A Lengthy Contemplation

If anyone would like to give me the slightest chance to choose what I want most to do with my life, right now, I would like to take up Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines, if you please. It doesn't even have to be in Dilliman. UP Mindanao will already be satisfactory. I reeeaaallly want to learn how to write, and write well. I don't know. It's been bugging me ever since I was shown the possibility of choosing what to do with my life. That was during my first year as a fourth-year student in my current course. And now it's bugging me every waking moment.

I'm already in supersenior status, faced yet again with the situation to tackle the one remaining subject that's kept me from holding a graduation diploma - that is, if I do decide to embark again. Yes, I know. It's one measly subject. A one-unit subject at that. What the hey! I would have already been legally out of school long ago, you might say. Yeah, you or someone else might. I'm not entirely sure what the matter is... I only know that I can't seem to think of the easiest topic that I can experiment on and get college over with. I'm also lazy, perhaps. Perhaps... Or perhaps, this just isn't the right course for me, after all. I mean, I passed the rest of the subjects, but that was because I had friends and batchmates to go through the whole ordeal with. And now that I'm alone... I have no one to run to or keep me going now. Now, the final test of application of all the subjects taken up (Bio Thesis) has become a huge road block.

Biology is interesting, to be honest. I loved what I've learned - what I did learn, hehehe. And I wouldn't have met this fun bunch of people - classmates and teachers - and I wouldn't have had the fun that I had if it weren't for Biology. But still... I am no good with the "kuti" procedures. No patience, no enthusiasm to get them right whatsoever. When I had to do the "kuti" stuff, I suffered.

They were the most boring, most pleasureless moments in my life. I was so close to falling asleep or cutting class during those moments. I wouldn't even have cringed if the professor glared at me and gave me a degrading reprimand. I would have silently thanked him for breaking the boredom and waking me up. (Yes, a "him" came to mind. He's the scariest of them all when he's mad/unconvinced with your answer/skeptical you learned anything, and his 4th-year subjects were the most esoteric, thus, the most boring. I honestly didn't learn anything. There's nothing in my head from either Physio class.)

I'm supposed to be doing something about this thesis subject during this very time period (1st sem), in order to catch up with the graduating batch next sem, but.... here I am. Online and doing nothing helpful. Supposed to be working, too, at that.

But like I said earlier, give me the smallest chance to get myself to U.P. and I'll pounce on it. I deeply want to nurture this long-ignored desire of writing. I have been met with the practical questions about what future writing's going to hold for me, or where to get the money for tuition and lodging and books and such whenever I broached the subject... But you can't force me to do what I have no passion for doing, either.

The biggest example right now, is this web editing job. Do you see what I'm doing? This is me spending what time I could've spent to reach my job quota for doing something else, something less contributory. All I could maintain thinking of when I place my fingers on the keyboard is writing..... writing..... writing.

How would I fare if the professor made us write a short story? A novella? Or some literary piece? Thoughts like that. I'd like to learn how to write poems or a play script, try working on one literary form under a certain theme. Things like that are likely to happen, because someone I know took up that very subject (her written works and some such are with me) and I downloaded the entire prospectus from the U.P. Min web site.

And lately I've been thinking about actually writing to the school's Admissions department and inquire. I am more than ready for this. I don't want to wait for an opportunity or when I'm more financially secure. It may never come. I want to act now. And there are other perks. My enthusiasm to play is dying here, and Davao is one football-active place. I might get an opportunity to rekindle it back to life there. Wouldn't that be a deal? My dream and my two passions all in one place. I only have to bring my spikes.

And it's not like I'm not coming back, anyway. How many years will it just be? Two? Three? And Davao is just 8 hours away, max. It's a long, ugly bus ride, but it's near enough. I can say that I can handle this.

Something -er, someone - is keeping my two feet here, though. And he's making me seriously hesitate. He makes me think so hard about going through with this. With my family, I know, somehow, by just pushing the right buttons, I might have a chance to get what I want. But it is different with this one. Entirely.

Because it's a "we", one must think in terms of "we", or at least with the other in mind. Wanting to pursue one's dream would be thinking only of one's own life's direction. We have our own separate lives, too, right. We can certainly continue to exist without each other and still also be happy, perhaps. But we would not like to lead lives separately, of course, if it could be helped. So I am also then at a point from which I must decide another path I could tread: we or me. Could the "me" path intersect the "we" path somewhere down the road? Or will the "me" path forge an altogether different, totally new life for me once I'm on it? Or is it more complex than just these two paths?

O, di ba. It certainly makes you sit down and think. If it's the real thing you'd want to keep it. But then, now is not the time to settle. Now is the time in which to try to reach to your potentials and enrich your life. Something has to give or be made to make this one work. And it will not be easy. There will be nothing easy about it. Whatever I may come down to, there will be difficult choices to face shortly up ahead.

I've written about this before and I've said some things, but then, this desire must be stronger than I initially estimated it to be. Maybe, it's my life's calling. My Personal Legend. My one true responsibility in this world. I am not certain that if I heed it, the rest of my life will follow. I do not know if everything comes out all right in the end. I do not know if the people I want to be in my life will be in it if I leave all familiarity and choose the path I haven't traveled. I know that the unknown and the uncertain should be faced bravely and as best one can, but I don't know if I should go looking for them. I only know that I cannot be content with my life yet, with so little in it. I have not yet enriched my life in the way and with the things I want it to be filled with.

And that's where destiny comes in. I believe that destiny also has a share of control with life's reins. Destiny handles the things you can't forever control or have no control over. If something or someone is meant to be in your life, destiny will put it or that person back in the circuit. I believe that. But I don't believe that just so I can have a reason to do what I want to do. I'm stating it because it's true for me. Because, there is a force working alongside you as you make decisions. Perhaps, it's why, even though if things in life happen because you did something to make them happen, some things still happen without your help or your permission.

So leave it all to destiny, hmm..... it's only so easy to speak about it, than to be actually in the situation when you have to let go...

Well, well, well.... That's my answer, isn't it? Let go and let destiny take it from there... There's something transcendental about destiny, isn't there? Divine, even. It might very well be God, one manifestation of his presence in this world.

I know another purpose for dreams now. They are motivations to seek for more, for fulfillment, for a more content later life, if one is destined to reach that age. They build and/or strengthen character, because if you follow them, you will inevitably be faced with unfamiliar situations that give you two options: sink or swim. Walk away and be cowardly, or press on and come out a much braver person. And maybe that's why God put them in every person he created. And that makes for a more interesting world, actually. Combinations of possibilities, that with every combination is a different outcome, a different world that ensues. And results vary greatly, widely, perhaps even endlessly. But somehow, from these possible combinations, there's one that made the world what it is now... And maybe, it's part of the grand design that the world is following right now...

(Yes, I believe in a "grand design", too. If you believe in destiny, you would, inevitably.)

I don't know if I'm exactly being intelligible right now. It's complicated. It's better illustrated with an algebraic/statistical lesson that I remember but can't quite execute (You know, permutations?). It's more complicated than I am capable of putting into understandable words right now, but somehow, I find it comprehensible. Amazing... God is. Infinitely amazing, infinitely the smartest, infinitely the most insightful, infinitely everything.

But.......back to what this is all about. I can see better where I can go, which paths I can tread. And I know my options, and it's possible for a Plan B and maybe a Plan C, in just-in-case scenarios... Basta... Whatever... I have a clearer idea of what to do now. But everything only works at the right time and while there is still time. If I want what I said I want, I have to get moving.