THEORY PT. 6: The Diving Bell

“France it is!”

Those words flashed on my celfone screen once.

“France it is!”

Indeed.

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My desire to go abroad is a part of myself that still proves to be insatiable. Somehow that pagan instinct of our ancestors, being hunters and gatherers, is somewhat hardwired in my brain—that wanderlust. I feel it constantly. Sometimes I manage not to think about it but when it strikes, especially in unguarded moments, I’m left helpless.

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As I’ve expressed in previous posts before I have developed these mental atmospheres of foreign lands in my brain. And somehow I find myself drawn to European cities. And for as long as I don’t set foot on those faraway places, these mental images will still haunt me.

I wish it wouldn’t be like Marcel and “Phaedra”. But they would be just as I imagined them to be, even better.

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Why don’t I do something about it then?

It is true when JP tells us that, “We are not simply our facticity….”
It has always been a message of hope for me. That somehow I can choose to rise from it all. That somehow I can choose to rebel. But believing in that phrase makes you face a double-edged sword. It involves an actual struggle. And this struggle cements an obvious fact: Yes, we are simply not our facticity BUT we also cannot escape from it.

Bummer.

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When things go bad at home, school or wherever, my wishful failsafe plan has always been to escape, to London, to Paris, to Tokyo—you name it.

“Anywhere but here.”

But I’m always forced to face things head on. No matter how much I didn’t want to (no matter how cumbersome, ugly, forsaken), I am just forced to live and deal with it. There was no resthouse in Tagaytay for me, no vacation in the US, not even my own room that I claim to myself…no. All I had was a crappy shack, on a funny sounding street. Sometimes I even dreaded coming home. It depressed me to see its decaying roof and the bleached wooden exterior. Heck! It isn’t even ours.

I resented this very much when I was young. It toughened me up inside. And it made me rely on my imagination almost to a point of gross exaggeration. Books and movies helped a lot. I do not know how could I’ve managed to live without them. They offered different worldviews for me…proof that at some part of the world things were good, things were beautiful.

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This resentment I carried when I came to college.

I must say, college made me think big. It was there where I met classmates who are far different from what I’ve been used to. In elementary and highschool,my classmates and I shared a similar class background. But in Diliman I saw, I saw first hand how money could make your life roll. How affluent families had sensibilities different from my own. How my classmates who had doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects for parents grew up differently from me. And how much (I remember), I wanted a piece of it.
And so I placed all my bets on this myth of a great life after college, how the world and its prizes are mine for the taking…

I felt that the Philippines owed me a premium once I graduated. So I studied hard. Cause in this lifetime, that’s my only chance of making it big. No safety nets, no trust funds, no family business…If I blew it then I’m done for.

I got ahead of myself.

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So on the evening that I received that text message. A few months after leaving Makati…made me question my decision of giving up the dream in the first place. I couldn’t help but wonder how my cards would’ve played out if I chose to stay in Advertising…what if I actually won the prize to Cannes too?

If it happened to a close friend, why can’t it happen to me? And to France of all places!

Again, I got ahead of myself.

Sino ba ako?
Ako si Jedi, panganay na anak ng dalawang haiskul gradweyts na ginapang at sinakap nilang pagtapusin ng kolehiyo.

Hindi pa ba sapat saken yun? At nandito ako ngayon at nagrereklamo na hindi ako makabili-bili ng tiket papuntang ibang bansa para magbakasyon? Na wala silang pantustos para ipagpatuloy ko pa ang aking pag-aaral sa banyagang unibersidad? Na kailangan ko pa intindihan and food and living expenses kahit makakuha pa ako ng iskolarship?

Na kailangan kong mag-sikap, mag-ipon at magtrabaho para lamang makamit ito samantalang may mga katulad ko namang binibigay at inaalok sa kanila kahit hindi nila gusto?

Pinili ko na mag-iba ng career at dahil dito iba na ang daan na aking tinatahak. Bagama’t hindi ko alam kung kung kelan, saan, at paano may iba pang paraan para makita ang mundo.

Wala akong premium na dapat hingin.

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Up to this point in my life…I move in places that barely constitute a jeepney ride to fathom. I walked to my elementary school, I took a tricyle to highschool, and I took a jeep to college. And now that I’m working, I commute not far from my college.

So I’ve come to feel that I exist inside this bubble. Bauby’s diving bell. Where all I could do is to stare out:

And Feel that dreamy feeling when I watch a BBC reporter broadcasting from a tube station in England, seeing that bright red double-decker bus passing from behind…with the words, “the London sightseeing tour”

And feel that melancholy rush when I look up in the sky, and see a plane flying overheard, up up and away…

And feel the wave of inferiority and envy when people talk about their travels abroad.



Does the world look in?