Life Less Ordinary

September 22, 2005

“Bloom where you are planted”. I remember resenting a professor who once told me that, as I whined about my too ordinary life.. How can I bloom when the land is arid and dry and the wind dusty and the sun unforgiving?
The day I left college, I tried to live a provincial life but made my own silent adventure in small dark stinking rooms with my students. I wanted a quiet revolution where their classroom experiences will be converted into self discovery and expression, the blossoming of esteem, the challenge of rising beyond their personal best. It was rewarding and I ended up confined in a hospital at the end of every semester for over fatigue. There was no stopping me. But my body finally called it quits. And slowly my spirit wanted to explore new grounds once more.
Around me were colleagues who would talk about credits, salary advances/increases or family life. I missed the intellectual discussions of the university, the poetry, the metaphysical discussions, the misadventures of conquering new lands and beaches, the mountain climbing, the art films.. But I was in the province, with the comforts of being with my parents who don’t only tolerate my eccentricity but celebrate it.
Then I thought of beginning the “real adventures”. I left for exotic lands and climbing monuments of old civilizations in the world; I studied new languages, engaged in reviving artistic endeavors and meeting people stranger than I. I met friends and strangers who climbed mountains of Africa and Europe, who lived in the streets to ski in new slopes of ice, who would work selling their things in the streets only to surf new waves of the Asia and the Pacific. And there are those who would purge the life out of me, breaking the seed until my soul evolves into something more daring and unafraid of dying while still alive. I am grateful for them.
I made my own journeys. Penniless in some strange land hopping from one state and country to another, meeting people, making friends even lasting friendships to date.
Only to return home once more; settled and raising a family, building a business, running a team. The everyday routine of a smaller and much more predictable life presented a higher challenge. I was reminded of what my professor once told me “ BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED”. I saw fears, insecurities, despair and containment in a closer perspective. I was born here, in fact raised in this rural-urban city as well. Yet, I discover new things about my hometown everyday.
Reading books are more of an exception than a rule. Films here are more for entertainment than an educational media and travels are reserved for earning money and bringing home the dough to the less fortunate family and relatives. It has a life of its own, most of the time, they are of new cell phone models and seeking for employment here or abroad. Freedom and Liberation or artistic expression for self or art’s sake is here but creating a whimper than a boom.
But I can say, I have finally learned to bloom where I am planted. Even without the Bohemian life in a provincial land, I have seen and tread the roads of other minds. It is a higher challenge to live here. A greater civilization of simple minds, yet profound in their own way of looking after each other. Their fears are deep and valid. Even the insecurities and utter darkness brought by a hungry stomach I have come to understand.
To remain alive in heart, mind, body and soul in a land of cell phones and endless job hunts is of higher challenge. To have myself understood is far harder than remaining lost in the middle of the Himalayas. But to survive here, really survive, entails a lot of strength and I wish to pass this on to my daughter, the knowing and the confidence that she can bloom wherever she is planted and that she can plant herself anywhere she wants to blossom.
To survive is to see that spark in the eyes, the burning of the soul, the knowing that an endless world of possibilities exists within ourselves and outside these walls of our minds wherever we are. That is, in the middle of a rice paddy in the Philippines or at the heart of New York Times Square.