Even though we didn't run in the same circles in school, I was saddened. Maybe not overwhelmingly so, but upon hearing the news, I felt the loss of the great friend, the great brother, basically the great guy that he must have been to his loved ones. I can only imagine, though, the magnitude of anguish his passing away must be to the people who knew him more closely.
*****
Get rid of the judgment, get rid of the 'I am hurt,' you are rid of the hurt itself. - Marcus Aurelius
A week after news of the Glorietta 2 incident hit me like a ton of bricks (no pun intended), I find myself still floundering in a haze of numbness. At first, I couldn't fathom how it could happen almost right in my backyard. Glorietta was the wealthy next-door neighbor's sandbox; it was the playpen for ultimate squatters like me. If I wasn't kicking away at corporeal doldrums in Pasig or trying to get high on burned Nike rubber in Legaspi Village, I could invariably be found making a nuisance of the mallrat experience at good ol’ Glorietta. I was the Great Loiterer. Glorietta to me was the sweet escape that was my second home.
So to be sure, to say it came as a surprise when I first found out about the unfortunate incident from an officemate is a total understatement. It happened around 1:40pm. People were just coming back from their leisurely lunches and what-have-you. Such normalness, such everydayness, and then some of these people's lives are inordinately changed for good. These things you never see coming, but for the loved ones of those who passed away--and for those who lived to tell the tale--the ravage is the ultimate testament to this natural truth.
In the immediate aftermath, I thought about my friends and my loved ones. Having never personally experienced anything like it, I could not picture the scope of the devastation. Rather, my thoughts mostly revolved around the fleetingness of life. What things we take so easily for granted. I thought about how eenie-meenie-minie-moeish it all seemed, how in the blink of an eye all that you hold dear could so whimsically be snatched away. You play the game of life fair and square, and still you have no say in the hand you are dealt. If you get unlucky, you roll with it. Or rather, as would be more apt in this case, you roll over. If you do get lucky, you're afforded time to think about what it could all possibly mean.
I know it wasn't the right way to think, but it was the way I tried to get my mind around it. I became quite apprehensive of the possible scenarios that sprung up in my head. The Dos, the Don'ts, the Maybes. What did it all mean? Should I? Do I want to? If I do it, will it matter? I'm hopelessly hard-headed, so my parents used to tell me growing up. Better that than being hard-hearted, I guess. Then again, I can't very well say I got the Miss Care Bear Award in the bag.
Lest I be further encumbered with such glum realizations, I had to log off from existentialist mode. I thought I was getting back to warm and toasty ground. My mistake. Proceeding from a deductive frame of mind, I thought about what was really pressing at the core of the current tragedy--my own "What If." Was I not supposed to be there, right in the heart of pandemonium, right smack at the moment of utter finality?
On account of work, I had a personal errand that had been extended for days. The venue of intention? Glorietta 2, no other. Timing? Same damn time as the incident. At the back of my head, the notion that I could have been there churned out little bubbles of queasiness that I couldn't just chase away. If I hadn't gotten all lazy-ass and chucked my errand out the window in favor of getting bum burns from sitting down in front of the PC and pushing keys per usual, I might have just gone ka-blam along with all the others. It was so simple--to go or not to go--that I can't believe it could have been the end of me. I hope this doesn't grab you the wrong way. I hate sounding like it's all about me, me, me. It isn't. Because I don't know what I would do if I was faced with the possibility of never seeing my loved ones again. Of course, it's still selfish. There's just no getting around it.
I had to stop right after that. I let the thoughts go, at least at first. I didn't want to have to keep thinking about the all-consuming possibility of death. Of loss. Of eternal non-recurrence. Doggone it. In times like these, I hate thinking. I hate having to feel more than is socially called for. Times like these, it's far easier to pull a Keanu and be the face of modern-day stoicism, of numbness. Unlike the Stoics of old, I don’t see why I have to abide by what’s right all the time. I hate coming to the right conclusions. I hate having to do the right thing. I hate it.
Duh. Writing this now, what I must do is slowly unraveling, and I might just come to the conclusion that the truth of these realizations is inescapable. Just as with death.
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