I don't know how to describe how my summer went last June. To whoever who might read this, I'll let you decide.
Last school year I stopped for a year and I went travelling. I went to most parts of East Asia namely India, China, and the Philippines. For nine months or so, I toured all over the world seeking for enlightenment, inner peace, and live this world from the perspective of my heart.
When I arrived in India, I visited my old buddy's house. We had libation moments gladly because it was legal to drink and lit a few cigars as we poured along. We had laughter and conversations we never did for a very long time. By the morning, we did a little charity on the street. Gladly offered free food with a little money to old women that are starving and half-dead men playing banjos calling Buddha to end their suffering.
I toured in India for pleasure but I never found it. The people I met, the homeless children on the street, the river filled with human trash crushed my soul and killed my existence. If I could just carry the world over my shoulders, if I could just wave my wand and diminish each and every suffering that exist, but sadly, how can I ? how can we? On the way home, inside my car I cried. Cursing the gods, "why them?" Why not me ? What have I done to deserve freedom, education, friends, and money? In America we throw away food, televisions, phones and talk crap out of each other while a father, a mother, a child in the streets of Mumbai can't eat anything, never had a minute to sit and watch television his whole life, and got no friends to talk over the phone.I lived in this world for eighteen years and its the very first time I had an epiphany so great and deep that scarred me for the rest of my life.
A week after, I hopped on a plane bound to the Philippines, my hometown. Born and raised as a filipino, yet both my parents never speaks the national language and passed down the belief to me and my older sister that English is the language of success. Growing up being fed respect for academics and the pursuit of higher education was a treason against my heart, my beliefs, and my unparalleled life path. Arriving home again brings back memories that I never can erase, although I tried. My childhood friends never seem to changed, the public highway across our house that use to be my playground is still full of dust and traffic and polluted with noise. Everyday, I wake up and the first thing I do is to look in the window with a sigh. Everything I see hurt me and if only there's no such thing as human necessity, I'd give my all.
Learning a lot by staying in the Philippines for months, I still crave for satisfaction. Packed toiletries, clothing, and set my financial resources, and by sunrise my journey began again. China! The place you don't want to miss. Chinese gives you respect, love, and hospitality you can never imagine. They can make you wish to be a Chinese yourself. For short amount of time, I still managed to study religion. The topic that everyone close to my heart always fight over. The monks I met talks deep, kept my gears running like solving a puzzle that takes one minute before you get it. Lectures about happiness, love, inner peace, wisdom and knowledge sounded like music to my ears. They comforted me with words, they inspired me by gaze, they loved and cared for me without a sound.
A stranger taught me a fable that I will never forget. A story about the dog and the water dog. A poor hungry dog traveled far in quest of a meat for his supper and obtained a very fine shoulder of mutton. Happy and on his way home, he passed on a bridged casting an eye beneath and found another dog with the other half of the shoulder of the mutton. He made a sudden spring and snatch at the new temptation; in doing so which he slipped of the bridge, found no dog in the water but himself, and lost his meat at the same time in the passing stream. The fable goes like this : So those who plan dishonest gains, Oft have their labor for their pains, and go, like him whom you've read, greedy yet supper-less to bed.
In life, we seek for a connection. Either a stranger passing by, a lover, a friend. The moment you find that connection, you feel again. I wept and torn myself on my way to California, but when I saw the whole picture, that connection put me back together so easily.
I can't find the right words to describe my last summer, but I guarantee you, it was life-affirming.
A week after, I hopped on a plane bound to the Philippines, my hometown. Born and raised as a filipino, yet both my parents never speaks the national language and passed down the belief to me and my older sister that English is the language of success. Growing up being fed respect for academics and the pursuit of higher education was a treason against my heart, my beliefs, and my unparalleled life path. Arriving home again brings back memories that I never can erase, although I tried. My childhood friends never seem to changed, the public highway across our house that use to be my playground is still full of dust and traffic and polluted with noise. Everyday, I wake up and the first thing I do is to look in the window with a sigh. Everything I see hurt me and if only there's no such thing as human necessity, I'd give my all.
Learning a lot by staying in the Philippines for months, I still crave for satisfaction. Packed toiletries, clothing, and set my financial resources, and by sunrise my journey began again. China! The place you don't want to miss. Chinese gives you respect, love, and hospitality you can never imagine. They can make you wish to be a Chinese yourself. For short amount of time, I still managed to study religion. The topic that everyone close to my heart always fight over. The monks I met talks deep, kept my gears running like solving a puzzle that takes one minute before you get it. Lectures about happiness, love, inner peace, wisdom and knowledge sounded like music to my ears. They comforted me with words, they inspired me by gaze, they loved and cared for me without a sound.
A stranger taught me a fable that I will never forget. A story about the dog and the water dog. A poor hungry dog traveled far in quest of a meat for his supper and obtained a very fine shoulder of mutton. Happy and on his way home, he passed on a bridged casting an eye beneath and found another dog with the other half of the shoulder of the mutton. He made a sudden spring and snatch at the new temptation; in doing so which he slipped of the bridge, found no dog in the water but himself, and lost his meat at the same time in the passing stream. The fable goes like this : So those who plan dishonest gains, Oft have their labor for their pains, and go, like him whom you've read, greedy yet supper-less to bed.
In life, we seek for a connection. Either a stranger passing by, a lover, a friend. The moment you find that connection, you feel again. I wept and torn myself on my way to California, but when I saw the whole picture, that connection put me back together so easily.
I can't find the right words to describe my last summer, but I guarantee you, it was life-affirming.
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