Beaten and Eaten by the System
I re - read the comments on my friendster profile and I discovered that I’ve changed a great deal since I graduated from UP and joined the Philippine work force. In these comments, I was almost always described with the following words: quiet, mabait and patient, simple and contented.
I feel that after five years I’m a far cry from the girl they knew back in school.
I’m not quiet anymore. I’ve learned the need to punctuate myself as much as possible. It’s my way to hold my ground and only by expressing myself audibly do I get the satisfaction of feeling the importance of my ideas and views. I used to be painfully quiet because I was shy and/or I simply did not feel the need to verbalize myself, I was completely happy hiding behind the shadows of my friends and family. all this changed when I went through higher education and realized that I need to speak, if only just to be able to feel that I am alive and I matter somehow.
Spoken words became my means to be felt by the people around me and for them to feel what I feel towards them. Yet, during my speaking days I still longed for the silence I used to have, I miss that girl who would just sit in the corner and though she’s alone she’s not lonely. I was independent that way, just give me a book and I can leave the cares of the world behind.
I’m not mabait and patient anymore. At least not the way I was known for. Makati’s fast phased lifestyle, my work’s by the minute measurement of my worth and the million things I wished I’d be able to do before I hit 30 have all caught up with me. It made me restless and anxious, I had little patience over everything and I snap at everyone. I don’t even have patience with miniscule things like opening the box of cereal or falling in line in a restaurant where the waiters/waitresses seem to be in slow motion (they are in fact in just the right speed). Patience was my virtue before, not it’s a prehistoric artifact in my life.
I’m not simple and contented anymore. After five years of working and consequently earning, I’ve forgotten one very important lesson my parents taught me: simplicity and contentment. Ten years ago I was happy and plain, I had no material possessions and I had no money in my pockets. I go through my daily life with just enough and I didn’t bitch about it. I was fine penniless but peaceful. Some friends even called me the vagabond because there was a point in my life when I was extremely detached from worldly stuff. I was free and I would love to feel that detachment and freedom again. Sadly though after five years I was beaten by the system of wants, and after another five years I was finally eaten whole by it. Contentment is a very tricky virtue to master, it takes a lot of guts to make do with just the things that are necessary and let go of the things that are wanted.
It will take an awfully long time to undo the mistakes of the past ten years. I can blame the system, the environment, even the people around me on why I lost who I was, but in the end there’s really no one else to blame but myself. I let go of my virtues in exchange for this life of pleasure and gains. I was the one who embraced the faulty philosophy of hedonistic lifestyle. I wasn’t beaten by the system, I surrendered… I wasn’t eaten, I jumped right inside it’s mouth.
I need to retreat and retrace my steps, maybe I might find myself along the way.
