humility javier

profile three, profile four // enna + nicolle

sisters. both top students. both pretty morenas. both loyal friends. perhaps it runs in their blood.

profile two // dan-dan

watch out, world. this one's gonna lead multitudes.

profile one // kenneth

hardwork brought out the goodness in this boy. so much compassion, so much leadership. i wonder if he knows, i hope he does.

I wasn’t born a fixer. As a kid, I ran away from the chance to fix things. May it be my broken-down doll house or my distorted Barbie. I didn’t want to fix anything. I didn’t know how. So all I did whenever one lego block’s gone missing or whenever beads fall off my bracelet, I pretend as if nothing happened. As if nothing needs fixing. I shove the mess into a box, or a can, or a corner, and let it be. Untouched. Far away from me trying and figuring it out.

I think I carried that habit with me when I grew up. When things that need to be dealt with aren’t just toys anymore. When things that get broken are the serious stuff. Like hearts. And trust. And plans. And relationships. And people.

And there’s a part of me that only wants to put all those messed up things & people in one grand box just to keep them safe from anything that could make them more broken. Just to keep them from falling apart more and more. Just to stop life from tearing up what’s left of them.

But I know that that’s not how it works. That’s not how fixing works. Nothing gets fixed by getting tucked away. Nothing gets fixed by being hidden. And untouched. And far, far, far away from trying and figuring-it-out.

Everyday I remind myself of that. I tell myself that messed up is okay. That broken is okay. That clueless & jumbled & fractured is okay. That perhaps, we could not do without. We could not be without. But that doesn’t mean that this is how we stay as. That doesn’t mean that this is our core value. It just means that we have to start somewhere to get to somewhere. In a logical point of view: we can’t set unwrong things right. We can’t fix something that isn’t broken. We can’t figure out what doesn’t need figuring out. And I tell you, these hands of ours aren’t meant to tuck away and run away, they’re meant to put things back in place, back together, back to grand.

I wanted to write something pretty today. But that just won’t happen I guess.

Because really, there’s nothing pretty about quitting. There’s nothing pretty about giving up. Nothing adorable about collapsing and falling face down on the ground. Nothing, trust me. But I believe that something beautiful, though sometimes painfully so, lies in the edges & in the corners & in the spaces of letting go.

This morning I had to do exactly that. I had to unclench my fists and raise my hands in surrender. I had to stop myself before I eventually and inevitably crash. Had to run away from something I’ve been running to. Or someone. Go figure.

And it wasn’t a one-time realization thing. It wasn’t a snappy thought that came out of nowhere. It’s more of little bits I picked up every day for the past days. Or weeks I should say.

I’m not exactly sure where the bits-- the tiny hints of uneasiness-- came from. If it was from me or from the other side. But I sure felt them dropping. Like road blocks. Debris from the sky. Signs and wonders. And I felt that an end was beginning to stir. That I had to stop, or at least pause, if I wanted to continue further.

That’s the thing about letting go. It isn’t pretty either. It sometimes looks synonymous to quitting or giving up. But unlike those uglies, this one holds a promise. Letting go is quite difficult, yeah, but I’d like to think that it’s brave. It takes bravery to do things that one might not want to do, but one has to do. One has to do to be able to do what one wants to do. It takes bravery to believe that letting go is okay, that it’s for the good if not for the best. 

The conversation was nice. It always is with him. But she knew, once it was over, that it wasn’t just that. Nice is what she’d call daisies and metallic paint and random good samaritans. Not conversations that split her open. Not conversations that cut through her core.

And there she was, in a room full of seemingly well-off people, waiting for familiar faces she hasn't seen for months, letting her latte get cold, and thinking about a question she thought she had an answer to. She prepared herself for a night of casting visions and delivering dreams. But then she later realized (thanks to the question) that she was nowhere near ready. She was nowhere near sure.

And it took a few minutes of soul silence & a couple of tears heavy like coffee drips before she decided to let up: she stared at the door, wondering and wanting her own character to barge in & hold her firm by the shoulders & say:

Life’s not waiting for your answers. Life doesn’t sit pretty in a corner with legs crossed, cradling its own cup full of cold latte as you figure out certain things like why do elbows touch and why can’t cows meow and why is geography annoying. Life just shows up. Everyday. With all sorts of lovely and human. Until it doesn’t. And you– hey, what you do is you show up in return. You show up regardless. Not for a fist fight, but for moments like this. With your sorts of lovely and human. Until you don’t.

And maybe there is no exact definition. Maybe there just is. And maybe that’s enough. Enough for you to tell yourself that this life thing is worth all the goddamn self marathons. And scraped knees. And strange encounters. And dreams coming true or false.

And you don’t have to beat yourself up for showing up. You don’t need to try to fix the little pieces within you first before anything happens. It will be fixed as something happens. As you let life happen. So let the elbows touch. Let the cows moo. Let geography be annoying. Because the questions you throw at yourself won’t run out.

"Never despise small beginnings" I’ve always been told. And yes, I don’t despise them. I could never. But that doesn’t eradicate altogether the heartbeats of fright and the nail bites of anxiety whenever I enter something new. Something small. Something that’s just about to begin.

I am now in the beginning of something. I am now in the process of putting my dreams in action. Here right where it all starts. And if you ask me, it’s pretty small in here. There are no red carpets and high ceilings. There is only enough space for me and my heart that’s about to explode. And you know what, this space is enough for now. This space is what I need at the moment.

That’s the thing about beginnings like these: you either embrace the small space entrusted to you at the moment or you forever shut your doors. And baby, I’ve been shutting my doors for a long time. My big dreams don’t deserve small spaces like that, I tell myself. But I came to the realization, thank goodness, that these spaces matter. These spaces are the spaces that will allow me to grow.

It’s not me that’s small. It’s not my dreams that are small. It’s the space to begin with. And as I grow, this space grows. As I change, this space changes. The space depends on me. On me, on me, on me. And if I continue thinking that a big space is what I need for a start, I might always depend on that space for me to grow.

"Oh, the space is big anyway, it’s okay if I just sit pretty here and stare at the ceiling and stay where I am as what I am. No need to break walls or whatever, the ceilings are high anyway. No need to build bridges or whatever, the floors are wide anyway."

But I’ve yet to break walls, I’ve yet to build bridges. I've yet to shed sweat and tears and blood to expand my character and to tighten my grip. I don’t want to be comfortable on some space I didn’t work hard for. I don’t want to have a large space– a large range of influence or a large amount of readers– without having a large heart. And large skills. And large growth.