Sunday, August 07, 2005

Mark My Words

Sometimes we encounter passages, poetry, and songs that tell the story of our lives. We read it, we hear it, we see it. And then we start to attach them to ourselves thinking that its for us alone, that it’s our own story. The thing is that it’s not about us. It’s about somebody else’s life and we just decide to change the name and then it’s about us.

I read a book and there was this line that struck me. “Quid rides? Mutato nomine, de te fibula narrator.” It is in Latin. Translated: “Why do you laugh? Change the name, and the story is told of you.”

Now that’s scary in ways I cannot explain. It’s plain “it could happen to you” or “it could be you” told in another way. But the question “why do you laugh” is what makes it different. It’s sort of a reminder of how people think about other people. How we like to deny our painful similarities and YET, we identify with superior ones. Just how we are so out-of-touch with our OWN SELF, that we do not see how it is basically, a psychiatric joke!

And then it makes me sad, also, that I can’t come up with my signature – a sentence that could sum up all that is me, the story of my life…

I remember all the things that I used to do, all the people that I used to be with all the time, all the feelings that I used to feel, all that I used to love. All “I used to”, “they used to”, “we used to”, “she used to”, “he used to” that I could muster right now. I never realized how downright painful those two little words are: “used to”.

Think about a man telling his friend how he used to love his wife. There’s just a thin thread between that and never loving her at all. Now think about a mother reminiscing how she used to carry in her arms her now fully-grown up son who doesn’t visit her at the nursing home? Used to - It’s the permanent end to something. It’s the permanency that hurts. And while it’s good that there was something good at all, the permanency of the end still hurts. So while we always comfort all our broken-hearted friends with the thought that “it’s better to have loved than to never have loved at all,” it is the moment of “used to” that is hurting them, us. That there is really just a thin line between that painful, permanent end to something good that existed, and that cold reality of never having experienced that good thing at all. And we always take the plunge, sometimes we don’t know that what we decide on doing will end something else, sometimes, we were not even deciding at all, just letting nature take it’s course. Like growing up, and not playing house anymore. It’s when you see your estranged neighbor ten years later, how you miss tossing around pans and imaginary food with her, how you used to play house every single day.

And then I remember too all the things that I had planned on doing but won’t get to, not in this time and life. I remember how I have always dreamed of becoming the woman that I have always wanted before I turn 25. It’s funny how people dream. When we dream, we are setting deadlines for our selves. Consciously or not. We set deadlines that turn out to be the reason for our frustrations when that deadline has passed. But it’s never our fault, it is never a mistake, it is never wrong to dream. It is not even wrong to not achieve your dreams. What is wrong, is letting that deadline pass, not realize it and then look back to blame ourselves. It is alright to not become the doctor or the lawyer or the engineer that we have been “trained” to aspire for as a little kid. What is not alright is to not remember that dream when everybody else is taking entrance exams, and then later on blame yourself that you didn’t take it. Just remember that dream, if you decide that it’s not what you want after all, at least you remembered (how you played doctor as a kid, how you doggedly watched all LA LAW on TV all the time, how you promised your Match teacher you’d be an engineer, how you always dreamed of the “Atty and Mrs” + your surname on an invitation envelope), and you made a choice.


And then I start to ponder about the changes I’ve undergone and the things that I’ve experienced. I wonder about the things that have remained constant over the years. What I’ve never stopped believing in and dreaming for. These are the things that I have felt so passionately about, and I can’t sit down to capture them all, before they become something else, like just a “I used to believe in”. Because when the passion has died, you can never, not ever, remember what it was like to be passionate about it. You end up just wondering. How you just loved it so much that time, how little things (like a fragrance, the weather, the music, even pictures) remind of that time that you loved it. But it’s only just a faint memory of what used to be, and you will never really remember. You may remember every little detail. But you could never capture the same essence.

When people die, there is that momentary remembrance of who we were and what we stood for in the lives of the people that we left behind. When I die, what will I have to be remembered by? What is that one thing that will sum up all that is me? Something like, “I think therefore I am…”?

It is crazy. How people believe that there are defining moments or turning points in one’s life. Is there any such thing? Or is there just a collection of everything defining who and what we are? They have version of that defining moment for basically every possible chronological phase in our lives. The formative years, the identity formation years, the twenty-something phase, the mid-life crisis, and the growing old something stage. In the end, when we die, we never really felt the turning point. It’s just steady, sort of like a wavy line, where the stroke changes a bit, but still connected in a long, long path of very little difference between each day – we just don’t wake up wiser the next day. There are things that will stick to you until you die. And I wonder, what is that thing in me that I will carry to my grave? What do I want engraved on my tombstone?

Posted by xam :: Sunday, August 07, 2005 :: 0 Comments:

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