The river of life

"By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
Genesis 3:19

My memories flew back to the past when Roxanne sent me a message on Face Book early this week. Raxanne is a daughter of Primo Eniong, the husband of a distant cousin. She is now in Florida in the United States and saw my Face Book account when she searched for some long-lost relatives. Through her, I was able to contact Primo Eniong after more than two decades without any communication.
I first met Primo Eniong when a mutual friend recruited us to help run a newsletter during a Boy Scout Jamboree in a place called Mat-i in Romblon, a province in the heart of the Philippines. He was a teacher who was good at writing. At that time, I had just left the university and had decided to stay in Romblon for a rest after having contracted tuberculosis in the city.
I remember Primo Eniong as a jolly guy who would immediately engage you in a conversation as soon as you shook hands. Although I was the silent type prone to smiling than talking, I felt that he was a long-time acquaintance. We struck a fraternal bond, despite our age gap.
The moment we were introduced I instantly called him Iniong, a nickname for Eugenio. I added the appendage primo to his nickname when I learned later that he was the husband of a cousin, though a distant one. Primo is a Spanish word for a he-cousin, a tell-tale clue that the Philippines was once a colony of Spain.
We crossed path once again when he moved to Manila with his family to work as a writer for the Ministry of Information. I was already working for a newspaper then. Since we lived near each other, I often visited him in their rented apartment where we often talked about our jobs and daily lives over a few bottles of beer, but never about migrating to another country. Our occasional rendezvous ended when I moved to a new place far from where they lived.
Our latest meeting, this time in cyberspace, gives me a sense of disquiet to think that life is transient, fickle and fleeting that before we realize it we are already in the twilight years of our lives. Primo Eniong, who was in his 40s when we were in Manila, is now 75 and has retired in Canada without my cousin, Prima Nesia, also a teacher who died back home more than a decade ago.
Beyond the memories of Primo Eniong I could look back to the small village where I grew up in Romblon and where life was quite rustic. This makes me ponder about life as a river so calm on the shore but becomes turbulent and uncertain as we go mainstream. It's a river that won't allow us to go back to the past, however you wish to when the going gets rough, because you are ordained to finish the journey home.

Life's driving force called passion

A Filipino who lives in the same building as ours has a passion for tinkering with his car. Everyday I would see him either adding decorative paintings or fixing something.
Once, when my wife and I saw him fixing his car, my better-half blurted out a side comment: "I don't understand this guy, there's seems not a day in his life that he does not do something with his car."
"It's a passion. Things that we love to do but don't know why," I told her. "It's just like my passion for writing."
"But you are a journalist so you have to write," she retorted.
"I do some blogging which is not part of my job," I said.
I cited blogging purposely because it's my passion that she always complains about, saying that I could have used the time I spent for blooging to take some rest or do other productive endeavors.
I kept on telling her that blogging is some sort of theraphy after a week's work that is focused more on the technical side of journalism - layouting that does not interest me much, editing, rewriting or writing stories that you don't like to write.
Journalism, which I enjoyed when I was young, has become a job. I remember Filipino consul Jose Jacob once telling me when he was still assigned here in Jeddah that our job becomes work when we lost the passion for it.
I forget my job and the world when I start blogging, pouring in my ideas into words, a passion that goes back to my high school days when I used to write verses that I passed on for poetry or love letters I slipped into the books and notebooks of the girls in our class and relished their wondering on who the letter writer could be.
My late cousin, an engineer, once dubbed me crazy for using the dictionary in writing love letters to the village lasses who had not even reached the primary grades during the summer school breaks. I shrugged off his comment because I was not really interested with the girls but with the wonders of playing with words that seemed to beat with the rythm of my life.
Having cast my eyes to a career in engineering, I had never thought that my passion for writing could lead me to journalism. Call it destiny but I dropped my dream to become an engineer when I realized that, as a working student, the course was too expensive and I couldn't afford to buy even a slide rule.
While many people find fame and fortune out of their passion - Newton, Einstein, the Wright brothers, Shakespeare and an endless array of names that we cannot count with our fingers and toes - I don't expect much out of my blogging. Yes, I do entertain possibilities that it may give me some passive income later on but until then I have learned to leave such cares to fate.
Passion, which is closely tied to our search for self-gratification, is one of life's mysteries that drive us to keep on going through the doldrums of daily living. It's an anathema to reason that assures us that we are more than atoms.


Please see my other blog Fun in Life salt-funstories.blogspot.com

Religion, like life, is better lived than debated

I followed with amusement an online debate on religion at the webpage of the Worldwide Filipino Alliance. I had lost track of it when I went on vacation in the Philippines and a tour in Hong Kong and Shenzen in China. Back from my vacation, I was amazed to find out that the debate is still on.
Personally, I have no appetite for a debate on religion which has been going on for a long time but has gone nowhere. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had predicted that Christianity would have been gone a hundred years from his time but the religion is still very much around.
Erstwhile unknown neuroscientist Sam Harris shot to fame with his books "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" but his popularity loses steam after the initial fervor for his tomes waned. Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author of the bestseller "God Delusion," has stopped debating with the theists.
Despite the advances science has achieved since Copernicus had disproved the Church's belief that the sun revolves around the earth, most people have not abandoned the faith. It's simple because spirituality has been part of human existence.
Darwinists believe that religion is a byproduct of human evolution. Anthropologists like Barbara King, for instance, argue that the religious mind developed in keeping with the growth of the hominid brain that tripled in size at its peak about 500,000 years ago.
Darwin's theory of evolution has undoubtedly made a big crack on the religious belief that Adam and Eve are the descendants of the human race but has not stopped people from their spiritual pursuits. Materialist science has breed such movements as theosophy, a mix of theology and philosophy, and intelligent design, a movement led by scientists who believe that human evolution is guided by divine hands.
This is because science has its own shortcomings. Darwin's theory of evolution has not given an adequate answer to questions like why do birds have wings, spiders have eight legs while some animals have four. Neuroscience, which has been trying to prove that the soul is an illusion created in the brain, has been stuck in the problem of qualla or people's subjective experiences.
Every discovery that science has made has always been followed by more questions that continue to beg for answers. Science has discovered black holes and dark energy but has no explanation on why they are there and what role do they play in the whole cosmic scheme. Science is an infant being bedazzled by life's mysteries.
Debate on religion often brings animosity. In the debate at the WFA website, some atheists call the creationists morons as if they have the monopoly of the human intellect or wisdom. Throughout the debate, both sides traded insults.
Religion is a sensitive issue that, despite our claim to reason, would draw out our emotion. Until we find the elusive "absolute truth", our faith is better lived or practiced than being debated. Our belief or disbelief is but a product of our individual experiences.
My poltergeist experience (please see my previous blog The Poltergeist Mystery), the strength and peace of mind I draw from my Faith, our intuitive mind and life's uncertainties always remind me that there's more to life than what science and human reason can offer.

Please visit my other blog Fun in Life at salt-funstories.blogspot.com