Thursday, January 31, 2008
Run For ItWhen I was around five years old, I remember being in the car with my parents en route to somewhere. I was seated in the back and was staring outside the window, mesmerized at the array of shapes and figures that would whip on by. Colors, hues and tints, it was all very enthralling to the eyes of a small boy. An observant little prick, I noticed that the houses and people didn't quite whoosh by as fast as I thought they should, relating their movement to the probable speed of the car. Imagine that, a five-year old who had motion physics in mind. I scooted to the front and checked the speedometer over my dad's shoulder. Eighty kilometers per hour. In my mind suddenly arrived the seemingly obvious rationale: "80kph is slow because the trees and mountains and buildings move away from my line of sight from the window slowly too."
With this, I blurted out, breaking the otherwise looming silence, "I think I can run at 80kph!" I said this with the utmost confidence and sincerity, as if making a statement of fact. My mom looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and amusement. One of those
ano-ba-naman-itong-batang-ito looks. "Oh? Talaga? That's really fast ah. Eighty?" "Yeah. Kaya ko yun. Kasing bilis ng kotseng ito." "Hahaha. Masyadong mabilis yun para sa'yo. No one can run that fast." And there it went, another moment of my childhood that went "ppppshhh......" Hahaha.
This memory is more than a dozen years old. When you really think about it, it isn't really much of anything. Not one of those moments worth remembering. This story would utterly bore my grandchildren in the future. There's no way they're hearing about this one. Haha. So why did I remember this useless tidbit from my youth? Why did I feel I had to write about it? I guess because it was one of the first experiences I've ever had of having my beliefs and principles challenged. It was probably the first time I used my logic as a human to be illogical and to stand by the virtue I concocted out of my irrationality. The thing is, we aren't human because we have the ability to be logical. That's not enough. We are human because we have the ability to be illogical. Only humans defy all common sense, sound judgment and coherence to stand by, to protect, to fight for what they believe in. It is simply illogical to starve yourself for days and days to prove a point and end a war. But we humans have done it. We believe in it. And the funny thing is, it actually works. Illogical thinking works.
Sure, I really couldn't run eighty kilometers per hour. But I was devastated that I wasn't allowed to believe that I could. I was thinking, "What's so wrong with believing in an impossibility?" Sure, I know it won't happen, but my illogical self says to believe in it. Because what the hell, I'm only human. The thing is, there are so many concepts in life that logic will say is stupid, is impossible, is lunacy. Heaven, God, the devil, love, death, life, altruism, all forms of illogic. Yet here we are, beating ourselves up and each other, forcing ourselves to believe that they're all true. Maybe they are. But they probably aren't. But that doesn't bother us one bit.
The moment I realized in that car that I could run 80, it didn't seem illogical. I was ready to get out of the car and race it at that point. As long as I believed I could and ran as fast as I could, 80 wasn't that far away.
the adventure ended at 10:08 PM
