. TOTAL mistake.

The girl left him in mid-sentence, so to speak, packed a few things, hopped on a bus that rolled into a Sweet Roro ferry and practiced her I-made-a-mistake-please-take-me-back speech to her sweet, sensitive, thoughtful ex-boyfriend. But when she tried to deliver this heartfelt speech to him, he refused to hear it. In fact, he refused to speak to her and to see her.Kapow!

The girl was devastated, but not discouraged. She rationalized that she had brought this upon herself, and she was willing to do whatever it took to win back his affection. Every month or so, when she had scraped up enough of her student’s allowance to afford a ferry ticket, she sailed on the Sweet Roro from Luzon to Mindanao, hoping against hope that this time, on this trip, he would finally let her back in. I don’t recall who said this, but it’s awfully on the mark: “What men will only do for God and country, women have always done for men.”

She had a goal—and to her mind, it was a noble one: love. She was going to be worthy of it again, and if that meant packing her quivering heart in her suitcase every few weekends, offering it to her stony ex only to once again watch it being tied to the back of a truck and dragged mercilessly along the Mindanao highway like Lito Lapid, so be it. At the same time, she wondered just how long she could do this, how much more humiliation and rejection and heartache she could endure.

Perhaps because we’re the gender assigned to experience the necessary violent act called childbirth—not to mention the agonizing nine months prior--women tend to have a much higher threshold for pain than men. The kind of prolonged intense physical pain and suffering that earns men medals and hero status, women experience all the time, as a simple matter of fact, without fanfare. And so this girlfriend of mine, by the mere fact of having been born female, was genetically predisposed to let it rip.

Eventually, she—and her poor, battered but brave little heart—stopped thinking, became numb to the pain and just went on her business of taking the blows. Kapow! Kapow! Kapow!

One day, she took her place in the queue towards the entrance of the ferry bus, the way she had done for the past year. (Yes—YEAR!) As she planted her right foot on the first step of the bus, it dawned on her, clear as a sunny day--“I’m done.” Just like that. No bitterness, no anger, no remorse. Just a sense of finality and…relief. And gratitude. She did her time, and now she was free.

She stepped back from the crowds, calmly watched the activity before her. And she stayed long enough to watch the Sweet Roro sail away and disappear into the horizon.

I think I got to my feet and applauded when Kat was done telling me this story.

The truly genius thing about going--as my siblings and cousins put it--“all out” is that it guards against that silent monster--regret. The regret of not having done enough, the whole pwede-pa-sana school of thought--wishing you had done more and wondering what would have happened if you had—that haunts your waking and sleeping hours, as terrifying to some as seeing dead people. I suspect this is the reason women stay longer than they should in situations that make them miserable. They want to face down their monsters now, when they still have energy left, and not run away only to have these monsters lurk around in their supposed happy and content future. They don’t want to regret anything; they don’t want to think they had “given up too soon”. They want to be sure. They want to be able to walk away and never look back. So in the meantime, as my sisters say, “Go lang nang go!”

Certainly, there will be none of that regret for you when you board your own Sweet Roro, when you choose to just ride out the excruciating pain—and humiliation. Even those have expiry dates. You will have known that you did give it—that job, that friend, that dream, that relationship--everything you had and found out that it just wasn’t for you. At that point, no amount of pleading or negotiation or argumentation or guilt-trip or even bodily threat can reel you back in. You’re sooo DONE. You can peacefully let the damn thing go already.

There is no way to accurately describe the rush of relief, the odd sense of victory and liberation at finally arriving at your last Sweet Roro. You’ll watch it sail into the sunset—that relentless drama boat that rocked you to the core—with the giddy knowledge that, finally, you’re not on it, anymore. You’re on solid ground.

Moving Out Of Warrior

Recently, I went to something called Bars Access Energy Therapy. The idea behind it is that the body’s illnesses aren’t caused only by an unhealthy diet or imbalanced (a.k.a. stressful) lifestyle, but also by negative thoughts and emotions. These negative thoughts and emotions block the smooth flow of energy throughout the body in much the same way that cholesterol blocks the easy circulation of blood. Bars Therapy is supposed to “unblock” bottle-necks throughout the body to achieve a smooth, balanced flow of energy.

Not only do I buy this idea, I sell it. I’m one of those staunch believers in mind-body connections and therapies, but when my friend Lizanne, who was so amazed at the insights she had during her own bars therapy, gifted me with a session for my birthday this year, I hedged.

Insights, I thought. Do I really need more of that right now? At that time, I was already five months at work on my second book and I felt I was drowning in insights as it was. So I waited. Two months later--and stuck in a whirlpool called my book’s introduction--I was ready for outside help.

The therapists—or healers—are a male-female team, David and Claudine, in a classic show of balanced yin-yang energy. David is a writer, Claudine, among other things, is psychic. I liked them both instantly.

After conducting a short ritual that would “open” me up—to the healing energy, I suppose--they asked me to remove my shoes and to lie, face up, on a massage bed. Both healers decided that David would take the lead (while Claudine would act as support) because, according to them, his energy was closer to mine than Claudine’s. “You’re both writers,” Claudine said in answer to my eye-blinking questioning face.

I expected them to bring out “bars”. And, for some reason, the “bars” I saw in my head were bricks. Somehow, when my friend was telling me about her therapy, I imagined red bricks being piled on her, depending on how stressed out she was. I wondered how many “bars”—bricks--I would require.

In any case, there were no such brick “bars”. The healers explained to me that this kind of therapy got its name from the points on either side of the head which connect to form an imaginary bar.

David pressed his fingers against these points in my head, mumbled some things and told me to “say ‘yes’”. So I said “yes”. He asked if I felt anything and I was tempted to say “yes”, but…”You know, I don’t think I’m really that sensitive…” Then he mumbled some things again and told me to “say ‘yes’”, so I said “yes”.

Meanwhile, Claudine’s lands hovered over my chest. She frowned. She addressed David: “Matigas dito…”

I didn’t understand half of what was happening, and I suspect I wasn’t supposed to. At least, not intellectually. I was practicing a new thing: trying not to think too much. So somewhere in the middle of the session, I stopped trying to understand what was going on and just sort of flowed with it. I don’t know if that inner decision had anything to do with it, but suddenly, there came—ta-dah!--the insights.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says this about insight: “Even if you seek to help someone out of concern, without insight you cannot be very clear about what benefit will come of your efforts. A combination is needed: a good human heart as well as a good human brain. With these working together, we can achieve a lot.”

And, boy, did I want to achieve a lot, beginning with getting myself together. Which, I had come to realize over the past couple or so years, was already a lot of work.

Even David, who’s not psychic, seemed to think so. “You’re…well, I wouldn’t say you’re running on empty. But you’re running on one-fourth the energy you need. And it’s decreasing.”

Oh, wow. He knew this from pressing the sides of my head?

I don’t remember who asked about it but suddenly we were talking about the major break-up I just had early this year. How tough it was, how that whole relationship exhausted—depleted—me, and how it came to a point where I had to choose between the survival of the relationship or the survival of me.

“That bad, huh?” Claudine said.

“How do you feel?” David asked for the nth time.

“I’m OK,” I said.

“I mean, do you feel anything now…any sensations?”

“Um…I don’t know,” I said. “I feel cold.”

“Cold?” Claudine asked. She reached over and took my hand. “Malamig nga.”

“It’s the aircon,” I said, unconvincingly. I’d already been told by several doctors—both holistic and conventional—that my blood circulation was poor, which is why my body doesn’t react “normally” to changes in temperature.

“It’s not that cold,” Claudine observed, referring to the room, and I felt her making some connections in her head. She touched my feet. Even with my socks on, they still felt cold. “Hmm…”

David verbalized the connection Claudine must have been making between my cold hands and feet and my “rock hard” chest and solar plexus. He said that my body heat seemed to be concentrated in my torso, that my center was drawing heat from my extremities. As if it was protecting something…

“If you can visualize your solar plexus, what does it look like?” Claudine asked.

I didn’t have to think hard. In fact, I don’t think I thought at all because there suddenly was the image of a round thing with rays emanating from it. I described it to Claudine.

“What is it made of?” she asked.

“Metal.” Again, my answer was fast and sure.

“You’re protecting something,” she said, thoughtful. Then, a second later: “You’re protecting a child.”

Hmmm…

“You’re protecting your inner child,” she said.

Oooh…

“How old is she?” Claudine asked.

“Four,” I said, without hesitation.

“What happened when you were four?” she asked.
She asked if any particular memory stood out and I instantly saw this little girl with bangs and a high ponytail wearing nothing but frilly white underpants, socks and shoes. I had seen those photos of me. I was in the Surigao City airport with my mom, my maternal grandfather, lots of other relatives and family friends.

“People are telling me who I should be,” I said, and even I was surprised as I did so.

“Should…” Claudine was quick to take note of this. “Who are these people—your parents?”

“My parents, my grandparents, my uncles, my aunties, their friends—everyone.” I could actually hear them baby-talking to me, cooing, telling me I should be this and that because I’m so this-and-that. I felt my body tense up.

“Who do you want to be?” Claudine asked.

“Myself.”

“And who do they want you to be?”

I thought a moment. “Themselves.” More specifically, the selves they didn’t think they could be.

I had gone down this road before. Had written about it in countless journal entries over the years, went to psychotherapy as a way to answer the question of why the people in my life couldn’t seem to just let me be. Why they had such set notions about what I should do, how I should behave, who I should love and why, in God’s name, did I feel so threatened by it? As though they really had the power to make me into what they had in mind.

I had finally figured out the answer to the first part (the part where they felt entitled to say who I should be)—at least, in my head, I did—so, as a way to be fair to these “people”, whom I love very much, I explained to Claudine that I am the eldest granddaughter. So I became the natural focus of my family’s affection; that they also naturally projected onto me all the things they wished they could have been, the way people tend to do with a new baby—an assumed blank slate.

The attention was rather intense, me being the first granddaughter (my older cousin, a male, was in Cebu, himself undoubtedly being intensely fussed over by his maternal grandparents and relatives), and it was a habit that just got carried over until I was, oh, thirty-plus? As a reaction, I had become intensely self-protective. Practically all my energy was channeled to fending off meddlers, those well-meaning, sure, but thoroughly invasive, intrusive people who wanted to have a hand in shaping me as a person—those people who just couldn’t leave me alone, goddammit—and laid on the guilt trip. All that effort, all that energy solidified over the years into a “rock hard” torso—I had created for myself a veritable breast plate, not to mention breast cysts. It was exactly what my friend Cecilia, well-versed in the ways of the esoteric, told me just a few months ago, “You follow the truth inside your heart like a warrior. Problema…heart chakra. Forgiveness. Kasi nga warrior pose, eh. Rage is essential to maintain the energy to assert your personal integrity.”

So I told Claudine this. I said, “My friend says I’m forever in warrior pose. It’s my favorite yoga pose.”

“It’s my favorite, too,” Claudine said. “But ‘forever’? That must be so tiring,” she said sympathetically.

“It is,” I said, and I felt like crying. My God, it’s tiring. And, only recently, I also figured out the second part of my seemingly life-long angst (the part where I felt threatened by other people’s desire to mold me)—I was afraid I wasn’t strong enough to fend them off, that one day I’d succumb and live a fake life just to shut them up already, that I’d live a life that made them—but not me—happy.

“You know,” Claudine continued. “You may have kept people out, but you’ve also locked in your authentic self. Let it come out. It’s time you let it out.”

Then she said the words I realized I most needed to hear from another person: “It’s safe to be who you are.”

(If you'd like to experience this kind of therapy, you may reach Claudine Mangasing at +639178958191 or David Montecillo at +639178170396.)

Like Father...

Five years ago, I don’t think I would have ever admitted to myself, much less to anyone else, that I took after my father. I thought he was too stubborn for his own good, too proud to admit he was wrong or to apologize for a mistake, too rigid in his beliefs and so quick to judge others who did not share the same values as him.

Then beginning in 2003, my life fell apart so many times that I began to develop a most effective coping mechanism—looking inward. And I went poking about inside my psyche, inside my thoughts and motivations, as seriously and as determinedly as a CSI agent. Out of this inward curiosity, I discovered that there was inside me a too-stubborn, too-proud, too-rigid, too-judgmental person and that it was this part of me that was attracting and causing the pain and misery and confusion of which I was suffering. No wonder my father and I didn’t get along—we were so alike, we shared too many of the same negative traits that we clashed.

I decided I was going to change.

I willfully altered my habits and thought-patterns (repeatedly telling myself as a mantra: “You don’t always have to be right”) and before long the miracle happened: my father and I managed to stay at the same table without arguing. Looking at my father from a more open, more accepting vantage point—and not always trying to exert my own will--I saw that he was a kind, funny, irreverent, pure-hearted, deep, thoughtful, intelligent, honest romantic idealist who was always trying to do the “right thing”. And this allowed me to get in touch with the part of me that was all that, too. The more I liked my father, the more I liked myself. I developed such a deep, unwavering affection and respect for this man who happened to be my father—and what all that was doing for me--that I found a kind of peace that I never even imagined. And for a few years, we were doing fine. That is, until I fell in love with a man with whom my father was so violently opposed.

The new man in my life had been married before and had two kids from that marriage. For my staunchly Catholic father, who didn’t believe in annulment and who saw me as the loose, immoral woman who was coming between a man and his family, this was a definite no-no. I thought I could change his mind once he’d hear from me how happy I was in this new relationship. But in our first meeting after he learned (from my sister) that I was dating a “married man with kids”, he told me in his straightforward manner: “I just want you to know that if this relationship ends up in marriage, I don’t want to be there.”

It was too late to hate my father for that or to think that he was just saying it to hurt me. I had already seen a more complete picture of him—I could never go back to thinking he was just put on this earth to make my life a living hell. We were at an Italian restaurant, sharing a pizza while he sipped his cappuccino when I brought up the subject of my new relationship. Almost instantly, storm clouds gathered around him, his expression darkened. He looked like he couldn’t wait to get away from the table, from the restaurant, from me, from the whole idea that his eldest child was devaluing herself by being with a man who did not value marriage and family. He suddenly looked old and lost, and my heart went out to him. I found myself saying gently, “I understand, Pops.” The strange thing there was that I meant it. Knowing him, I did understand his position. He was consistent. He was acting according to his own strong personal beliefs, according to what he believed was right. He didn’t mean any harm. In fact, to his mind, he was trying to protect me from harm. He reminded me so much of someone—he reminded me of myself.

Right then I vowed to myself that I wasn’t going to change how I treat him. I would continue to respect his position and his beliefs even as they were the direct opposite of mine. I would treat him the way I wanted to be treated. I would never again try to change his mind. For almost a year, he refused to speak to me and I let him be.

During that time, I became a writing teacher and discovered that I loved teaching almost as much as writing. Teaching revealed to me my own capacity to be a safe place for my students, that I was a person with whom they felt free to be their most natural, authentic selves. I couldn’t help thinking it was my experience with my father that made me into such a person.

After almost a year of not speaking, my father turned up in one of my workshops. It wasn’t as dramatic as it may sound because he isn’t a very dramatic or sentimental person. He simply sat, matter-of-factly, in class and was the most enthusiastic student. Whenever I asked my students if they would like to share what they had written, my father would raise his hand like an eager little boy and proceed to spill his guts. In one heart-wrenching essay, told in his trademark straight-up, unapologetic, unsentimental, irreverent, funny and unflinchingly honest style, my father shared with me, his writing teacher, the story of his life—his dreams and disappointments and the peace he was trying to make with all of these.

It took us three drafts, a few more cups of coffee in a café and plenty of trust and respect on both sides to get us back on track.

Finding My Way Again...And Again

(For 100 Kwentong Peyups on the occasion of the University of the Philippines' Centennial Celebration. Submit your own UP story in 1,500 words or less to kwentongpeyups@campaignsandgrey.net) ;)

Right after taking the U.P. College Admission Test (UPCAT) in 1990, I made a pact with myself: If I were to fail the exam, I would take it as a sign that I was not meant to pursue higher formal education. And that, instead, I was to happily be on my way to learning from the only place that, to me, could rival U.P. on the excitement scale—the “real” (a.k.a. “working”) world.

It may have seemed like a radical decision for a high school student, but for me, it only seemed natural, given the feelings I had nurtured towards U.P. for years.

The university had first taken hold of my imagination early in my adolescent years when I saw old pictures of my mom as a young, pretty U.P. student in the 1960’s. She was in teensy miniskirts that reached up to her butt, a cheeky grin on her face, hamming it up with friends and looking like she was having the time of her life. I became very curious about the school that gave me a completely different picture of my otherwise proper, ladylike, conventional mother—the French-speaking, American Field Scholar student activist who made Molotov bombs and was chased down University Avenue by the Metrocom. Like a person’s first great love, the university seemed to have brought out the bold, fearless, astig aspect of my mom, and I wanted to believe that, as soon as I shed my plaid Catholic high school uniform for the college outfit of my choice, it would coax the same brilliant traits from me.

For this reason, U.P. held an intensely romantic, almost mythical aura for me. I decided it was The One. (And I think this marked my first ever all-or-nothing bet.) I wasn’t going to play safe by applying to other schools. And I certainly wasn’t going to settle.

It was an attitude that allowed me to apply to the university without a sense of desperation or fear of rejection. So even before the letter of acceptance from U.P. arrived in the mail, I had already decided there was no way I could lose. No wonder I entered the university with a kind of swaggering confidence and an abiding belief that nothing in the world could go wrong for me. I felt invincible and this feeling liberated me to do the first few bold, courageous/crazy things I’ve ever done.

I joined the U.P. Mountaineers almost as a test of how far I could handle the notoriously rigorous application process (five-, ten-, fifteen-kilometer runs under time pressure; a battery of written and practical exams; climbs of escalating difficulty). I was inducted that summer at the summit of Mindoro’s Mt. Halcon, otherwise known as the “Macho Mountain”, and felt like I grew balls.

(What I had to do to secure my parents’ blessing for that induction climb was another character-building battle altogether.)

I joined the women’s football team even as I knew nothing about the sport except that the players sometimes got to do a really fun thing like sliding in the mud. I attended my first and only rally ever--in support of a total log ban. I faced down a professor—my first time to stand up to an authority figure who was not one of my parents. I survived a sexual assault by a stranger as I walked from my freshman dorm to the Arts and Sciences building early one morning. Instead of being cowed and avoiding that path after the incident (which, to my mind, would have been a victory for the attacker), I continued to take the same route to class but now holding an uncapped Pilot pen and seriously looking forward to stabbing the next pervert who came near me.

In U.P., I knew exactly who I was. And who I was in that school was someone I really liked and respected.

It seems fitting then that later on, as a wage-earner assailed by self-doubt and annoying existential questions (“Is this what my life is about?” “What do I really, really want?”), I would find reprieve in the place that first showed me my possibilities. When the otherwise manageable undercurrent of indecision, confusion and fear would swell into a great wave, carrying me and then slamming me down on the shores of some desert island, I would be left no other choice but to try to regain my bearings. During these times, I would pick myself up from my island of misery, skip work and make my pilgrimage to U.P., as though to get in touch once again with the bold, uncompromising, spirited girl that I seemed to have left there. And always, during the course of my short visit, the school would remind me of who I am.

It doesn’t matter what I’d do in U.P.; I could be joining the late Sunday afternoon crowd brisk walking, jogging, biking or skateboarding around the Academic Oval; sharing a slice of Devil’s Food Cake with an equally “lost and confused” U.P. alum friend or sibling (three younger sibs were undergrads at UP, one took her Master's) at Chocolate Kiss Café; catching another wild stage performance by my never-say-die friend and iconic campus figure Romeo Lee; or just planting myself on one of the benches scattered around the campus like the village grouch, scowling at the carefree students who walked by and relishing my cynical old-timer mode as I mutter disdainfully, “Bagets.” The answers may not come to me at that point, but the memories of my four fabulous years in U.P. would crowd around me like old, solid cheerleading friends recalling the moments in my college years where I was most proud of myself. And then the crippling doubts and fears would be replaced by an unshakeable confidence that, as that unofficial U.P. Humanities professor Bob Marley sagely sang, “Everything’s gonna be alright.” Relax lang, the vibe around me seemed to say. Aabot din tayo diyan. You already know you got it in you to make it.

And I would always trust that feeling. The strange, almost drug-induced powerful feeling that never once failed me the past eighteen years since I first felt it.

Everything was gonna be alright.