“You would still be here tomorrow but your dreams may not.”
Thirteen years ago, I moved to Manila for college. In Filipino context , it wasn’t called “uni” yet and instead, we refer to it as simply just—college.
Social media was slowly creeping into modern consciousness and through our first generation gadgets, we started to see and discover a different world. Yes, android and iOS started to penetrate our daily lexicon but laptop was still our go-to device. There was Wi-Fi but in-app chat features wasn’t that popular yet. Receiving a reply in real time through any of these was a novelty to most of us back then. People texted more than we did today because replying to an online private message would mean opening your laptop and plugging in a USB stick to connect to the internet. Movie marathons were painstakingly planned by downloading from torrent for hours and potentially passing on from one USB to another digital virus. I still kept those files, well-preserved in my decade-old external hard drive until they’re no longer readable as modern digital formats.
Looking back, we went through so much lengths for things we may no longer want in the end or like that much. Fast forward to today, goals are measured and achieved short-term yet some could end up being categorized as mere musings. Different landscape but same dilemma, still.
I was sixteen then, a probinsyana discovering Manila from the lenses of a teenager. Before that, my visits revolved around visiting families, walking next to my parents as they run errands in Binondo and Ermita— adult things I didn’t really pay attention to. However, at sixteen, I was given the chance to see the city from a different perspective; the background to my academic pursuits and later on it bore witness to the life I never thought I’d live in this city.
I started to understand why people seem to never sleep. Life was never linear and experiencing it rarely run parallel. Chaos could easily blend in your daily grind and in a city where all kinds of people exist struggling to survive one day at a time— tomorrow sounds more than just a schedule and a day.
A promise to those who hope but a curse to some.
It might not always go according to plan yet we yearn for it to come.
And in the course of waiting for it, dreams get shelved and at times, forgotten.
