alone

I remember something about last week. I was out everyday looking for a job. My schedule was, usually, interviews or tests in the morning then school in the afternoon for the job fair. And that wasn't an easy task. Most of my tests and interviews were in Makati. I had to ride two trains from Makati to school and vise versa, and a lot of walking. I remember dining at various restaurants and usually fast food chains alone. That what really struck me more than the tons of walking I had to do. I didn't exactly feel alone or lonely in the first couple of times I did it. But on the third day that I had to eat alone, it occured to me that I Am Alone and lonely.

It was this one time, friday and a few minutes before dinner time that I decided to placate my grumbling stomach. I was sitting at a corner of a McDonald's branch at a mall arranging my orders, then I notice that everyone had someone with them. I front of me was a couple happily chatting their plans for the weekend while chidding their two kids, a boy and a girl who couldn't stop playing with their fries. Immediately to my left were a group of people who are probably in their sixties, talking about a common friend, happily excahnging their opinions about him/her.

I sat on a table with four chairs and twice did someone asked for the vacant chairs. I felt so alone. A group of noisy highschool girls borrowed the second chair and I watched two of them took that chair away to their noisy group, they really lively and boisterous and quite happy to share each others' company. And then it happened. Something broke into the well guarded mullioned sappyness. I used to reassure myself that I can live on my own, get old on my own, die on my own... the usual misfit's dramarama. But it struck me, have I been planning to starve myself of bliss? I have been all about survival since that stupid lesson on Sarte (at least in my head I'm all about that). Alanis was right, we have to decide between survival and bliss. The vital question is: Is your hope (or motivation in life) about merely clinging on to something dear (and elaborate its complexities so that you can arrive at God) or do you go after happiness and the possibility of it?