realization, i have just realized, is a word i use quite loosely. i may walk up a hall, catch a glimpse of my reflection on the shiny steel surface of the elevator doors and go on to claim that i realize something about myself. like something as silly as how how my eyes are not symmetrical. i have over the years, in similar fashion, realized that i don't like sinigang, that i abhor eating at abscbn cafeteria (or at least i did when i was still with the company), that i don't like the bitter taste of beer, that i am obsessed with triffle-hi of gayuma and yadayadayada. i have realized that i don't construct sentences the way i used to (whether i have improved or have turned for the worse is a thing I cannot realize just yet.)

but truly, realization, as i have realized just now, should come with a distinct pain. liken it to being shot with a pellet gun right on your nape, that sting not fading anytime soon after the pellet hits you. and it won't kill you. it just leaves a totally unnecessary feeling of discomfort that causes unrest, grumpiness for the rest of the day. you feel your nape, and never get to neglect the fact that you have a nape. and you miss that feeling of not feeling your nape. of being able to just go on without that full knowledge of having one because it's just there. simply because it was just there.

when you realize something, whether about yourself or about how things go, you part with that part of yourself that's hopeful, the part of your psyche which cannot fully reconcile what you want to do and what you will be able to accomplish. before realizing something, you are magnanimous, invincible and totally able. to part with that ignorance of a certain something is a painful matter that is not always outdone by the new knowledge which takes its place.

and so now i know why i constantly confuse myself. like that lonely horse pulling a calesa up a filthy binondo street, i find it easier to trudge along with blinders on both edges of vantage, steadily ascending without knowing what's on the periphery, being under the impression that that sometime, somewhere will be arrived at, wherever it is, without fully understanding how getting there feels like.

(okay, i should stop being vague. i have a tendency to be vague, and i don't know why.)

but it's kind of too late to gripe over this now for i have just realized that to be something, something real in this world, someone who matters, one has to do things that one does not like to do. it may be as petty as writing an article on something one is actually the least bit interested in. or claiming to be something that one, in the end, does not want to live up to after all.

posted by carl @ 2:00 AM