28

12 July 2009

No one thought about me twenty nine or thirty years ago. I was not. I did not even exist in the mind of God.

Then when two individuals met – when they had sexual intercourse – a miracle happened, or I will say there was a meeting between the sperm and egg cells. Then a life was formed. After nine months, a male baby was born. It was 12 July 1981. He was named K.

Since I had the consciousness of the reality of existence, I’d been asking the question: What is life? And I would say that life is an interval between birth and death. It is a stage of a journey from nothingness to being and back to nothingness. Cells are formed into a human body, and then cells die. Human life is born, and then it will die. From Spinoza’s perspective of eternity, one will see life as a passing shadow in time – or just an illusion that passes through time and space then disappears.

But I refuse to define or at least to describe life this way. I want to infuse it with more meaning. Yes it is convincing to think that life simply passes – that we are confronted with the reality of aging, then will eventually die. Naturalists say it is a natural process of the cycle of life. But with Heidegger, I think life comes as it is, and that I am being thrown into this world of being, thus I am being in the world. And since I am in the world, I do not just exist. I have my own being – that is, both being to being and being to nothingness.

I exist therefore I live. My being does not rest on the thought that I exist, but because I live. I am no Cartesian to think of the condition of being as existence of the mind and the act of thinking. I am not a thinking or a product of thought. I am simply because there is life that invigorates the flesh of my body. There is no being there who manipulates me in his or her mind. I simply am who thinks, moves, decides, and lives independently from any transcendental beings that are products of the mind’s speculation and imagination.

So now, at least in my own thoughts and reflections about what my life ought to be, I am being haunted with the question: So what’s the meaning of it all? I do not know fully. But at least I can speculate that there may be some kind of meaning to existence.

Yes, I have the will to live. As I live death is haunting me. I don’t want death to invade me and others as of the moment. I want to live fully not just as a human being but also as an individual person who has desires and aspirations in life – a person who hopes about the reality and materialization of the idea that every human individual has life and since life is sacred, thus every human being is significant. Every human being has rights and freedoms.

In a society such as my own, individuals simply disappear. They are abducted by the government. The condition of life of millions of Filipinos is simply awful because of the appalling behavior of many politicians and government leaders.

At twenty eight, what have I done so far? Well, not much. Although I will to live in a society of my own making, I have not done much to improve my condition of living. I have not done much to improve the condition of the life of many. I have not done much to uplift the lives of others.

My friends said that I am too young at twenty eight. I will still experience many crises to come. But I refuse to think such thing; maybe I am too young to have done things that I have idealized. But I am not too young because I already am past a quarter of a century. There are millions of lives there who died young and millions died during infancy. Yes, they’re too young to disappear from this world.

At twenty eight I am too old, and I do not wish to live longer than a lifetime and thus prolong my agony.