P[e]NORAMA

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We put on many things that we often end up confusing these things as us.

 

Sometimes, it’s hard to separate our diplomas, positions, titles properties, stocks, and so on from us — that often, we fear being stripped of them, because having mistakenly equated our self-worth with our possessions and titles, we fear we would be nothing without them.

 

But while these are among the things that make up who we are, they are not just what we are.

 

The positions we hold can buy us semblance of respect — the kind that are afforded to the title, not necessarily the person who holds it. Our money can buy us those sorts of friends that scamper away as soon as we are broke. Our stocks and diplomas can give us some kind of security — one that could crumble the moment the tides start turning against us. But they can never buy us honest-to-goodness peace and happiness. They can only sow upon us discontent. And distrust.

 

If these are the only things with which we have clothed ourselves, then we have every reason to fear being stripped of them, because without them, we would be naked.

 

But the thing is, it is only after we undergo some stripping that we realize that these things we have sought to clothe ourselves with do not really matter — not in a way that what’s inside each of us matters.

 

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I know what I am talking about may not be an all new idea, but I feel compelled to write it in the face of what’s happening with our economy and because I’ve realized, albeit belatedly, that this concept of stripping has become a repetitive element in my mind, playing over and over. I’ve written it in my earliest attempts at short story writing, and it was among the things I’ve said to friends in different occasions, and guided me in many of my major decisions.

 

In one of my earliest works (Underneath the Sheaths, 2004), there is a part there that talks of stripping or being stripped:

 

“I watched him undress me with his eyes. I saw him clear up the protective layers I had carefully, meticulously wrapped around myself. One by one, he yanked the sheaths covering my body, examining them carefully, searching for whatever it was he needed to see. I saw layers upon layers of sheaths pile up before me. First went the bedcover of anguish and sorrow. Next came my nightdress of hatred and bitterness, followed by my underwear of loneliness and pain. One by one, he tore them to pieces, making sure there was nothing left for me to put around myself after he had finished. He didn’t stop until everything was gone, until I was lying there, unclothed, exposed to his penetrating gaze. I was worse than a slut stripped off her dress; I was a soul devoid of everything. Bared. Naked. Defenseless…”

 

In September 2007, when I decided to leave my job as copyeditor for H&L, one of the things that made me pause was the realization that I would lose some of the perks that came with the position. I am talking about the preferential treatments and the numerous freebees. Though the treatments had always made me feel awkward, I knew that I would also miss them. I knew too, that without the position, many of the people I’ve come in contact with would no longer give me the treatment they used to afford me, simply because I could no longer help them with their business. But my pause was short. I had reasoned to myself that it was exactly what I needed — an stripping of the superfluous dress that circumstances have cloaked me, to know who my friends really were. I also reasoned that my job — and the position that went with it — was not me. That I was more than the title and that to equate myself with my position was an insult to the spirit that has come to live in my body. So I resigned without the ifs and the buts.

 

When the financial crisis set in late last year, I had a heart to heart talk with my Sweetie. I felt he was distressed at how the financial world was becoming crazier each day. I asked him: “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” And, not waiting for a reply, I asked again, “Does worrying about it would prevent it from happening? Que sera sera, baby. This is not normal times. You could lose everything, but you will still be you. You aren’t your savings, you aren’t your possessions. You are above all these things. Do try to relax.”

 

When, on several occasions I was asked if I missed my work, my answer was constant. Yes, I miss some aspects of it, but not everything. In fact, I now wonder why I put in too much time at work, why I had chosen to work much too hard, to the point that I had to set aside the things that I really wanted to do, like write stories and poetry. I am not, and have never been, my job. And yet, for years, I worked as though my fulfillment at work equals me. I know now that my work is just but a part of me, that I am not just my job. I am just too glad I realized it early and, more importantly, that I managed to quench the fear about being stripped off “many things” and possibly falling off the cliff with a loud thud — and did something about my realization. I was off the rat race long before I turned 30.

 

And lastly, in my interview with writer Frank Rivera last week, he said exactly the same thing, although he was referring about not being too proud of the schools we attended, the titles we have, and the institutions backing us. “If we strip ourselves of our schools, our titles, our possessions, and so on, they might find themselves naked.”

 

Indeed, it is in removing the inessentials masquerading as vital that we find the essentials. It is in allowing ourselves to be stripped that we will get to our core, and find who we truly are and what we are made of.

 

I hope that when we dare strip ourselves, we will not find ourselves bared and naked, but fully dressed — with the things that are nourishing to the spirit.

 

//Sherma E. Benosa

9 March 2009; 11:55pm