I SHOULD either be slumped in bed resting or watching a great movie of my preference. It is life I wish for on Sunday afternoons, a break I hope to have from the constant knowing of impaired living – its realities and struggles without end.
Instead, I am hearing Barbra Streisand’s high pitched but melodious voice trying to soothe and put wings to this struggling heart, a broken spirit living the moments alone.
This Sunday afternoon, my wife and children left this pagan doubly struggling with words and whipping them into grammatical order (unschooled in this area, I should say), re-reading and re-writing this article into its current shape, that I think and believe makes sense. This is how I learned writing - always struggling, practicing, not moving away from that first time – always a struggling beginner, God help me, I wish I am some expert now.
I think that is what makes me lonely. I sensed having missed some foundational time and training leading to some expertise. Lonely yes, but I can only accept it as part of me. I may have all the lonely feelings but a man must not get bogged down by his feelings in time, some place. He must move on, warts on the skin, broken bones and soul all with hope still, that having a sensible mind, heart and will is enough to get one through life’s journey with its legacies to give and leave behind.
Legacies, what are these to me?
Some people have great capabilities and capacities in pursuit of legacies like the building of houses, structures and buying land for themselves, families and children. Some do it with great art, especially the art of the impossible, namely the art of improving one’s self and stature through the sciences, politics, business and the professions. In the end, children, structures, laws, principles. buildings, streets, places, almost anything to include plants, minute and giant beings are soon named after them, perpetuating not only their memories but the legacies of a well lived life.
Mine is incognito, my contributions to the making of legacies easily absorbed and given to common and larger causes. I thus gloat and cry foul every time some “great” soul who is given to intellectual property rights, patents, copyrights, trademarks and lately, rights to own cells and anything in existence lays claim to what is not yet owned. That, unfortunately includes where the sum of my incognito trinkets of accomplishments goes to, generally the common things like fresh water and air, including the almighty being the source of all good things.
Actually, owning and controlling everything is not a monopoly of the infamous multi-national corporations but also a suggestion by peers who assert that a team’s accomplishments are his or her own making; or tribes and clans laying claim and owning whole mountain ranges. That could not be right in any sense, place or time, unless one also owned all the people in a place since time immemorial or that one’s right is divine, different from the rest of us mortals. It makes me imagine the wind always moving in the wrong direction. I agonize hearing its moaning and mourning the death of nature in our time.
I struggle taking hold of my thoughts on the making of legacies, putting forward our will, good and bad, across time in the future. Now that is a real struggle, not superficial but going deep into living, who and what we are. It was a struggle I was having really as I tried these past days to give meaning to our Knowledge Learning Market (KLM) exercises every November with the stakeholders of the Second Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resources Management Project (CHARMP2).
The KLM is an event where stakeholders share knowledge and experiences covering best practices and lessons learned during project implementation. That alone tells a lot and is a serious matter. You cannot share something you do not know and has not worked in your case. If it did not work well, at least you know your will and honestly tell your audience why your efforts failed. It leads to an obvious conclusion to do better with a shared knowledge of how it could be done with some measure of success.
At times, I am sardonically amused about remarks suggesting that writing and other art works are acts of supreme inspiration. Just like any other mortal endeavor, good or bad, excellence in writing comes through disappointments and hard work, not a one-time thrust, especially if it has any “heart-mind” meaning at all. “Knowing one’s will,” applies to all human pursuits done with dedication and perseverance, “blood, sweat and tears.” I write and stayed this long knowing what I must attend to doing. I write my life spent as an offering of time, a service too, from a physically, morally and mentally challenged existence, all these years, albeit kept secret for quite a long time. I will keep on doing my best, any which way, I must.
The legacy, I should leave behind are the goodness and kindness of friends and family, exercised to make my existence possible. At the end of the day, I must pray in all honesty and might that God blesses you all! – an expression, aye, a lesson I learned during our 4th CHARMP2 KLM, as I stayed on, engaged the activities and discussions enduring at the same time a searing tooth ache in a defective gum, all part of an impaired existence.
I should conclude in a prayer that my expressions do not hurt anybody in the wrong ways. May God understand and forgive this self-confessed pagan.