It always amazes me how a few words can change a person’s perspective. It’s like casting a spell over one unsuspecting; it takes you in an instant, a sudden tolling of things, without deliberation or hesitation. During lunch, I grab a packet of salt and sprinkled the tiny bits over my one-day meal. The food is salty, but never bland. Words are like that; they add flavor, these little things. These little bombs.
Twenty years ago, I sat on a plastic chair, raised my knees, arched my backs and wrote on a journal. I have books lying around my cabinet, waiting for that much-awaited reopening. But who reads old diaries? Not me. I don’t have the time. We don’t have the leisure of looking back. All of us must be busy running forward. The little girl in me, who has always been writing to the woman in the future, has been past shut in the pages, splintered into small flaps, fading into a gray image of forgotten nostalgia.
Sometimes, I go back to those pages, reminding me that my train has long been far off, and that whatever I tried to walk before, I have ran in a thousand miles. Cue Vanessa Carlton song. I can still remember the little plate of mango jam I spoon for dessert. The books where I first wrote my old stories are probably burned, or rotted as fertilizer, as paper always comes back to the ground like a home.
Yesterday, I skimmed through Facebook like a true, quiet ninja—trying to be anti-social with social media. Fingers swipe up, and the feeling is like browsing through folders of human profiles, with content spilling without the need of it. Too much information. Less of inspiration. Until this:
Instead of wondering where your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
— Seth Godin
The entire 11 months of this year was spent in me trying to find ways to get out of this room, and on the 12th month, I slammed that door shut. My ideas were childish, dumb and preposterous. For 29 years, I have been filled with selfish wanting of gaining things for myself in so little time. Now, on my 30th year, time has revealed to me a lesson of thinking otherwise: a future to be built.
I used to draw about paper planes and paper boats and I think the real joy about them is that I built them with my own hands. Fold it in squares. Fold it the opposite way. Overlap each triangle and then open it up for the sail to appear. It’s a child’s play.
Today, my heart is filled with the desire of creating something with my own hands. I have been living with nothing but literally, these two stems, but I want it to grow. I want it to be filled with many more hands and hundreds of fingers. That life is not all about what I can produce, but what I can start.
In the coming years, I want to start. I want to build. A home for me to stay, a workplace for me to bloom. Oh, the excitement—there are many opportunities to grow, as long as I set my priorities straight. Like making a grocery list and ticking off the most important parts. I don’t have to be alone, although of course, I want to have the freedom to be, because I dwell in a big, roomy space of my own. I want to do different things at the same time; to juggle different kinds of stress, and push my body and heart and soul to the limits, because as far as I know it, there is none.
This is such a wake up call for me. Quote pulled from @nomadmanager‘s post. LOL at me dropping ‘datung’. pic.twitter.com/5Ojq7bmvUl
— Caris Cruz (@hellocaris) December 3, 2015
Caris Daily. The daily grace by Caris Cruz
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