I cannot understand what i feel; I am entangled in a web of emotions; and my senses now utterly deserted me. I wish I could hide in the deepest trench and disappear in real time. I want to strip myself of all the comfort I had for I do not deserve a single of it. There's so much I can do yet I confine myself to lethargy. I cannot forgive myself if after such realization, I do nothing about it. You see, I am really blessed. I have the best parents in all the world and half of my siblings. But I abused those blessings through laziness and overdependence. Thanks God. I remember using my rational mind, but I do not know when and where to start and how will I!
I just met a friend I had only known from afar. I heard so much about him and my first impression was clouded with uncertain emotions. I was heavily influenced by people who spread bad gossip about him. I cannot express precisely what i think and feel for i am full of confusions. But somehow after a short period of being with his company, i noticed a certain likeness of how we viewed life. I must say he had such a remarkable strength more than anyone I've ever met. Maybe because of my flexibility I have reached a certain depth of his soul.
I don't mingle much with people except on subjects worthy enough to listen to. My friend taught me a lot about life and its branches of hope, despair, loneliness, joy.. He is intelligent and ambitious. He loves his family and their welfare more than anything but he loved them with his own kind of reasoning. Perhaps of what he has gone through life that made him tough yet certain of what he wanted in life.
We talked about our achievements and laughed at the similarities of the circumstances we've dealt with and the way we coped with it. I know certain things he'd done that is actually beyond my scope of morality. At first, it was so hard to understand the misgivings he has for life. As i placed myself on his shoes, somehow I got a grasp on his inmost self and marveled at the possibility of me doing the same. To certain degrees, I'm sure I will. It helped to be closer to God. He's not. And it's a pity. It's difficult to touch the heart.
I noticed that most of the things we've talked was the hardships life brings. He constantly emphasized the adverse effects of poverty on his life. As I listened intently to his sentiments, my childhood memories came rushing back. I remember having spent a great deal of time with my poor neighbors. I can still see the expressions of my unfortunate playmates' face torn by hunger and it occured to me how such misery had bruised them.
I stared into the eyes of my friend, I saw pain and something else. It was vengeance! He was, still is, angry with the life he had, the hardships he had gone through and the responsibilities slumped on his shoulders. He told me the scapegoats he'd done. He rebelled against life itself. It was so hard to let him understand that fairness exists because he is detached from them. I tried my best to give him consolation but he considered my efforts as pity and as proud as he is never accepted them. In my hopelessness, I was so enraged that I could have frontally ridicule him if he hadn't been honest with me (and dishonest in certain things). Perhaps because of my sympathetic nature I realized how tough he must be to endure such burden. How vulnerable to succumb to simple pleasures to escape his miseries. He compared his life to the life I had. My family and his family. Somehow I realized the big gap between us..
I wondered how could I let him swallow the fact that fairness exists when undeniably I have never tasted the bitterness of poverty while he has lived with it for the most part of his life. He spills on my face the unpleasant memory of going to school with nothing in his pocket. How would I tell him life is just when I never even went to school without new things to brag about to my classmates? I had all the material things I could ask for while he hadn't. It left me nothing to say. I cannot gaze directly at him. I felt so embarassed for being so dependent on my parents.
He told me how hard it was to be the breadwinner of his family. I was digusted at his bigotry thinking that it's necessary to provide for his family. After all he's the only one employed aside from being the eldest of five. But i lost the courage to despise him when I looked at my own family.
I saw my brother, who has a stable job but is still asking for financial support; I saw my sister, who's scared of finding a work lest our parents would stop giving us allowances; And I saw myself, who's endowed with the wisdom to discern these truths but I am immobiled by something that bothers me for quite a while now. I am guilt-stricken because I know I am not living--I do not feel alive anymore.
