MANILA, PHILIPPINES. In the last two weeks I noticed a sudden shift in my everyday activities. Leisure reading is starting to be a good part of my everyday life and I have never been intense in creatively writing my thoughts in Filipino. I remained communicating with friends here and abroad with honesty about the state of my medical condition and always with a sense of excitement that soon, I would be fine. Ten months had passed since my dental operation, ten months of chronic pain but starting this October, as soon as I embraced this pain as part of me, I felt a substantial change.
Yes, I do not see myself as a victim of chronic pain anymore but rather as an active carrier of suffering. The stubborn lesion in my mouth, the occasional dizziness and the feeling of weakness are all just manifestations of my body imbalance, which need attention. Now I know how to respect this fact of nature.
Experiencing this physical pain also allowed me to be more sensitive of the various forms of human conditions that allow suffering to happen. It is one thing to romanticize the sore realities of these human frailties but it is another thing to notice the amazing ways in which people around me here in the Philippines, in more despicable condition, are able to carry-out with everyday life with more of hope than despair, with less complain but more tolerance.
As Helen Keller once wrote, “Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.” It is so nice that I am spending this difficult part of my life in my dear country where chronic poverty has made people resilient.
