Wednesday, March 17

Thoughts—On Birthdays and Life Lessons

I will be 39 in a couple of months. Just looking at the prospects makes my insides go suddenly rigid. How could have life gone away in a blink? I used to think that 25 was the benchmark, an age where a woman finds herself in a standstill and eventually leaves the mockery of youth forever. Beyond that, she begins to shape herself into an ideal of grace and virtue, bearing the wisdom of a sage and the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. So it was a bit of shock to me that at 26, I still felt that I have not moved up a rung and mapped out my life more clearly. I was way past my quarter life and had not started my own family, at the very least. I was still hanging out at cafes and associating with uncommitted friends.

Maybe I am just the perennial late bloomer. Everything comes to me long after others have gone on to revel at new things and make pioneering choices in their life. When my colleagues have decided to find themselves some fine chap, get married and have children, I was still at the stage of aspiring to meet a boy. I was caught up in the romantic notion that if a certain Jay Gatsby comes by, tries to sweep me off my feet, throw lavish parties and shower me with a parade of worldly goods and excesses, I would turn him down like Daisy did; but in favor of a financially-strapped sickly looking artist-type boy who would impress me, with only a tattered copy of his Foucault-despite not understanding Foucault--- just because he is too broke to afford anything else. I had the belief that if he was bold and honest enough to present himself as thus and win me over, then all is good. For me it was a young, passionate and quixotic idea, enough to make me fall in love. But even if I had sounded foolish and impractical then, I was not being superficial at all. 

Now that I am married, with kids, and about to become an official member of the joy luck club, I have to be more grounded and realistic. Good news is that I am a late bloomer and therefore amenable to change. Bad news is I feel that in two months’ time, I will be hanging on a precipice, where 40 looms over more closely than 39, and everything will be too late. Whatever I will learn now won’t do me much good. One day soon, I will slip over the hill and become too old and antiquated to even remember how to get up, much less reflect on things like love and passion. Rather, I will be apprehended by incontinence and the chaos of grandchildren. There’s realism for you. 

We all emotionally grow up at some point that our priorities and our stances change. For the worst or the better, only we can know. But while I’m at it, I continually struggle to discover the more fundamental lessons in life. Take for instance, Contentment. If you ask me today-- and I would never admit this years earlier-- I will say that money, is a necessity. It pays the bills, it puts food on the table, it sends my children to school, it ensures my retirement years, it sets me off to buy some occasional womanly trifles for myself.  What I failed to account though is that with money too, I can lose sleep over outstanding debts, I can lace my feet with a pair of Louboutins and still feel grossly inadequate, I can habitually sip a cup of Starbucks and create the idea in my head that I belong with my imaginary in-crowd, I can warrant myself a free pass into private soirees of  the rich and what haves, and assimilate in their lifestyle by acting like one, I can buy friendships and loyalties and people’s souls, I can stand out and be exasperated by the curiosity of irrelevant humans even if their candor had once been my source of happiness. I never thought that money had that much power, and seeing how people change and become spellbound to it and even become, well greedy, for lack of a better term; I begin to suspect that money indeed can be more important than goodness, and that it all becomes a matter of worshipping the hero of one’s choice.

But I choose goodness, over money.  Of course, if I had the money I’d probably be singing a different tune. Imagine the liberties it would afford a working-class woman like me! With money, I’d probably be jetting off to Europe basking on some Parisian afternoon sun, tasting the finer things, carrying about the air of a well-traveled woman with that so-called je ne sais quoi--- instead of skulking at some ratty second-hand bookstore, surreptitiously reading and daydreaming about stories set around a Parisian afternoon sun and a well-traveled woman. But does money need to change me, ingratiate me with the thought that I can be perceived as a better person when I have it or smell like it? How long will it make me happy? Will it ultimately make me happy? I have always thought that we have to be content at some point.  If I had enough of it, will I be content then and not want anything? Are there things that can be had without having to mention money? Are they a better option? 

In two months, I would like to start something. I would like to advocate simplicity and contentment. I would like to believe that we work to live, and not live to work. I am not wont to be in the forefront of some angsty crowd, crying battle cries of the oppressed or weak. I don’t need to level any playing field and seek equality from anyone, such that my personal values and fulfillments become lost on me. I would like to think that motherhood, and wifehood and womanhood is an act of faith and whether it has set disadvantages from what I had wanted to do, it has certainly done me more good than harm. I would like to convince myself that money can be used for good things, very good things.

I would like to have the answers above and see how it can make me a better person, at 39.

Thursday, March 11

Hello 2010



So, although it seems like I have completely abandoned blogging in deference to being a full-time something (maybe a mom, worker or photography enthusiast), my heart still hankers for a space to go home to, where I can unload my emotions or thoughts. Do thoughts really need to be unloaded, yes perhaps, because it drains me to have that much to keep inside my (almost) pea-sized brain and not have the means to elucidate myself about them, on account of people around me being busy living their lives as well. My only consolation is, I have a life, and am not moping around waiting for things to miraculously move from point a to point b. 

Well sometime ago I have created another blog on which I intended to post my photos. I did, for a while. But as per usual, I tend to start my little ventures and fail to finish or follow them through. Honestly, I get a little overwhelmed with having to keep a lot of things up, I have admitted that I am not good at multi-tasking and that's why maybe my focus is singular in one thing, but any more than that, and I crack down. It's not having an excuse, it's just the truth. So I guess I will keep things simple instead and maintain this original blog. Hopefully I could post more often, or if I lack the initiative to write, I can put up photos of my Sophia my daughter, who happens perhaps to be the only willing model in my, well, photographic pursuits, which honestly causes my self-confidence to vacillate at times. As Henri Cartier Bresson would say though,  your first 10,000 photographs are your worst, and seeing that I am probably just on my 3 thousandth, I am not too worried about it. I just get a little impatient, especially after having assumed lots of my shots were good and end up cussing them to varying degrees once I realize the exposure mistakes I've made, and the opportunity I've wasted. It's just me, I can be that single-minded that if you ask me what I ate last night, I wouldn't have remembered.

Things have happened so fast in the last few months, it seems such a daunting task to recall now what they were, but darn I am trying very hard to redeem myself here. Alright, so my little Sophia is not so little anymore. She celebrated her 4th birthday in October of last year. She had her first pink/purple bike from her dad and couldn't have been any happier with it. But I think the bike was just a tad too big for her frame that after a few frustrating tries, and some cuts and bruises to boot, intrepid soul that she is, she shoved the bike in a corner and gave it up for good. I watched her silently hoping that she'd pick it up again one day, but so far she hasn't. Fortunately though, she is one to always have her hands onto something, like drawing. I have observed how she would wiggle happily when I come home with a box of crayons for her, and although she is  way past the stage of writing on walls, she comes up with these fascinating stick figures and colorful copies of princesses and mermaids that she sees in her books. I can't say that they exude anything so genius that would make me suspect her of being gifted, but being a mom and someone who appreciates art, I would like to be the first person to give her that latitude she might need to grow into this kind of passion, and even encourage it. I see that she enjoys it and proudly shows me her work when I come home, so I can't help but be positive about it.

My son Gabriel is now 7 years old. He is in grade 1 and becoming much more independent than we could have prepared ourselves for. He is immersed in television, and has outgrown a lot of his toys which reminds me that I should now have to decide whether to keep them or give them away, and should stop  buying anything unless he absolutely begged for it. Isn't it true though that when you are a parent, you go through stages of compulsion to provide for your children and smother them with the most colorful little plastic stuff just so you know you are being a good mommy and not depriving them of the essentials of a happy childhood? But yeah, well I've learned, and now I suppose I'll be stubborn about it.  

So how about me? What's up with me? Lotsa things, but now I have to go see if  I can take a break and come back in a few days.

     


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