A shock of reality, and a humanizing realization

Last night, I was given a glimpse of the darker side of reality,
when one bad news after another came my way.

The first was about a friend who told me that after 8 months, she and her boyfriend are not together anymore. Why? I have yet to find out, because when she tried to answer that question, she couldn't help but cry and move away. She told me she's been crying for two days now, and that she's so tired doing so already. As I saw an overflowing barrage of tears flowing from her eyes, I couldn't help but be hurt too. It didn't help when she told me about two more saddening events. She found out that her now ex-boyfriend tried to take in a large dose of methanamic acid (i'm not sure of the spelling), and is now coughing and vomiting blood-i'm not so sure though if this was a suicide attempt. In the same week, she also found out that one of her closest friends attempted to kill herself through slashing her wrist....and amidst all these issues in her life surfacing, she also faced a quarrel with her mom, at a time she was hoping just to lean on her shoulders and cry.

The second bad news was not as harsh, yet also pinched me to wake up to a certain form of reality.A month ago, i was coordinating with one of my friends from a television network about a project, wherein i was tasked to create a few animation pieces as a show. I was told then that there was also another group who were bidding for the job, yet i still tried to give him my best as a sample. A month later, as i was watching a great show in the channel, i suddenly saw a very familiar 15 second animation, and realize that without my knowledge, i had lost and the other group had gotten the contract. Actually, I wasn't really hurt by the situation. I was more shocked, and i felt that it was somewhat unethical that i was not even informed. It wasn't such a big issue, but i was still hoping to engage in the project, i guess not...

These two bad news struck me last night, not so much in a tear-jerking way, but they elicited a heavy-burdening kind of feeling. The two situations, though not similar in depth, have a similar root : hope.

As a Christian, hope is one of the values that have always been placed in a pedestal, most specially here, in a third world country, with so much reason to lose it, yet last night, i saw a different face of hope, a quite dangerous one. Having heard the stories of my friend, and experiencing a let down myself, i realized that hope is a gift, a quite generous one at that, because when one hopes, one allows himself/herself to become vulnerable to the you are hoping for. The "hoper", at least for the moment of hopefulneses, loses a bit of himself/herself, to be able to give trust to another. It is actually quite similar to allowing yourself to be loved, allowing yourself, not to be in control of the situation, and living in a temporal world, where most of us are sick of how our environment, our context, our society, the situation around us controls our life, it is almost stupid to once again open the doors to some form of uncertainty...yet we still do, we still see people count on each other, trust each other with each other's life.

"Trust each other with each other's life" - it isn't a one way street, as much as one hopes in another, the other in turn also allows the one to hope in him/her. Parang loving relationship-where the lover allows the loved one to be part of his/her life, and vice versa...and knowing how much is given when someone hopes, the role of the other becomes very crucial. When we allow someone to hope in us, we take a part of themselves, and swear to carry it on our shoulders...and the other expects us to do so...and what happens when we forget, or fail, or become selfish and run away from this task...the "hoper" is shattered into pieces, and punishes himself/herself for allowing this to happen in the first place-and here is where slowly, one by one, people lose one of the most genuine values of all.

It's quite a sad reality, but it's not something we can't do anything about...
and so i look to my loved ones, and ask myself how i have been giving them the love they hope to receive, and I pray that I may not forget, fail, or run away.