When I grow up...

Last week was my “come back” week in training after a 1-week hiatus and I was guilty of displaying an “Ayoko na!” face last Tuesday before training was fully over. I wasn’t disciplined enough to insert 30-minute work-outs during my break and what Coach had in store last Tuesday and Thursday was just beyond what we used to do. Man, I should’ve somehow prepared my legs for those 1km sprints and a very time-strict tempo run…

I survived though, without quitting, and that was enough of a victory for me. While waiting for my other teammates to finish their own workouts, Coach sat down with me and told me something I wouldn’t want to forget:

He began with this rhetorical question: “Why do you think the Kenyans or the Africans, or even those from Mindanao, run better than most people do?” He continued “It’s because these people were born on hardship. They can endure more pain that most people can. They had to run right after they were born.” He then related “My idols would cross the finish line looking calm and poised while other runners would start puking. They must have felt the same kind of hell inside but they did not show it.”

I think this insight is worth sharing. Hearing this gave me the kind of victory to go after. We often let pain or the fear of it stop us from doing what we want to do, from reaching our goals, from being happy. We let pain make excuses for us. But in life, there are discomforts and obstacles to see through. Avoiding them or making short-cuts deprives us of one great discovery - the better within ourselves.

There is a finish line at the end of every race. May the people who fight for their lives inspire you to fight for your dreams and to make a strong finish.

I’d like to end with a thought Coach borrowed from another group of runners: When you choose an absurd pastime called running, you discover the absurdity called life.

May crossing finish lines lead to a fitter you with a fitter life.

For those whose pasts are still too valuable to unload- like sticky band-aids that cover suffocating wounds, or our attachment to the ground, which prevent our feet to let wings take over. May the desire to move forward be much more powerful than the comforts of how things used to be. And may the freshness of the unfamiliar, of starting over, purify the air we breathe and at last heal the molding wounds that decay the spirit. -Ailee

“One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened . You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot forever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. 

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.

Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.”

I search for myself as a poet plunges in a sea of blurring words,
Among those old souls much befriended in Shakespeare’s time
Those that gave life to the Classics - legacies longer than lifetimes
Forgotten, almost unspoken yet with unsurpassed substance to resurrect
Such as the depth of a simple truth and the voice of a silent love,
That illuminate the mind, awaken the spirit, revive empathy, empower a dream…
Allowing the writer of a life to contribute eternally with only a few, short years.

Ailee

Oct 19, 2011

One of the worst pains I’ve ever felt is letting myself slip away. Once I’m aware that it’s happening, I panic silently. A marriage of sadness and frustration creeps aggressively, seducing all my weaknesses to surface and perhaps, break me. I tilt my head to any other direction, as if to counter the current flow of thoughts anchoring me to helplessness. And now, I find myself writing. Many people say it’s therapeutic. To me, it’s not always that way. I write to dig for truth; to find myself again. I don’t think that such a quest is always a therapeutic one. In the recent months, as I continue to immerse myself in another life, I even find writing as becoming.

There is a certain image I unexpectedly find as a perfect fit to “becoming” or being and it’s the current state of The Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Yes, it’s part of what they call “The Ruins”, but as I stood there so minute beside the remaining columns, I looked up tracing it’s height in awe and then stepped back a little to breathe in its magnificence. Isn’t that the feeling you get very rarely; the feeling you get when you’re in the presence of someone (or in this case, something) great or aspire to be? What I was seeing wasn’t simply a ruin. It still has a message that could violently ring or awaken any heart that would observe and listen.

There was one lucky question I threw out in the open (lucky because I rarely voice my questions out) - “How come the Greeks don’t just rebuild what it once was?”. I was thinking that that way, us tourists could still get a feel and a clear picture of what 4th century BC must have been like; so we could all remember that time of greatness. It was simply an idea worth mulling over and I really didn’t expect that I’d get to read the answer the next day.

The Greeks stopped rebuilding because of the trauma the wars brought and also because they wanted to preserve a memory of the tensions they went through, for future generations.

I immediately thought, whoa that latter part isn’t something you’ll hear everyday. Don’t people usually put an effort to forget or erase or cover up tragic memories, or at least weaken their power? Why did those Athenians, the wise men at that time, opt to expose their wounds instead of having the urgency to prove themselves strong again? 

The Parthenon wasn’t simply ruined or ridiculed by foreign men. It was also forced to change its identity several times with the passage of men having different religions to boast. Centuries after however, much of it still stands and if it withers, it does so very slowly instead of crumbling away all at once. Though repeatedly wounded and disrespected, there it still is, hard as rock. :p

If you are so kind enough to reach this point (*”,*), I hope you do get that I’m not simply talking about a historical monument. I hope it got across that I was referring to a humble durability you and I can possess, making us stand in dignity despite this, that, and all.

There are winds and waves against us which we cannot control. But remember that you are strong as rock because you were made by the rock, the reason why good things still prevail. Strengthen your faith, and if it begins to slip away, have the courage to pray.

April 28, 2011

Ubud is a magical place. I thought only European places can have this powerful effect on me - when you want to cry just by looking at everything that surrounds you. You want to cry because you’ve been dreaming of this feeling for a long time, searched for it, but never found it were you were. This happened in Ketut Liyer’s house while I was waiting for my turn to talk him. It was the Best waiting time I ever spent, talking to Made and learning about Balinese Hinduism. Here, they celebrAte everything; expressing gratitude is their way of life. They don’t enter the temple when they’re sad and ask God for this and that. They believe that prayer is an intimate moment of sincere thanks. As I learned all this, I was smiling in deep admiration of their way of life. In a way, I felt like even for just a moment I could breathe the way they did here. More air, more life. More gratitude, more smiles.

I didn’t know what to feel when already conversing with Ketut but whatever it is that he said or didn’t, I must’ve been smiling ear to ear. He said “I am very happy to meet you”. I am very happy to have met you too Ketut and to have seen your almost toothless smile, one of the most infectious I’ve ever seen. Thank you for telling me I had lips wet like sugar. Whatever it is you meant, this made me smile. :)

Now i am truly happy enough to enter the temple and give thanks even for the beauty in my life I rarely see.