A Short Essay

Of what I could gather from my elders as to how was I during my early years as a baby, they are in unison in describing me as a wailer. Inay, my grandmother as I used to call her, would pacify me by lugging me at her side, catching me by her hips, yet I still would wail incessantly as if I had seen a ghost or the small universe I perceived around me were a chaotic phantom irritating my mood. Though the earliest memory I could rummage pertaining to my childhood was my quiet attempt to distinguish which among the pair of rubber slippers in front of me corresponded to my right and left foot.

Unknowingly, these opposite qualities of my younger years would merge to define and mold me as to what I would want myself to be. Probably, the first time I wailed was not for the reason that my lampin soaked in urine made me uncomfortable, but my pristine effort to narrate the story I had dreamt of. While the silence I practiced learning how to wear my slippers foretold of the virtue I would need in order to pursue my goal of self-actualization.

Still the perception of a chaotic universe around me prevails. It remains unchanged by time, though instead of tacit wailings brought by this overwhelming observation, the need to put an order and form to this so as to appease my senses has pushed me to grab a pen and there on the blank sheet of paper I would attempt to construct an ordered universe through words, by which as a baby I wailed due to my inability to perform the task. It is during those first tries that occurred the formation of my dreams.

Though the initial concrete steps I made happened years ago during my grade-school years when instead of staring at the idiot box, like the rest of my family, I would slouch in a corner and devour reading The Reader’s Digest, illustrated Gospel books, and the book Science in Everyday Living.

These efforts, unfortunately, would come to a grinding halt when I reached my secondary schooling, putting more importance on gaining an actual experience on my immediate world by hanging out most of the time with my school buddies.

Tracing the path that I used to tread would only happen during college days. Though by that time, the previous four years that had been wasted wantonly took a heavy toll on my ability to deliver on what I should by then had learned to do: write.

It was a humbling experience then to see my contemporaries composing several pages of essays and articles while I miserably struggled to avoid getting stuck with my first sentence. Like the quiet tot I used to be then, silently discerning which is which among the pair of slippers belonged to what foot, I played low-profile, diligent and with the determination of ten bulls reading contemporary works of master storytellers like those from Latin America who grow dinosaurs from iguanas.

Now, a decade after I left the university, the education continues, excruciatingly slow at some point in time but not as slow as a snail in tranquilizers. That path is rough and a challenging one which I expected from the very start.

Nevertheless, my wailings has metamorphosed into a decent reconstruction of the universe around me with deft combination of words. The wailing I only have to do now is how to find someone who would be willing to pay me work on something I love to do.