Musing IV: Hope

I stayed in bed this morning, finished a movie and came in late for work as a consequence. I usually wake up to my alarm, the TV set to go on every 6:00 AM; and this morning it happened to be tuned to a movie channel. A movie was just starting, "Lord of Thieves" I think was the title. A movie set in Venice about a bunch of orphaned kids each with their own little stories and their adventures together to survive the city doing thievery; intertwined with another plot, the adults and their search for supposedly mythical 'merry go round' of youth. The movie ended with both of them getting what they wished for: one of the kids to go fast forward and be an adult and the adults getting back their youth. Enough said, I like juvenile and cheesy movie lol!

As I slowly took my sweet time preparing for work, I was already late anyway. I opened a page of my daily reflection booklet and the day's reflection is on Hope. What a way to start my day, serendipitously. I got to ponder on the words of PJP2 "Hope is not an empty optimism... rather a premise of responsibile activity..."

Flashback to my youthful days: 5th grade was about to end, I and two other friends (Islaw and Simeon, gosh I suddenly remember them - I wonder where they are now?) were watching the practice 'march' of the graduating class. We excitedly watched and pointed out that the following year; we would be the ones marching to the beat, getting up the stage and do all those ritual of graduation ceremonies. We stayed in that open grounds even after the practice has finished. We playfully did our own march as we hum along the beat. We daydreamed on that day; youthful bashing on dreams and ambitions, what we want to be, what we would do, what we could be doing in the years and decades far; family we would want to have, kids we would want to raise; the possible vices that we might even acquire throughout the years including the possible sickness, old age scenarios and death that can befall us in the twilight.

I can still remember some of the things I have bragged on that day: I would be doctor someday, not just a doctor but a successful one at that with all the knowledge and power to heal and help, not to mention all the trappings of wealth it brings; I bragged that I would someday have my own family, a wife and kids and that I would want to start my own family at my early age of 20's; I bragged that someday, the school would invite me to the very same graduation ceremonies for me to give inspirational talk to the would be generation; I bragged of success and triumphs only my young minds could imagine. I even bragged my possible would be vice, smoking but definitely not gambling or alcohol.

Those were the things that I have hoped for. Looking back, I may have eschewed a lot of roads, even got to tread completely different roads but here I am now back to the road my young minds have initially laid out for me. I have gone astray a lot of times, but still the things that I have hoped, somehow always helped me back. I'm now a doctor, successful in my own way and by the standards of what my friends would like to measure me. I now live independently, with the wealth and opportunities that my profession has given me. Yes, I have smoked since the age of 15 but has stopped for almost 2 years now for the fear of what my young mind has also foretold my possible exit mode would be, a painful lung problem (I don't know how I came to that thinking during that time, but my idea that it would be a painful existence and death because of smoking actually stemmed from that time on).

I don't know if my hope to have my own family shall ever pass; having long ago passed that age I have set it in my mind; also having long ago accepted the fact that I am gay. Against the odds, my hope is still there and I have long ago also resolved that whomever I would want to start a family, would be on the premise of that person's complete acceptance of my being and that my utmost responsibility in turn would be my complete trust and devotion.

I'm a hopeless, romantic fool in that way. The pessimist in me would say that this could be happening only in an ideal world and not in this imperfect world. But then I also realize, hope is what I live for.