The Stranger

The most painful thing a person can ever feel, apart from losing a loved one from a timid disease, is to lose another one from the flow of that loved one’s own thoughts, and into the land of indecision. It crushes your dreams, your hopes, the ones you thought you both had from the very start only to find out, in the middle of flailing words and sweet exchanges that it was only you dreaming these dreams, holding onto the same hopes.

While we can say that every individual has distinct aspirations and values they live by, it is hard not to hope that someday, somewhere, some angels will fly and glue those little pieces of differences over their heads  and made these into ribbon sheets of endless love stories.

Once there was a man, high-spirited, confident, the epitome of passion and self-direction.  He was not happy, but neither was he sad. He’s “just fine,” or so he said. Then came a girl, curious and stubborn, who would always ask him questions, determined to learn how she could be the self-sufficient person the man seemed to her.

I found this word somewhere—“Self-efficacy”—it means being able to do what you had set out to do, or being able to be the person you had set out to be. I should have told him this term then, because he was, to me, the walking meaning of the word.

He could be a writer, a musician, a mentor, a film director, a debater, a painter, a dog-whisperer, and many other things he set out himself to be. In the midst of what I treated a professional crisis, he smirked at my lack of plans and clear direction. He makes litany of how one idea is wasted if it is not followed through with action, how seemingly reachable goal can’t just be knocking at your door, and how I should endure and persevere until I am where I want to be. I have gotten used to watching him and listening to him intently while he tells of the hardships he had come to surpassed or the successes he sees for himself to achieve while we stand outside the platform of the MRT.

I knew right then, I was a fan. I cannot tell about myself as much as I can tell about him; what he do, what he likes doing, what his passions are. I know what makes him cry, I know what makes him smile. I can make him smile.

I know this man with all my heart. Until one night, a different guy showed up. At first I thought he was the same man. He had the same smile, the same intellect I have always admired. He strides the way my man would. He also liked strawberry and tea. Yet there was something really different about this guy. Behind his smile I could see he was in deep thought. He was seated across me but it was as if he was not there. The eyes, which used to glare with passion, were blanked. The hands which I used to hold for strength and support were fumbling over spoon and fork. The guy, who looks like the man I used to ask for decision, was not even sure what he wants for dinner. This stranger asked me what he should do with his life. I shuddered.

I don’t know what I did or did not do how the man I used to know ever get to slipped away before my eyes and be replaced by this stranger seated in front of me. I don’t know this guy— this guy who said he doesn’t know what he will do with his life. Who told me we cannot get all the things we want in life; who thinks of planning as compromise, who thinks that life is run by instinct; that love and concern will look after themselves when whims are followed first; the guy who cannot share his mind because he thinks I would not understand. I could not blame him. I really would not understand.

I wonder, at what point had this stranger could have possibly took possession of my man. I think I had been so full of myself that I did not notice my man slipping away from my fingertips. That by and by, he was losing his soul or whatever it was he used to have before, that made him so strong.

I am well aware the man I used to know was not superman. He could get hurt, frustrated, irated by little acts of negligence. But I was sure he was a man—who was not allergic to the word “plan” who thinks of others before himself, who wakes up every morning with things to accomplish and get these accomplished.  And he was not the boy who sits small in front of me, in the corner of a green couch in the upstairs of a mall, who was torn between hash brown or mashed potato.    

If ever I’ll meet with that stranger again, I will ask him to tell my man I missed him and urge him to come back home to me, and live the life we used to oversee from the cold steel grills outside the platform of the MRT.

“Someone has to be the bitch so someone else gets to be the nice one.  Someone has to be one who pushes so someone else gets to be the one to take it easy. Someone has to be driven so someone else can take their time and figure things out and follow their bliss.”

– Rise & Shine, A. Quindlen

May 26, 2014

2.37PM