True North

Dear Sean,

Hello.  I am the brother you’ve never met.  Or at least, that’s what your mom insists us to be.  I don’t know why she would say that.  I would not want to be my own brother.  My life is a series of tragedies.  I am resigned to the fact that if I don’t die young before the shotgun of a jealous boyfriend, I will at the very least, grow up to be a very dirty old man.  The kind whose wife will someday throw a siopao at in a restaurant.

Hence, you will understand my amazement as to why your mom is quite fond of me, to the point of calling me the son she never had, and the brother that you’ve never met.  For that, I love your mother and also call her my intarwebs Mommy.

Thus, I pray that you will forgive this sudden outburst of familiarity and concern that I am to share with you.  Consider it as the words of an older brother, one who himself has taken a beating from life, and is intimately aware with the nature of suffering.

If I understand Mom well enough (despite having only known her for a few months as a bunch of pixels beaming on my LCD screen monitor), I believe she was concerned when she alerted the world of your blog entry, particularly this phrase:

If only life can be lived by the living with no interference from forces that can’t even be seen… maybe a better world wouldn’t be so unfathomable and perhaps most wars avoided.

I don’t know why I’m feeling this way. Blasphemous, it may be, but I see no reason why good people ever have to suffer. And don’t tell me that it’s to help us remember or to remind us to “believe”. Because I was thankful for everything up until the bad news turned my world upside down.

Should I get struck by lightning, we all know who His least favorite was.

It’s your call, God.

 

(Yes, Mom shared your private thoughts to the world.  She’s just wonderful that way.)

First of all, let me assure you that there is nothing blasphemous in what you have said.  It was in fact Jesus who, in a moment of weakness, cried out, “Eloi, eloi sabbacthani!”, which is Aramaic for “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”.  Mortal as we are, we cannot see past our own noses or understand why so much pain is inflicted upon those who are close to the Father, while so many who are evil and unjust enjoy so much bliss and happiness.

Indeed, there are times when it seems like God is out to spite us… to rub salt in our wounds.

I myself am guilty of such arrogance.  Yes, Sean, as righteous as it may seem, I call this outporing as an act of arrogance.  Human as we are, we are nothing but ants yelling angrily on the Sun to explain why it is shining.  We are nothing but mere creations.  Dare we who are made of dust and clay, sinful and imperfect, demand that our Creator account for His actions?  Such is hubris.

And yet, despite this arrogance, our God would love us so much to bring Himself down to our level and explain what He has done.

And this is His answer, Sean:  Suffering is very much a part of life.  There is no one who lives who does not walk away wounded.  And to this, I point to the Son of God who became the Son of Man, a God who allowed himself to be humiliated, tortured, crucified and murdered by the lowly ants that He would seek to raise and share His divinity.  I point to His mother, Mary, who was conceived without sin, who spent her whole life in perfect obedience to the will of the Father, and for all her devotion, was rewarded by seing her own begotten Son undergo much pain and suffering, and as they say, “Her heart was pierced by a sword.”

No one alive escapes this suffering, brother.  Not even Jesus.  Not even Mary.  One might even say that it is expected of those who are good and pure to be made to share more of the pain and suffering that evades those who are evil and unjust.

The suffering is not there to make you believe Sean.  It is there precisely because you believe, because you are good.  Perhaps, what you haven’t understood yet is that we are called to embrace this suffering, to take up our Cross and follow Jesus on the road to Calvary.

But why, you must ask.  Why can’t things be good and beautiful all the time?

Open your eyes, brother, and see the beauty of suffering.

Mom said that she welcomes this pain.  She replied, “im just so used to many blows on my body (surgeries), i dont mind another one. just reading my son’s blog made me realize how i affect him that much. i never would have known.”  She also added, “way back when i was working in manila, my officemates used to dub me the bionic woman because of the many surgeries ive had starting when i was only 3 years old (a broken collar bone). can you believe that? when i was 16, i was hit by a car on jones ave. other cars would have run me over but i was saved by an angel, a good samaritan just got off from a jeepney and just scooped me up swiftly. then so many more (surgeries) followed. im like a cat with 9 lives.”

I would liken Mom to the Disney character Mulan.  Cheesy as it may sound, it was said that “The flower that blooms in adversity… is the rarest and most beautiful.”

Perhaps my friend, she is suffering so that you can learn from her… so that you yourself may find the source of your own strength.  That when you see your mom taking all the blows that life deals her and still walking away like she won a million dollars, smiling like she was just proclaimed Ms. Universe, you will see true strength.  Remember that you were born her son, conceived in her strength, blessed with the ability to laugh wholeheartedly inspite of your pain.

Suffering purifies the soul and prepares it for the kingship that is to come.  Or, as the man known as Paul of Tarsius once wrote, “Like gold that’s tested in fire, so too shall we be refined under the cruscible of suffering.”

Thus, I urge you… be strong, oh brother that I’ve never met.  This too shall pass.  The storms shall abide, and the sun will shine for another day.

And with this, I urge you to please take care of Mom.  Even if she’s the one who’s undergoing a medical problem, she still finds it in her heart to worry about your own pain and suffering.  Savor these days and appreciate your mom for everything that she’s teaching you, just by being herself.  You might find that you will best remember her during those times when she had the most problems.

Those are the days that she carried herself like a champ.

I made this music player at MyFlashFetish.com.

There are a lot of things that I could do without in my life.  I could use a little more patience and tolerance, especially during those moments when I’m close to giving in to my powder-keg temper.  It would be great if the person I’m in love with could reciprocate how I feel. 

I struggle not to be self-indulgent.  I make an effort not to give in or be led away by my feelings.  I deny these urges:  lust, pining, anger, despair.  I’ve accepted a lot of things, lived with them, allowed the fact that I lack the people and qualities that I want to have.

It takes a lot of grace from above, but life has become easier to accept.  I am in the moment.  I am.

 I am.

Why do we remain in love with someone who’s totally wrong for us?  Why can’t we fall in love with the one who’s perfectly right?

*cue cheesy Tagalog movie soundtrack*

Can someone please give me some insight into this?

I don’t know if this is in retaliation on everything that has been happening in my life lately, or whether it’s because I’ve grown up and become “wiser”, but I’ve learned to distrust happiness.  Happiness is fleeting.  It does not stay.  It is illusory in the sense that things which brought us happiness once are not guaranteed to give us happiness in the future.

I no longer am in the pursuit of happiness.  I long for something more profound.  I guess I am in the pursuit of peace of mind.  Just let things be.  I may not be happy but I am content in the fact that I’m also not unhappy.  I just am.  That is enough.