Experience

In my mind, Cotabato City has almost become synonymous with danger. There are bombings and terrorism. Bombed buses and building are on the news bearing the name Cotabato. It has a gloomy face inside my head. Stories of priests and nuns martyred for their faith by fundamentalist Muslims in that part of mindanao tend to darken all the more this gloomy pictures that I have. Yet, I have never really been to Cotabato which leaves all my pre-conceptions of that city all hearsays.

These thoughts of Cotabato City occupied me until my family planned a visit to my father’s baptismal Godmother when my father became Catholic from being an Aglipayan. She is a Dominican Sister assigned in a hospital managed and owned by their congregation in Cotabato.

It was a 3-hour bus ride from Koronadal City with 15 minute bus stops at every terminal from Tacurong City and municipalities of Isulan and Sharif Aguak. It was a very smooth ride far from my conceptions of checkpoints managed by armies searching for rebels with the brink of an encounter between them just in hand. But, it was very different. No checkpoints only terminals, safe terminals and routes.

We arrived at Cotabato City around 10:30 in the morning and headed to the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena’s convent to pay our visit. The convent is just around the hospital they manage. I did not expect they also own a midwifery school and what surprised me is that those who patronise that school, such school managed and owned by a Catholic congregation, are young Muslim students. It was Saturday when we visited and the school is filled with students taking their NSTP with scarves in their heads.

Our next stop is to check in for a hotel room. We realized we become total strangers to such foreign city since my parents’ last visit was years ago. But, the people did not bring me back to my pre-conceptions instead proved me wrong with all that I thought about their city. People were actually ready to help giving directions which place is this and that and where to take ride.

Of course, in such a city where Muslim population dominates there is no religious destination which a Christian would interest to go instead mosques. So, what made our trip to Cotabato meaningful are the people. I met people of different creeds, not formal meeting, but on the streets and sidewalks, cabs and tricycles, stalls and restaurants experiencing their authentic way of dealing with people far from my pre-conception again of people divided due, not to their colour, but on their creed. I spoke with Bajao street kid not expecting a polite ‘Thank you’ as a sign of their gratitude. I spoke with a Muslim cab driver about the day’s fight of Manny Pacquiao. I spoke with a Christian waiter for the direction of the Lourdes Grotto. Everybody responded politely without showing indifference. Cotabato is an experience of people united though diverse.

From there I have realized the value of experience. From the language of people things are different when you yourself immerses to that fountain of reality. Language may symbolize such reality but the danger is when you fossilize it forever. I have fossilized Cotabato in relation to danger only when I melted it down again into a fresher way – a society of diversity in unity. It is actually a cradle of peaceful people very much immune to different cultures. A respectful people to whatever creed you may belong.

The problem of language confronts us everyday. It governs our daily relationships both strengthening it but mostly ruins it. We tend to express different symbols on our different experience but the connection that we could build on the other varies. So, we must realize we can never reduce everything to words. We may symbolize our experience of it but we must make it clear to the other that it is not everything that it is. We must not establish finitude. Let the other also experience it for himself. Often times we control for some other reasons without realizing that we suppress the value of experience.

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On Being

For what is being?

During one of my classes in art appreciation, I found myself being in a certain situation which made a great impact on my psychological balance and led me to sleepless nights. That was only last 13th of November 2014. We were in Doherty 112 deliberating a meeting for our project in fulfilment to that class, Art Appreciation, which is a stage play, to be presented on the next term of this semester. The leader is a Political Science senior student and is facilitating our discussion. The first part of the meeting ran smoothly. She raised her concerns and also her plans and we cheerfully participated. Jokes were even thrown. Until, when concerns from the members are asked and some raised theirs that the dark side of the discussion dawned. Harsh deliberation sparked and the whole cheerful meeting had its dark ages. The problem? Only in the level of language.

I felt very bad that my ideas were rejected just because it was not understood. Not even not understood per se but not understood only by her. I felt that sense of inferiority and thought what is happening to that class. It became as if I was in the time of the Nazis or the time of Marcos that there is no need to understand what I say but what is the only important is what her say.

On the positive side, I have another incident which I want to include here. It happened in the evening of 15th of November 2014. We are in the mall around 7 in the evening just after buying stuffs and heading the exit. My father happened to meet someone. As is usual customary, hands were exchanged for shaking. But, what is interesting to that incident was the fact that when my father extended his hands they were actually smudged with paint. Paint of different colors. My father is not a painting artist.  He was out during that morning painting in the school which happened to be where he is the Principal. I jokingly said to him: ‘As if you do not want to shake his hands, huh?’ From where I received a rebuke: ‘Why not?’

His answer actually made me bad. I felt insulted but I realized it was actually I who first insulted him with my question. That question which belittled his way. Ways which is him authentically. Ways which are the product of the life of simplicity and sense of poverty. He always asks us: ‘Never ever forget the life from where we, your father and mother, came.’

Last Nov. 10, 2014, during our first meeting in metaphysics, it was said that metaphysics is the study of ‘that’ which is and ‘is’ is is. I felt that tingling sensation thinking that it was only the beginning, what would be the next? At first hearing, I thought my professor was only emphasizing the word ‘is’ until he wrote the whole three words down on the board with broad strokes that I realized the whole three were in fact three words in themselves that corresponds to a single fragment and gives a whole definition to something that which is – being.

But, what does the two scenarios above talk about? What is the significance of those two stories to that of our first discussion? They actually talk about very same thing, which is also the topic of that subject – being. My consolation then: be ready to the unfolding of every mystery by every being.
The two stories presented to me how the great schemes of things revolve in our existence. How our being encounter another beings. From our discussion, being is that which is. Being is ‘that’ and not ‘this.’ Being as ‘that’ because being display uniqueness. Not as simply ‘this’ because it is inexhaustible. The quality of being and its interpretation does not depend on another being but in itself. It is unique. It does not depend on the other being but in itself. Being is like water, forever flowing. If it is grasped, the one trying to may wet his hands but water will forever flow. Just as being, as I try to know it I may but never exhaust it.

The two scenarios had also its common result on me feeling bad. I felt insulted but what is the problem? The problem is that on the two scenarios I tried to control being. I tried to box being up inside the context of my perspective. I tried to box everything up inside my perspective when in fact being is emanation. It is like the sun which gives light. I can only see what it shines.

At this point, being as like the sun, we can also understand it as also giving itself its own meaning and we cannot control how a being express itself. We cannot judge a being if that reacts in such a way because it is that, it is how that emanate. We cannot see something if the sun does not shine its light on it. So, if I put that the sun is the being then we cannot understand how a being sees something if that does not light it itself. In other words, we cannot put words on a being’s mouth because every being has its own light to shine over from itself. Then, every being has also its perspective. A perspective which is being’s being and the being’s perspective should be respected because to suppress it is to suppress the being’s being altogether.

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