– gem –
(Bonifacio Heights – photo by @megnaika)
I started reading the book one night when I couldn’t find anything else to do because I was once again running away from the guilt of not doing my homework or studying my notes for Accounting class. I realized I had kept a few E-books on my laptop for which I had yet to find time to read and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to start off.
I’m not much of a reader these days because I’ve had enough bad experience of being disappointed with dragging pointless stories. “Looking for Alaska” is different though. I know it’s one of those books I’ll always be reminded of simply because it is very philosophical but not a heavy read at all.
So I was stuck contemplating on a quote (which can be found on the 151st page) after I finished the story. It struck me because it made me figure out why I have been feeling quite miserable over the past few months.
“He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumi’s note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”
There’s one word used in the phrase highlighted in bold letters that caught my eye – one word used in two tenses. Forgive; forgave.
The bitter person that I am now is the product of the number of events in my past that left my heart broken in pieces. They’re not just wounds as I thought they were before. Now I figured out that wounds would heal but pieces would take a lot more effort to be whole again. Someone or something would have to do the gritty work of piecing it back together. I realized that it would have been easier to mend it if I wasn’t so stubborn and played victim all the time. Yes, I was the victim but no one else could heal me but myself. I was the patient and the doctor both at the same time.
Mistakes could be forgiven because it’s us who commit them and we are only humans. We make mistakes and we do the wrong things and sometimes it leads to hurting someone we do not intend to hurt in the first place. But these things happen whether or not we try to be a 100 and 1% cautious in our actions. And as Alaska questioned in the paper she turned in for their Religion Class, quoted from Simon Bolivar, the character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel The General in His Labyrinth, “‘How will I ever get out of this labyrinth’— of suffering?”
I believe that there’s never really such a thing as suffering. I think it’s this in between that we make up at the back of our heads because we cannot find our way to solid ground. Suffering can only be felt if we let it envelope us. It’s like a pitfall that’s waiting under the cracks. I must admit that I caused myself to be stuck in this “suffering” over the past months because I couldn’t take the fact that people I care about made mistakes and I could not bear absolve them for what they did to me. I was never aware of their reasons, of the whys and hows and I guess it was that that made everything more difficult. What made it worse is how I tried to find explanations that would help justify their actions hoping that doing so would make it less unbearable.
Now I understand that sometimes we don’t need a reason to play even with the pain.
And though what I’m about to do is not easy, I will swallow my pride and forget my bitterness and forgive my dad for leaving us for another woman, forgive the first guy I loved deeply for breaking my heart, forgive a close friend for betraying me and lastly, I forgive myself for causing this misery to drag on for too long.
Finally, after a long time I am accepting the existence of forgiveness because life can end in a split-second and I don’t want to be robbed of the opportunity to give peace to others and be at peace with myself.