The Heart of the Problem

I'm nearing thirty-five, older but none the wiser. In retrospect, I guess I made more bad decisions than good ones. I took a college degree that holds little assurance of landing a stable career. A few years after that, I attended law school, only to stop for financial reasons, flushing down the drain three years of daily mental gymnastics. I took odd jobs in the interim, most of which involved pushing pen on paper, apart from the one where I answered phone calls and spoke to people from halfway around the world, the diversity of their accents ranging from anywhere between the bizarre to the impossible. Some other work opportunities I skipped for reasons I can no longer recall. Then, one day, I gave up on writing. And so I found myself in a fixed rut, ever so consistent the way the night follows the day, barely able to claw my way out, only to find myself regressing to a position far worse than where I began. Something was wrong.

Many times I have tried to diagnose this affliction that has been leeching the life out of me, to give it the name that it is missing, because to fight a nameless foe, let alone one that has taken control of the battlefield that is my sanity, a precarious terrain for a protracted siege waged at the behest of a war that, by all indications thus far, will hardly be won, is to swing your fists in the dark. The symptoms were everywhere, but the sickness hid elsewhere.

I guess the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.

Follow your heart, people say time and again, probably unaware that you can only follow that which is ahead of you. There is a sense of implied detachment there, a separation demanding to be closed out, oftentimes made familiar by that feeling of pursuit, an impulse to zip the gap, birthing a chase that can be unforgiving. Maybe I tried to follow my heart during the many occasions where the road forked. Decisions had to be made, and I trailed the path that my heart has carved before my feet. Yet my heart might have been out of place, meandering so far out, so distanced and equally confused in its insolence, that whatever I did back then my heart was not into any of it, precisely because my heart was elsewhere. I had my eyes scoping out the place where I thought my heart was, all the while neglecting the task at hand, oftentimes literally.

But if it is worth anything, I dreamed of dreams in those same years, dreams that anchored my feet closer to the ground, a temporary reconciliation of heaven and earth for airborne Icarus, reminding me that there can still be certain yearnings even during a time riddled with uncertainties, or precisely because of it.

I dreamed of having children one day, of driving them to school and of fetching them. I can imagine myself taking them for a quick detour to a nearby food stall, and treating them to a snack they fancy before we head home. I dreamed of putting them to bed at night, of telling them stories, sometimes real, other times imagined, planting the seeds of their dreams as I watch over them gently fall asleep, their eyes half-open in a final act of resistance before submitting to the call of the moon and the stars. By daybreak, I'll be cooking breakfast for them, setting the table and serving their food on their plates as they make their way downstairs, their voices in a sleepy chorus calling out to me through the morning sunshine, "Papa, I had a dream!"

"Do tell my loves," I'd say as I hold them close to my paunch, stooping to plant my lips on their forehead. "But go kiss your mama first," I'd whisper. And off they'd go.

I also dreamed of being a lawyer on weekdays, a sedentary job that will foot the bills, and a busker blues musician on Friday and Saturday evenings, a bohemic pursuit that will tour me around the metropolis. Mondays through Fridays I'd be astir with clerical tasks in a cubicle, a legal serf ensconced in his little manor of three wooden partitions, etching his legacy one notarized document at a time, and other meetings and paperwork that require nothing more than legalese. On rare occasions I'd appear in court before a judge, wearing a suit and armed with the formalities that legal proceedings demand, and by the end of every Friday I'd be off to busk, guitar case in tow. In front of strangers walking hither and thither, I'd play the music that has helped me tide the rough times. Some would pause to observe the performance of this nondescript blues musician, dropping coins in my guitar case before walking away, never to be seen again, like penance for a sin they did not do, but which they have to pay for anyway before they disappear, much like how legal cases go in this country.

And then there's the dream of publishing a novel. At night when the family is sleeping soundly, I'd devote an hour or two to writing, to make the story move, or fly, so that one day it will see print and find home in a friend or stranger's bookshelf, its pages visibly ageing after having been read many times from cover to cover before settling in its spot with finality to gather dust.

The door creeks open. "You're writing again Papa?" my youngest would ask, rubbing her eyes with her fingers while squinting, walking to where I sat by the desk, a lamp revealing sheets of paper and a pen in the dark. She would sit on my lap, her sleepy face on my chest. I could feel the gentle breathing of the little one.

"Papa will soon be finished with this for tonight," I'd tell her, like those many other nights. She would fall asleep. I'd write a few more lines before carrying my daughter back to her room, the thought of completing the novel tugging at my heart with the same firmness as the way the little one would clutch my shoulders as we made our way upstairs. I'd tuck her to bed, then gaze at the distant stars outside the window before closing the door.

But I feel that I am grasping at straws each time I conjure those images in my mind. Social media offers no reassuring hand either, one that could hopefully save a man from drowning. I am genuinely happy for the accomplishments of my friends, seeing them advertize their life triumphs with such calculated pageantry in our tiny virtual sphere, like bright sparks that recede quickly into the darkness before one could make out where they came from. I smile at the thought of them fulfilling their desires, especially at such a time when many things, even the trivial ones, have become so restricted that dreaming might as well be considered a crime. Yet I cannot help but wish that somehow, in some way, the universe would also conspire to make things in my life fall into their proper place so that maybe one day I, too, can share even just one blinking feat in that vast mural. By then I can finally say that I made my parents proud, or at least I tried to, if only for a moment.

I'm nearing thirty-five, older but none the wiser. Where my heart is at this moment, I know not.