Prayer

One thing about life that I know for sure is that it doesn’t always turn out the way we want it.  Even with the most carefully laid out plans, the world is just way too complex and everything in it so interrelated that unexpected twists and turns always will surely meet us along the way.

There is no formula for a perfect life.  We can never achieve Utopia, and this is not I being cynical about life.  Good people die brutal deaths, downright evil people live long prosperous lives.  A God-fearing person eats of the crumbs that fall from a rich man’s table, a decadent master dresses up in the finest of silk.  Clearly, goodness does not equate to a good life.

Life is uncertain.  A health guru dies of cancer, a person that smokes since his teenage gets to bury his own grandchild.  Parents end up in care homes, a spinster dies in the loving home of a friend.  A well-off couple can never beget a child, a young lady is violated, conceives and murders the unborn.  Clearly, we don’t always reap what we sow.

So should we just live life in careless abandon?

If you do not believe in an Author of all, at least, you believe in truths that are Statistics and Physics.  The probability of a person standing on a railway to get hit by a speeding train is way higher than that of a person that stands even a step away.  You are most likely to die jumping off a plane without a parachute.  In short, plan still, aspire still, try still.  Do what is good and what is right, and if the outcome is not what we hoped for, at least we gave it our all and would not be found wanting or if bad things happen despite our being good, then at least it cannot be said that we deserved it.  Trying so desperately to achieve something we want makes us overlook and not appreciate what we have now, which is what ultimately matters.  The past can never be brought back, the future can never be fully assured, what is certain is the present.  LIVE YOUR NOW!

I am person who believes in the Almighty God.  In the God who is just and omniscient.  I ask for my heart’s desire, but I pray for what’s best for me.  And this is my prayer before I close my eyes to sleep:

“Dear Lord, I thank You for Your love, protection and provision for me, my family and everyone I hold dear.  I thank You for the chance to once again rest my body and mind.  And should You allow us another day, I PRAY FOR AN OPEN MIND TO UNDERSTAND AND A SUBMISSIVE HEART TO ACCEPT THE WORKS OF YOUR HAND.  Whatever Your will for me and the rest of the world be done.  In Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.”

Remember, even the Holy One died the most unspeakable death.

Irony

Since this has already become more of a food blog than anything else, I might as well bring it!

My friend HLD and I agreed to go to our friend's father's viewing on its last night, Friday.  However, the notification that the interment was rescheduled on Sunday came a little late that we were already on our way to our rendezvous.  And as I have previously established, I am not the kind of person that changes plans, so I went ahead and fetched HLD at SM Marikina.  She jokingly asked me if there would be food at the wake because she was already starving.  So the tourism minister in me went full-gear once again.  And since I am in a mission of making a simple meet-up into an adventure, we were not about to eat at Jollibee so I asked her if she could still bear it because I could take her to my usual food-trip starting point Cafe Lidia.  She agreed and we sped off.

However, while we were traversing the busy J. P. Rizal road in Marikina, it came to me that if I were to write another blog about this dinner, my blog site would already look like the official website of Cafe Lidia and it shouldn't be.  So I decided to bring her to Krung Thai, a simple little Thai (what else could it ever be?) restaurant nested in the cleanest wet and dry market in Marikina, and probably the entire country.

 

We were the only customers when we got in.  We were given the menu but I already had something in mind.  I ordered two plates of Binagoongan Rice but the waitress immediately told us that they ran out of bagoong already because there were way too many customers earlier that day and they are not allowed by the market administration to cook bagoong at night time because the tenants upstairs complain of the odor it leaves on their stuff.  Apparently, since the market is closed at night, the smoke coming from their kitchen gets confined in the second floor, leaving the pungent odor.  So after careful deliberation, we settled for...

Thai Chicken with rice in coconut milk

Tempura (I know it's not Thai!)

Pad Thai

Unfortunately, they already also ran out of Thai tea because the owner wasn't able to make his regular trip to Thailand to buy the ingredients for the tea (yeah, right!) so we had to settle for Sprite and bottled water.

However, it was still a success because HLD immediately loved the chicken at first bite.  The tempura was okay but we wanted it crispier as it already appeared kikiam-ish.  I prefer their Pad Thai over that of Som's where I and ETS usually eat when I visit her in Mandaluyong.  Krung Thai's Pad Thai is dry but sticky, Som's is saucy bordering on masabaw.

It was a great dinner with a lot of laughter at the expense of other people lol!

Eventually went to the viewing and munched on these...

The softest and most immaculate-looking orange-flavored puto I have ever tried.

This one I didn't try, you know, meat, dead and whatever.  It's just me, never eating meat at viewings.

Now, that's LIFE!

Hindsight

I was going to say that this is a very bad week.  News about the passing away of a classmate, a friend's dad, a friend's brother and another friend's uncle, came within a week's time.

But then, I realized that it happens all around, all the time.  That every single second, a person loses somebody he loves.  It is as normal as the falling leaves or the rising of the sun.  It is only a matter of time.  It only matters to me now because I knew these people. 

The sad part about all these, according to most of the surviving relatives I've talked with, is that they missed the chance to show love to the departed.  Be it because of lack of time, a strained relationship, or simply taking for granted the time they had with the loved one because they were just always there, like a rag in the doorstep.

Time? We spend a lot of it having coffee with friends for the usually useless chitchats; we spend an hour or two in a spa; we have all week to tend to the wake.  It just isn't there when it matters.

Strained relationship?  We easily forgive and ask forgiveness from the person behind the glass.

Always there?  No, they will definitely not be.

My guilty hands raised.

Answer

I recently received a text from a dear friend about the passing away of a classmate from high school.  It suddenly came to me that death indeed is one of the things that we should expect to happen especially as we grow older.

I heard one say on TV that there are only two things certain in this world, taxes and death.  Others refute this because there are people who still live in the wild, ergo, no taxes.  Good point.  Some argue that what’s certain are birth and death.  However, there are babies who die in the womb.  Another valid point.  Therefore, only death is certain.

Death is the one topic most people, including myself, dread to talk about.  Even perhaps the most daredevil of us all felt fear of the inevitable at one point in time.  Maybe it comes from the fact that it is human nature to fear the unknown.

Death comes to us in so many ways, imaginable or otherwise.  Some just did not wake up from their sleep, some died from accidents or diseases while some at the hands of another person or worse, their very own.

Untimely is the one word that is almost always used whenever describing a person’s passing away.  But the big question is when is it timely?  Who’s to say when is the best time to go?  A young person who suddenly dies in a car accident is said to have had an untimely death.  But could we not consider that it was the best time for him to go because had he lived a few years more, he would have contracted a dreaded disease that would have killed him slowly and painfully.  We could always think of a number of what-ifs to either console us or aggravate our pains.  But the fact remains that everyone has to go, one way or another.

Do not misconstrue that I do not recognize the pain death brings to a loved one nor do I acquit people who take the life of another.  Heaven knows that I ardently pray that I don’t get tested on this because I would surely be as devastated as anyone would be.

It is just that my point of view on the matter is that everyone, whether he believes in the afterlife or not, will have his way out.  As mentioned, some would have it sweet and swift, some not.  Since all of us are mortal beings, we do not expect to live forever.  Death is part of the grand design, of the grand scale of things in which everything has a purpose.  Death is the period to a novel, the curtain fall to a play.

And I guess the question we should be asking is if we are playing our part well, if we are living our best life.  And my answer scares me.