Saturday, December 02, 2006

ako si kiray

Tonight, I'm TV's victim.

I am for the underdog. I've always been appalled by those kids who either have pretty faces or the super brains. I was less than the regular kid, I guess. I was never a super brain or the cutie pie. Neither was I the best runner nor jumper during my years in varsity in HS- I know I don't even look the part. Some people just have all the things to become. I felt I didn't. I was the underdog.

This is probably the reason why I'm most interested in kids who don't seem to have a lot of potential to become an Einstein, a dashing Hollywood actor- or anyone who is great at all. I'm interested in those kids who struggle just to have that sense of worth. I'm interested in kids who had to hate themselves- only to come out of that self-hating phase renewed and enlightened. Some were able to become through real hard work and some discovered their real strengths eventually. They're more inspiring than the gifted ones.

Then I grew up. I learned that worth is a thing the lazy mind is after- the mind that is too busy arranging the world, including itself. It's as if the struggle through puberty was worth nothing at all; as if the worth the regular kid was after constituted that vicious cycle he was supposed to get out of.

Yes we grew up, but most of us are still stuck in puberty. It's frustrating to see people who are still after recognition of their merits, those who seem to understand themselves based on some objective arrangement of reality. It is seldom that I see people motivated by a strong sense of action, of some weird desire to achieve something without bothering whether that would constitute his worth. Action in my generation means a way of becoming something else that would figure in the arrangement of reality. This arrangement becomes people's way of understanding themselves- make that "the only way to understand themselves". It may be both imposed and/or self-inflicted.

That didn't explain my point very well. I have this sense that real maturity means having that strong feeling that we should not be after what we are in the configuration of the cosmos (whatever that may mean)- primarily because that's illusion for me- but that we should be after something that lies outside that configuration and within our own sense of what is worthwhile to do. If that something is still the idea of the self then I guess people will always be frustrated.

A key to happiness, perhaps? More like hypocrisy on my part, actually. I notice that I am caught in the same hell from time to time. I'm too busy trying to be smart, look good (unsuccessfully)- or generally someone who is important. But I notice that I'm beginning to outgrew these concerns. I'm after something now- something aside from myself. Still, to be human may mean to be caught up. So I may not be pointing to something worthwhile after all.