State of Orderly Chaos

Humans want to find order into anything, from taxonomy to the classification of rocks and minerals. Sorting everything into classes, orders, families, etc. I could go on and on with labels of such ridiculous names that even taxonomist finds it confusing. Humans are in every little way orderly, not just in their lives.

The way of communicating with other people shows order and ethics, the simple art of ethics revived in communications. In the halls of the academe splendor, ethics is considered more of a common sense than a study, in communicating its like slicing breading while making sandwiches in a very boring morning, you know you want to eat a sandwich you carefully make them then suddenly in the middle of the process of making, you find yourself bored… if not stuck… why not just fry eggs or something? Ok, my parallelism sucks but hey at least I tried… poorly.

Life is in a state of orderly chaos, everything is in motion as Newton indirectly said in his Principia. Life is never static; it always finds a way to move, to change or to find some way to irritate people in their typical “static” lives. In Jurassic Park, Dr. Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) once said that life will find a way, and it will. No matter how we stop it, no matter how we ignore it, it will find a way to gain entrance to the impossibility because life contradicts impossibility.

During the recent mornings of my life, the cold stale air always gushes in my face when I go outside. Going to school, walking under the darkness of the upcoming morning, seeing people with their bloodshot eyes of interrupted sleep and their desire to buy pandesal (Pan De Sal) in the morning makes you notice how routinely their morning can be. I board the jeep going to the LRT station; the cold air still follows me, like some entity hungry for attention… or is it just my perception? Either way, its really cold.

Not used to wearing jackets (I love wearing suits though), I find it somewhat dismaying on my part that I complain a lot about the cold air yet still persist on not wearing any jacket… stupidity on my part. Going in and staying, waiting for the train can be boring without the invention of the portable music playing device called the mp3 player. Standing, waiting for the erratic train to come, depending on the train, you might be riding the white E-Telcare train which is the coolest train (thermodynamically speaking) or the ugliest train, the PCSO train. The whole train is covered in GMA’s face! What did the people do to deserve such an ugly train whistling through their skyline? A lot of answers on that one.

Arriving in Recto and going to Mapua is as repetitive as it can be; proves a point on routine. You go down the train station, walk a little, wait a little (sometimes) then you board a jeep going to City Hall then you go down, walk, enter the gate, tap your ID to the ID tapping machine and all else is straightforward. That brief little description on how my morning goes shows how my life can be orderly and at the same time chaotic, in between the intervals of destinations or points in the destination there is that uncertain feel. Question pop in my head, am I on time? Is the jeep on time? Is the train on time? How many people are boarding the train? How many people are going out now? So many uncertainties, factors of uncertainties. Now you might find it weird that I notice these little things, yes it is weird but on a philosophical standpoint… whatever! It still is.

As I look upon my life in the birds eye view, I see that I am a routinely person. Like in each every person in the modern world, we follow a strict routine, I’m not saying that routines are bad but we have to go outside that line we always follow. The line of routine, the line that keeps us “alive”. Its like going to Starbucks and selecting a cup coffee… so many choices but we follow a strict choice that we’ve been picking for the last couple of months or years. That gives us the certainty that we need to go functioning everyday, the key word is certainty, it gives security. This is why capitalistic society thrives and survives. Capitalism thrives on routines, routines that alienate man that makes man a machine. We work within the boundaries of the routines that we made just to serve a purpose of materialistic intentions, and when I say materialistic, not in a philosophical sense.

We always say that we must live our life fully, live as if we’re going to die tomorrow. The capitalistic way of thinking says how can you live as if you’re going to die tomorrow without MONEY? We work our asses of just to gain money to buy more things to work harder to gain more money to buy more things… it completely alienates man. That is how capitalism works. The fact that as students, we are slowly being trained to follow this line, the line that will lead us to certainty, certainty for survival in the capitalistic society. In my point of view, life is not just about surviving, life is also LIVING. How can we live in this frame of mind? Well God knows… wait… he doesn’t.

Hypocrite as I can be, I want to live my life beyond that line of routines… where you can actually live. You have to go beyond that concept of life we are used to. What will happen if you do? You’ll live to see another day, another limelight… but the experience is worth it in the end. We live too rationally, we must be able to grasp the reality that life is about living in routine… its about living period. We will not regret living, as long as you desire to live. We must destroy that mentality, we must be ourselves. But hey, stick back to your old routine, get in to that couch of yours and let your day pass by… if that is what you called living then so be it… life is relative after all. But in the end, after turning that TV off, you’ll start to wonder… have I wasted my life? =)

Wasted Sundays...

Confucius once said: "Live as if you're going to die tomorrow, learn as if you're going to live forever" I bet once in a while he got bored, not just for a minute or an hour... but for a day. =)

I actually like that particular quote, I would like to live and learn like what the quote said but lets face it, its not the hardest thing to do but its not the simplest. It is said that man creates his own destiny, that one is actually from Homer, so we therefore dictate the flow of life, ours to be more exact. We can make it active or boring, colorful to dull, but the thing is, like Newton once said in his Principia Mathematica "Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it."

Sunday is one of the most boring days, in fact, in some religions, Sundays are rest days. Like every person in the world, I don't wanna wake up early during Sundays, for heaven sake its the only day in my present life where I can drift away aimlessly in my dreams even if it is the morning. Once the alarm phone begins to produce that awful obnoxious sound, just imagine, you were dreaming something good, if not amazing, then someone pulls you out of unconsciousness and you wake up into reality. The sun shines brightly at your face, as if saying wake up you lazy bastard. Like any other idiot in this corporate world, you raise your whole body like a zombie, scratches one's head, remove some obstructions in your eyes (muta as we call them), yawn a little, then do what it is you do after this somewhat mandatory ritual.

A priest asked me once, do you pray in the morning? I don't recall actually that I pray in the morning. We were taught by our parents, teachers, or some teenager who's going to be a nun or priest in the future that you should pray in the morning. During the elementary days of my life (one of the most exciting periods of my life) I tried to pray in the morning. The day came where I promise to pray, and so it happens. After a good battle of rolling in my bed like I'm the in grasslands of Austria, I fell from my bed like a log being thrown into the river, the sad part is that when I fell I manage to hit my arinola and spilled my urine all over the floor and myself. Mind you, at this point I know how to swear but since its the beginning of the day, I don't wanna start the day screaming putang ina. So it was, I was reaking with my own urine that I rush down in the bathroom for an early bath... in my dismay my mom didn't put any soap so I had to run naked in the storage closet to get some soap. Then just as I was about to take a bath, there was no water. From that point on, I stop trying to pray in the morning.

High school retreats are overrated in my opinion. A good wasted Sunday during a particular retreat really got me the whole day wasted with laziness. It was a fourth year retreat in Don Bosco Bato-lao, we were in the boys barracks sleeping like laidback pigs. I was busy minding my sleep because of a very tiring yet somewhat awkward night before then suddenly a flash awoken me, and to my dismay it was a flash from a camera. My first souvenir is a picture of me bluntly sleeping, mouth agaped, and in some sleeping position that god knows how I get myself into that position. The rest of the morning went like a routine, bath and breakfast and all. I remember a particular seat near the cliff, the seat where I usually sit during those retreating times, I went there with a special someone, we sat there staring at the vastness of the landscape. Just as things are getting cozy, my friends came like mosquitos biting one's legs and they caused an awful amount of noise that it startled a dog sleeping near us which pissed the dog so we were forced to vacate the seat. Damn those guys. Lunch came like it was nothing, I can't remember what we particularly eat. I spent my day in the hammock day dreaming about the future, more on my retirement to be more exact (too early to think about that, but hey, its my life!).

Going back to these memories of wasted sundays, I sometimes think that Sundays are designed to be the most lazy day. For me anyway. There's nothing profoud nor unusual about it... its just a typical day of sleeping pleasure... or was it? =)