writing about life

The urge to write finally gets to me, so I sit down with my fingers clutching the ballpen and an open notebook in front. I’ll have to be satisfied starting this post the archaic way, while my sister is using the PC. Again, just like countless times before, I pause. The desire to write cursing throughout my body, but my mind like a big dam holding back the waters asks: ‘Write what?’

Nope, I’m not psychotic, but I put down the pen and begin arguing with myself.

‘Write about life!’ my chin lifts up, proud of the idea, as if it were an original. Did I come up with that all by myself? ‘Life!’

I squint down on my proud chin and answer back: ‘What about life?’ And so the argument goes back and forth. One side throwing idea after idea in a frenzy, the other countering with wild precision. Not like a tennis match, the analogy is still too tame. Think like a wild basketball game where 10 players swarm all over the ball and each other. Someone will win the argument in the end, I’m sure, but by then I would have switched to another channel and my writing would be forgotten.
_______

My life the past week had its own build-up and rush—and flop—at work. A meeting to prepare for and attend, and quarterly program materials to prepare and send out. Well, the meeting turned out ok; the program materials, in spite of our efforts, were left unsent on top of the office table. This particular build-up went into a nosedive and crashed into the ‘to do’ list of next week. If you’ve experienced working hard at something only to see that it won’t turn out the way you wanted it to, you would probably understand how I felt. Yup, I crashed with that one.

I can’t help but think what last week was all about. Sometimes the daily activities, the push and pull of relationships, the burden and privilege of responsibilities have a way of putting one in autopilot mode—with a ‘beep’ to warn us that we are almost at the end of the flight and time to prepare for landing. Only to find out we are headed for a crash. And we miss out on the flight itself, we wonder what it was all about.

The past week was like that for me. And maybe, on a smaller scale, sometimes, hindi naman masyado, medyo medyo lang—maybe it was like that for you, too.

So what was last week all about? God still works through everything and God has a purpose for why it turned out that way. But sometimes this reminder is hard to swallow, especially when you’re feeling dejected.

Definitely one’s faith goes through the treadmill, bench press and aerobics mat. Faith comes out tired after the work-out, but stronger in the end. And ready for the next week.