My Birthday Me-Day

I remember my childhood and teen years as a very long episode in my life. And I remember them quite vividly: the street games, the aratiles tree, the scary old neighbor, and especially the "Broom-Of-Doom" my mother used to hit my butt with after some misbehaving.

The communication boom happened during my late college years and after that, life just kept on getting faster and faster, shorter and shorter, and the memories of the years that followed became hazier. We, urban people, now spend a huge part of our waking hours looking at screens - cellphone screens, computer screens, TV screens - and when we look at the real world, we are not really seeing it - we are too busy thinking about something else. The ease of communication made us use more of our time and attention to and for others. By the time I place my full attention back to myself, I realize I'm 31 years old.

Out on a whim, I decided that I would have some time off from the cookie-cutter lifestyle and just experience life as I wanted it (considering the time and budget of course). This means backpacking around the city and going to wherever my curiosity leads me. I only had the weekend and a 2-day office leave for it, and I wanted to experience it to the full. And the only way to do that was to ditch the cellphone. It's astonishing how hard it was to depart from this little object, considering that I have lived more than 21 years of my life without having one.

The mini-adventure was difficult and lonely at first but I was really enjoying it after a while. I ended up having too many pictures of food since I really didn't want to take out my camera as much as possible when I was travelling. But I had a notebook where I would write down things that I learned from my journeys. I spent the first day walking around visiting memorable places; and the rest of the days for self-pampering and meditation. A few hours were spent just sitting in restaurants. I couldn't help myself from observing the people in the streets walking by, wondering where they were going, what they were thinking, and how they're living their lives. And sometimes I would look at the surroundings: the trees, the buildings, the birds and the sky, until everything and everyone would seem like tiny electrons, going around and bumping each other occasionally, in this molecule called Earth.

The Earth and  the stars seem no different from the people in the streets: however we'd like to believe that we were born with free will, everyone is ultimately helpless against all these going to-and-fro. It is the nature of nature: everything must move and change, or else will cease to exist. In the early days of my life as Christian, I just watched the eternal dance of Nature. Now as Pagan, I must learn the steps myself.

Mabon: The point of celebrating Sabbats is change. But this time I wanted a bigger change, so I downloaded some life audit questionnaire to guide me through. It may seem a bit too Oprah, but this was really helpful and made me think hard. The cards were there to help me for some of the vaguer questions. There were no ceremonies in this ritual; just a heart-to-heart talk with Me. And there is no New Agey "just think positive and everything will be better" here. It's all about looking at life as it really is. It is tough to know yourself, but when you do succeed, it's like meeting an old friend again.

Book and breakfast at Fully Booked: The only non-consumable thing that I bought for myself was this compilation of Taoist classics translated by Thomas Cleary. What I really wanted here was a printed copy of the Chuang Tzu, and a decent translation of the Wen Tzu . The Tao Te Ching and the other two works are an added bonus.

Basbasan Nawa!

Posted in: watery reflections