26 April, 2015

    Today, I turned 24. As an ilocano, I cooked my favorite comfort foods (Pinapaitan and Dinakdakan) then I bought a bottle of brandy and decided to drink alone. As I am drinking alone I tried to recall the events that passed.

    I came to a realization that everything that happened so far is a result of my own choices and decisions. One may feel nostalgia when doing such a thing, but as I am trying to get an emotional response from my memories, the only thing I feel is emptiness. Emptiness in a sense that no emotional response comes to surface. I try to feel loneliness that I lost people that were once significant for me. I try to feel anger that some people decided to betray me. I try to feel happiness that I met new people that shared new memories with me. I try to feel gratefulness that people tried to show me sympathy. To my disappointment, such emotions may never grace me again as I have realized that one may never truly come to understand another person since one may never completely grasp the full extent of how another person thinks or feel, since each individual person has a unique way of understanding and handling such issues. Hence, I came with the following rationalizations:

    No matter how one tries to understand, one can never truly understand.

    No matter how one tries to empathize, one can never truly feel the same way.

    No matter how one tries to sympathize, one can never truly care.

    One can only try to understand and relate to another's circumstance as to try to create a bond which is only natural because this is how humans have thrived so far. This can be related to the basic instinct of an organism which is to survive.

    As survival comes to mind, one may realize that even love may also be questionable. The continuation of a species is a well established fact and necessity for survival. If one acknowledges this as a fact, one may argue that love is only a manifestation of the basic instinct of survival. It is only a way of beings with advanced cognitive abilities to affirm that they've found a suitable partner for reproduction and the advancement of their species. Having this premise, one may assume that love is just an illusion created by human cognition to romanticize the propagation of the human species.

    I am not trying to condone the nature of humans to feel emotions. I am merely trying observe it from a distance wherein one's own emotions may not interfere with one's observation. I know very well that emotions are what makes humans human. I am merely trying to establish the significance of such emotions in my own way of life as to use it for my own cognitive development and to improve my role as a part of society.

    I may be wrong, but I am glad that I made something that I can read in the latter years of my life.

-Jose Kevin Corsino Agub