I SHOULD GET A LIFE

When I was a kid, whenever a block of Lego was missing from my Lego box, I pray. I’ll stay still for a minute, clench my hands, look up to the skies through our dirty white ceiling, and ask for help and guidance. I’ll continue my search, and eventually I’ll be able to find the missing piece— and it was enough proof for my childish mind that there is, in fact, a God. I held on to this belief until eventually a piercing gaze into the heavens and clenched hands were no longer enough; the missing pieces stayed missing— what is lost stayed lost. It was then that my “there is” changed into a “there might be.” 

Siddharta Gautama was enclosed within a sterile bubble until the four great sightings pricked his bubble—the world as he knew it— to burst. My bubble burst at an early age. It dawned to me that the people who struggled so hard to protect me was as vulnerable to suffering as I am. The rope that kept me from falling then turned into an eel that suddenly escaped my grasp. It was then that I realized that a glass shield is as good as having no shield at all, that it is better to be insecure than to feign security only to be hit by devastation when my guard is at its lowest. It was then that the traces of negativity within me that I’m struggling so hard to rid myself came to life. Perhaps I was too young then to have my bubble burst, too young to handle the realization that; although a bubble separates me from suffering, it is still just a mere bubble that can burst from the slightest of pricks. And in this world full of pricks, a bubble is never something that can provide genuine security. I was perhaps too young to end up under a Bo tree and figure out life as did the Buddha. My four great sightings did not lead me towards the light, instead, it led me into abyss. Apparently, no kid is Bodhisattva material. And so my quest to find the missing piece continued.

I was never a religious person; the ceremonies, the rituals, the singing, and the dogmatic tone of priests confused me long before I knew the word dogma. But in spite of these, I once believed that I was certain that God exists and that the eccentric practices of the church were gestures of respect. I don’t find attending mass necessary; I believed that a relationship with God was ultimately personal. But as my “there is” turned into a “there might be,” little by little, my personal relationship with God was taken into the back seat. But then I was introduced to the scholastics, specifically to Thomas Aquinas’s five ways, I considered the idea that maybe —just maybe— God was the missing piece, that maybe God can provide the genuine security I was looking for, that maybe a bubble under God’s grace can be stronger than steel. I was very fond of Thomas Aquinas’s thoughts when I was just starting with philosophy. I was under the delusion that grand narratives are possible. Then my dilemma about free will consumed what was left of my faith. Jean-Paul Sartre turned my “there might be” into a “there might not be.”

As Richard Dawkins put it, I became an intellectual coward. In principle, I am an agnostic because I currently think that a validation concerning the existence or non-existence of God is impossible to attain. But in practice, I am living under the assumption that there is no grand narrative, that existence precedes essence, that life is absurd. Ironically though, I’m no longer haunted by my insecurities. I’m finally starting to realize that I am bound to be incomplete and that there will always be a missing piece as long as I have it in me to search for it. Happiness and purpose is just a word that defines the pleasures and the things that we are meaning to accomplish. Every day will always be a struggle. The pleasures in life will always be temporary, and likewise so will suffering. For the longest time I was under the bias that pleasure does not last, that ultimately, our status quo as human beings is suffering. I forced my self to embrace pain and reject any sort of pleasure, I gave up on happiness. I failed to notice that suffering, like pleasure, is also temporary. That, as Heraclitus phrased it, everything is in a constant state of flux; Nothing is permanent. The world might be absurd; we might be trapped in samsara, but unlike the Indians, I no longer have the desire to break away from this vicious cycle of life and death. I have reached the conclusion that, although the world has no ultimate meaning and that I will live a life that can be happy or sad at any given moment, I just have to learn to deal with whatever comes my way — to embrace both the blade that stabs me in the gut and the delicious meal after surviving such ordeal. 

I am now secure in my insecurities.