I wonder what will happen if I die?

It was after watching the UAAP finals at MVP, and I was walking around the campus, savoring the satisfaction of our victory when I came across the wake of Gab Doller at the chapel, and it hit me that in the midst of all the cheers and happiness, there exists sadness in this corner of the school. It was sad to think that his death, at least for a moment was overshadowed by the championship, and so in the hallway empty of students who were all celebrating at Araneta I came and stayed in silence to show that at least in a way, people have not forgotten.

You never really think about death, and so when someone close by dies it feels surreal. I wasn't really that close with Gab, and if not for a blogpost that mentioned him being part of World Youth Day and me remembering that a picture of the participants was in the last issue of Guidon, I wouldn't have remembered that he was my French I classmate. I knew the face but the name attached to it only weakly until I saw his picture and put them together.

I came upon his Memorial Board where a tarp was put up for his friends to write their last messages for him. I was touched and saddened by what was written. There were those expressing their shock and mourning his sudden passing. There were happy messages left as if he wasn't gone at all. And there were those remembering his friends' fondest memories of him that they will miss.

Which made me contemplate. If I die and I had a Board like this, what will people write? Will they say my death is a shock? Who will write? How many of my 'friends' will leave even a note? What will they miss of me? Will they mention a thing they remember me for or miss having?

I had this same-yet-different thought when I heard of Tara. She was shot during a robbery and was placed in a coma. The night it happened I already read about it in my friends blogs and within a week benefit concerts for her were already being planned. And i thought, who is she that she is getting this much attention and support, not out of disrespect but out of real wonder, because I didn't really know her. I wondered if something like it happened to me if the school will show the same amount of support or does it all depend on people's 'social capital'?

I have this notion of passing my day-to-day with as little impact on people as possible. Being detached from the world and the people makes me free. Staying in the back, being anonymous, keeping quiet, the guy that does (great) things with taking as little attention as possible. But to think if I die right now no one will remember me, or anything of me sucks. I guess that's the downside of keeping my distance from the world. I'm left to wonder if I left anything to anyone worth remembering.

This is what going mad feels like

I've put off writing this post for 3 months now as I grapple what I really feel. it has gone through several writings and edits about several things, about what I felt during a particular time or about the past months. Let me say everything now, once and let me forget all about it.

I love you. I love you now as much as I had two years ago. I always think about you. Whenever it rains, whenever I'm alone, whenever I don't see you. Always. It's driving me crazy thinking about you and knowing I can't tell you anything when I see you. when all I can say is 'if you only knew.' If you only knew how much I still love you. If you only knew that I'm still waiting. If you only knew how much it hurts me whenever you tell me those things. If you only knew how much it hurts being beside you and pretending everything is ok. If you only knew I don't care about those things as long as I see you happy. If you only knew that i can't get close to another because my hope for you stops me every time.

My hope is pushing me to look for you everyday, to ask you how you are and what are you doing, to make sure that you're ok, and I'm going mad because I have to stop and tell myself that I have to let you go, that you don't care about me anymore. I'm fighting myself and it's tearing me in two. And until now I don't know if I'll still hope and wait or if I have to strength to finally let go and move on. You're making it difficult because you continue to make me hope whenever you hold my hand.

I'm telling myself that I'm too young to feel this way, that I still have my whole life ahead of me. But then I wish that I could be with you and then I'm back to square one.

I wish you didn't come back anymore. I was doing fine without you near. You have become a memory that I cherished. Now your close I find it so hard to stop myself from hoping.

I trying to cut all ties that holds me back to you and your memory. Your kinda helping me by not acknowledging me, and I think you're doing it on purpose. That's good, but I wish you could tell me more directly. I don't know, maybe I'll confront you one last time. Or I will just continue burning bridges and move on and not look back without saying another word.

Either way I take, let me say it again. I love you, always have. With this, let me leave all that I feel right here and forget about it.

Distraction

Its not all about time management. People say that all you need is proper time management and you can do the stuff you need to do, and make room for stuff you want to do. For me it's not that simple anymore. By it's name it already points out the fact that your time is limited, and it's just that - there isn't enough time anymore to think and do everything. It feels like a crowded room in my head, with a million things pushing and shoving. Simply put, it's information overload.

I started thinking about this after one of my philosophy classes. Sir Pasco gave great insights and challenged us to philosophize on our own. But before I got around to reflecting on the things he said, my mind was already racing to different things: what does poverty as entitlement failure mean - I have to pick up readings for my development management class - father Dacanay will give a quiz tomorrow about conscience/3 - I wonder what items I should use for Medusa (DotA speak). And as I cycled through those different thoughts I realized I lost the insights I had about our philosophy discussion.

And so in the course of my crowded line of thought I came to question why my thoughts were so crowded in the first place and remembered the comment of Sir Pasco. He said that people don't philosophize anymore because information is right there at our fingertips. People choose not to think anymore because information is so accessible.

Convenience has turned us to information sponges instead of hunter/gatherers, and we are bombarded by information through television, the internet, newspapers and radio. It's information overload. I can follow what's happening to the rest of the world so easily - and it's great to be aware, but trying to grapple with the entirety of the global situation while absorbing academic lessons is like a rag trying to absorb some spilled milk while being hosed down by a garden hose. Information is beyond being at our fingertips. It's being shoved down our throats whether we like it or not.

This phenomenon of information overload gives a different dimension to the concept of time management for students. We face multiple subjects and tens (if not hundreds) of pages of readings for each one. After taking to account time spent in the bathroom, eating, sleeping, traveling, and doing schoolwork, there is only so much time you can burn reading in a day, and what will the quality of it be? After reading through polsci, shift to theology, after that a major subject and after that to philosophy. In the process of cramming information into the brain I'll be astounded if no detail was forgotten. And how about those subjects that require more than memorization? Like computers with multiple running programs, our attentions can only be divided so much before our brains start slowing down.

The life of the modern student of course is not confined to academics. We spent a good chunk of our lives in the internet, the information superhighway. The TV too is a distraction. All these things fight for our attention. And what of those books we would like to read?

They accuse our generation of being apathetic. I believe this is partially a product of modern society that demands us embrace the globalization of information accessibility. We have to (or choose to) isolate ourselves from the rest of the world to concentrate on our priorities, whatever they maybe.

I guess this is my crude attempt to philosophize on my own, on the question why I don't have time to philosophize in the first place, which apparently doesn't make for a good essay. It's because I'm distracted by so many things to think about that I don't have time to think about all of them anymore, even if I wanted to.

Things I'll leave unsaid, for now...or forever

The girl of my dreams is back, and she's driving me crazy once more. 2 years after she left, I've tried my best to move on, and I did, to a certain degree. I've been living my college life to the fullest I could, and the best analogy I could think of to explain that is that my life has been like my favorite cake, the best, and she is like the icing - I could live without it, but the cake would be incomplete. But here I am, the hopeless romantic, the naive boy who still believes that love conquers all and that the stars will bring you back to each other; kept a persistent hope in the face of relentless doubt that one day we will be together again, a tiny tiny annoying thorn in the back of my head. I tried my best to forget about it, to smother it with practicality and stone cold reality, but it just won't go away. I can say a part of me did move on; time can do that for you. Out of sight, out of mind. But now that she's back, she brought with her all the memories and thoughts and hope I've learned to suppress all this years .

Now the part of me that clung to hope is daring me to hope, fighting against the part of me that accepted reality and moved on, that wants to move on. And there is also the part of me that remembers the promise I made two years ago. I'm being pulled in different directions, and all that it's making me is weary. Confused and weary because I don't really know how I would feel. Do I still hope, or will I turn my back on her and go forward?

I can ignore her, that's easy. I could just live my college life like I did the past two years. We have different schedules, I have responsibilities - it's very easy to lose myself in my work now. But I do want to be with her. i want to keep her company, but also I'm telling her to find her blockmates and stick with them so that she can have new friends to hang out with. ARRGHHH!! I'm just so confused.

And here - the girl of my dreams is ridiculously out of my league. She's rich, I'm not. I've been to Bataan and Batangas, she's been to Berlin and Bern. I haven't left Luzon, she has been to most of Europe. I've wanted to learn how to speak French, she can. She missed her first day at school and yet she still aced the quiz on chemistry. Her parents will allow her current boyfriend to stay at her house during vacation, they're surprised I'm even still in Ateneo (now that one hurts). But it's exactly all these things and everything else that I love about her.

Now she's back, she's filling up my every waking thought again. she's my biggest distraction, and also my inspiration. Whenever I'm with her, it's as if all the world just falls away and all I can feel and think about is her and that I'm happy. Just that. I'm happy. I've never felt like that with someone else.

She doesn't know the power she has over me. I'm willing to go out of my way to do something for her. I was running errands for her here when she was in Europe during Valentines day. I walked her home at midnight and walked home alone in the dark streets alone after that. I'm willing to get up early in the morning just to accompany her in school (if you know me you would know how important sleep to me is). I even kept that promise I made to her before she left. I waited.

She knows that I still love her. She can tell it from the way I look at her. The annoying thing is she acts like...the way she acted when we were together, giving me that look that makes me fall every time. Believe me or not, but I've thought of her every single day for the last two years. But this, along with everything else I'll leave unsaid.

I have become a Republican

Pullman's His Dark Materials affected me, first and partly because of the sad end which I'll admit got to me bad because I was once in the same position as the characters found themselves in, and reading it brought back the same painful emotions. Not to mention it happened to the characters I've come to love, which was sad. It took me a sleepless night and the whole day after to get over that. Leaving the bitterness of the ending and looking back with the eyes my literature teacher trained us with, I've come to see the genius of the work (the sad ending only made the story better), which believe me I could talk about for hours.

But making me realize how amusingly useful my literature class is not what I meant about the story affecting me. It is that I, an admirer of universes conjured up by the imaginations of authors like Tolkien and Lewis, have found something else in Pullman's novels, something beyond the mere wonderful storytelling of a fairytale (which already is fantastic). It is the idea of the Republic of Heaven.

The idea hit me like a truck: it makes sense, plain and simple. I'm a Catholic, and for a time now also have been a vocal critic of the Church. I've come to the point where I'm fully devout, fully questioning the very foundations of the Church teachings. I've settled on the label "Agnostic", but make it clear I'm an Agnostic Catholic, reconciling both sides of my dual belief regarding religion. This is even what drew me to reading His Dark Materials in the first place, because of it's reputation as being Church-critical.

But now I've not only discovered a magnificent work of imagination, but encountered a 'philosophy' I've come to adopt, because like I said, it makes a whole lot of sense, and suddenly it just arranged my confused personal religious views into a coherent idea.

The idea of the Republic of Heaven is quite simple. It says that the Church focuses too much on the afterlife and that we must build our happiness in the here and now. It's not as blasphemous an idea as it sounds. The best way to sum it up is in through this quote which says "they tell the poor people that they must be content with their poverty, and they shall have their heaven hereafter. But why may we not have our heaven here (that is, a comfortable livelihood in the earth) and heaven hereafter too, as well as you?" Isn't that a valid question? my disoriented view on religion has just found it's foundation, and the structure it can build on at the same time.

Pullman's comments, manipulated to reflect my own, can show you what I mean. He says "The kingdom of heaven promised us certain things: it promised us happiness and a sense of purpose and a sense of having a place in the universe, of having a role and a destiny that were noble and splendid; and so we were connected to things. We were not alienated..." (I'm a Christian)"...I don’t think I will continue to live after I’m dead..." (My agnostic view of the afterlife)"...so if I am to achieve these things I must try to bring them about – and encourage other people to bring them about – on earth, in a republic in which we are all free and equal – and responsible – citizens." The end there just pretty much reconciled it together. Like I said, it's not blasphemous. Let me continue that statement:

"Now, what does this involve? It involves all the best qualities of things. We mustn’t shut anything out. If the Church has told us, for example, that forgiving our enemies is good, and if that seems to be a good thing to do, we must do it..." (Yes i agree religions serve as moral compasses) "...If, on the other hand, those who struggled against the Church have shown us that free inquiry and unfettered scientific exploration is good – and I believe that they have – then we must hold this up as a good as well..." (If the church says it's good, adopt it. if it says it's not, take a step back first before you shun it. Take the case of population control for example. A runaway population is clearly not good for the environment, yet the church refuses to reverse it's pro-life stance.)

It talks about making the world a better place. It talks about using all the good virtues to build Heaven here on Earth. Even I think God will like that. I will live my life, I will live it, here and now, and while I'm doing it, I'm striving to do good for the world - I'm a development studies student after all.

It's name even sounds cool. The Republic of Heaven should be built here, because where we are is always the most important place. And that's why now I'm proud to call myself a Republican Catholic, unfortunate it may be that whenever I say it people will always think of the American political party.

Now, the question is, will my new found philosophy that's clearly incredibly humanistic stand up to the most (in)famous theology teacher in Ateneo?