Thirsty for Manila

It takes a strong stomach and a steely gut to love Manila. Even then, you have to take small sips at spaced intervals to build your resistance. Because if you take it in all at once, Manila will overpower your senses, knocking you unconscious until the morning after when you’ll find yourself hurling over the toilet bowl and swearing you’ll never ever drink again as long as there’s breath in your hungover body.

Unlike Boracay, Manila is not a dainty glass of margarita topped by a tiny umbrella. Manila is that dark drink in a plain lowball glass, a pungent concoction of spirits that have no business being mixed with each other. It’s the one served to you by the bartender with a devilish smile on his face. Ask him what’s in it, and he’d only say, “You wouldn’t want to know.”

But you do. Out of curiosity, you sneak a peek at the labels of discarded bottles.

Vintage 400 years, says one label.
Fermented in American and Spanish distilleries, says another.
There are a couple more, written in Chinese and Japanese characters you can’t decipher.

The bartender catches you and says, “Some things are meant to be experienced, not learned. Just drink it.”

Shedding Schadenfreude

“Misery loves company,” as a saying in English goes. The Germans, being who they are, took it up a notch further by calling it for what it really is with the word Schadenfreude, which means “pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.” Then, there’s famous American author Gore Vidal, who candidly once said, “Every time a friend of mine succeeds, a little part of me dies.”

Don’t even attempt to pretend that you don’t know that feeling. When you’re all alone with your thoughts, envy is more than happy to keep you company. Maybe you’re good at fighting it off most of the time, maybe even better than everyone else, but you’re not immune to it. It’s the tiny voice whispering inside your head and that niggling feeling scratching away at your heart.

The worse part is, once you start to feel that you’re anything less than happy for other people, the guilt creeps in. A part of you dies in the way Gore Vidal said, yet you end up having to feel bad about that. Guilt makes everything so much more complicated. It won’t let you have the luxury of wallowing in your own misery. Soon, you’re just a confused mess of emotions, seesawing between bitterness and acceptance.

You remind yourself of the word mudita, which is the Buddhist term for “the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being rather than begrudging it.” Under your breath, you mutter “mudita, mudita, mudita” over and over again, clinging to it like a lifeline. But alas, you are far from being enlightened enough not to stray from the straight path. Schadenfreude’s pull is much too strong and it wins this round. And the next one. And the one after that, too.

You find it hard to sit back and be the viewer all the time while everyone else gets to be the lead actor in their lives. People keep reassuring you with “Coming soon!” and “Next attraction!” but somehow your movie never gets to “Now showing.” Sometimes, you think that maybe, you’re not meant to be the protagonist, that you’re just meant to be a supporting character. Or maybe, you’re nothing more than just an extra — not meant to do anything else than fill an otherwise empty background. You shudder at the horrific thought, but you wonder if there’s any chance it might be true.

I wish I could tell you that what you think is not true. I wish I could tell you that everything would be okay. But I can’t, because like you, I don’t know the answers to your questions, which happen to be the same as mine, too. The best I can do for you is to be an added voice to your pleas. Maybe, if we ask together, shouting at the top of our lungs, we can be heard and finally get an answer. Maybe, if we wait long enough, as patient as we can be, something’s got to give. Maybe.

For now, while we’re waiting, grab the popcorn and I’ll get the drinks. Let’s put our 3D glasses on, sit back, relax, and enjoy a movie or two — maybe even several. Might as well have fun with this, don’t you think?

The Running Hourglass

With age comes loss — loss of beauty, health, vitality, agility, hopes and dreams. That’s why growing old is scary. The longer you stay here on earth, the more you have to lose.But the scariest thing about growing old doesn’t involve you. It involves the people you love the most. You become so fixated on your own graying hair strands, body aches, and regrets that you fail notice how everyone around you ages, too… until one day, when everything seems to fall down at the same time. Your favorite teacher back in high school has a tumor in his brain. Your childhood friend’s sweet grandma complains of spasms in her arms. Your cool uncle suffers from a stroke. Your own grandfather no longer recognizes you.

Then, your dear father drastically loses weight. You ask him to eat more, and you even cook his favorite dishes. He wolfs down the food, but to your eyes, he doesn’t gain any weight, and it even seems like he keeps on getting thinner. You’re worried sick to your stomach but he just grins at you, saying “I look so handsome with the fat off, don’t you think? Honey, you’re such a worrywart. But I feel okay. Don’t worry about me.”

Your beloved mother accidentally lets it slip that she gets frequent bouts of dizziness. They go as quickly as they come, she assures you — but the point is, they still come. You want to whisk her to the hospital, make her get a CT scan or an MRI exam, but she refuses, saying “I’ll go to the doctor as soon as I can if it’ll make you happy, sweetheart. But I’m fine, this is nothing. Don’t worry about me.”

You don’t know exactly when it happened, but now, you’ve become the parent and they, your stubborn children. You finally understand how they felt so many years ago, when you were a small child who wouldn’t do as they say. But even as a naughty kid back then, you saw your parents as your superheroes. They were strong and big. They would protect you from all harm. They were indestructible. They had no kryptonite.

Today, they are still your superheroes, but you can now see that their brave hearts and souls are housed in very mortal and vulnerable bodies that will eventually and inevitably fail with the passage of time. You start to wonder if, maybe, the hourglass is running out of sand, and you vow to do everything in your power to add all the grains that you can, even if you have to painstakingly put them in one by one. Whatever it takes.

It isn’t just you who is thinking this. When you go out for coffee with your coworker, he mentions how his mom has to follow a strict low-sugar diet to control her diabetes. Your gym buddy sends you a text message about how he can’t run with you today because his aunt was rushed to the ER due to high blood pressure.

Then, later in the evening, your best friend calls you, letting you know that her dad has passed away because of heart failure a few minutes ago, and will you have the time to please, please come see her because she is in such unbearable, intolerable pain.

Suddenly, you feel very old. So this is how it feels, you think.

Yet, you close your eyes, take a deep breath, and say a little prayer to a god you desperately hope is real. You accept that life will always go its own way and the only thing you can do is to do the best you can. You make peace with the harsh reality that nothing and no one lasts forever as much as you wish for it with every fiber of your being.

You tell your best friend that you’ll be there, because you know that when the time comes, she’ll be there for you, too.

Until then, you enjoy the time you’ve got with the people you love most, while the hourglass is still running.