“Soon I will get back to the life I paused.”
DUMAGUETE CITY – This column comes out on my last morning in this gentle city, ready to board a Manila-bound plane in the late afternoon. I spent the past two weeks here as a fellow of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop. It is only now, when I am a year shy of 50, that I am able to return to what has been an aspiration since college days.
I already had great expectations of the workshop because of its prestige and its 63-year history, especially its role in shaping Filipino writers from all over the country. But the actual experience of coming here far exceeded these expectations, and in ways I never imagined.
My eight companions and I live in an old house that could easily pass for haunted, given its appearance and its age. I share a room with a girl and we have agreed to keep the lights on at night, in the hopes it would lessen the likelihood of any otherworldly episodes. After many days, however, even the strangeness has come to seem…familiar.
We refer to our residence as “cottage” or “dorm.” Here, too, I realize, this is what dorm life is about. I have always wondered what it was like to be “just” a student, living on your own and trying to relate with your peers. The meals are ready and you just have to show up. Make sure you are never late for the sessions. Read to get a sense of the pieces assigned, and then read again, this time, closely. Like a good student, participate in the sessions. Listen to the greats. And when your work is discussed, be amazed at how other people spent time and effort going into your world, caring enough to comment on what you created.
Take them all in – the praises and the criticism – with humility and grace.
As the days passed I found myself forgetting the life I paused back in QC. That life was crazy – plenty of work and personal/ domestic concerns. I work from home but it is precisely because of this that boundaries are easily blurred. Aside from teaching, I write for a living. Projects and deadlines loom large in my head. I sometimes fall asleep only to wake up at dawn with a jolt – acknowledging that there is yet another thing I have not yet done, even as I struggle to remember what that something is.
Fortunately, I did not leave children behind. My kids are no longer that – they are adults that could very well survive without me. I have to put my trust in the way that I brought them up, so that they are now able to fend for themselves, find meaning in what they do, and most especially to be kind to each other and to others. Mercifully they left me alone, not updating me what they are up to every minute, except to throw in the occasional “how are you?” or “we miss you” or share the obligatory meme. There was also one instance when one of them happened to be here and treated me to a nice Father’s Day dinner. Here I am just another fellow, the second-oldest in a group composed mostly of thirty somethings (our youngest fellow is my older son’s age) but I feel neither ascendancy or insecurity because of how old I am.
Back home, I was anxious because of my health, always mindful of when I should see doctors and what medicines I need to take. I was restricting myself from eating things that give me too much joy. Here, while I am mindful of the hours I need to take my medicine, I mostly live in moderation. I try to halve everything I eat – quite a simple, but not always a doable – formula. We do a lot of walking anyway. I find that I do not need to aspire to a long life as much as I need to live a life of meaning, hoping to make a difference for others.
It’s easy to fall into stereotypes for writers. But living with so many of them, being in constant interaction with writers for two full weeks, has shown me that people are different as much as they are the same. This acknowledgment gives me the capacity to be more accepting, yes, but to also be firm with boundaries.
The interlude is ending; soon I will get back to the life I paused. I return much humbled, with a renewed sense of purpose and a stronger commitment to do what I feel I was born to do.
adellechua@gmail.com
