Leavetakings

This is the first post I have had, well, in over three months and it is somewhat bizarre to be writing again after so long. Just like something unfinished, this stays unfinished until the whole thing falls into disrepair. It's been so bad that some fellow offered to buy my site for $50. Unbelievable.

This is also the first and last dispatch I am issuing from Manila at the tail end of this year's annual vacation.

As vacations go, I believe I have reached the stage where "ho-hum" is knocking on the door of "dayumn, is it vacation time again?" Considering my state of mind and affairs prior to leaving on this vacation, that kind of transition deserves its own level of understatement. Or irony. Or whatever.

I will always miss home. Always. Even as I go on and make my own way elsewhere in another time zone, this patch of earth is my own building block, my genesis. That said, this year it has been somewhat easier to let go 0f The Things That Were Before. Ah, such semi-tragedy it may seem, but mostly in that some people in my life may have been hurt that I didn't care so much to make time for them during this vacation.

All I can say is, sorry. Really. It has nothing to do with you, it's all about reaching into the heart of me.

There is this FACE that my brother-in-law wore the day he went back to work in Dubai sometime during the middle of May. Here is a man who missed the birth of his son and only experienced true fatherhood when he arrived in March.

I'll remember that face because I'll be wearing it. For their sake, still, as it has been in the beginning, as it shall be in the end (when it does come). One day I hope to wear it for someone else, and for the family I am leaving behind. This vacation did offer possibilities, but it's too early to tell. In its own time. In His time, as well.

So rings the mantra of my life, and my new meditation for the necessary adversities in life: Not for my sake, but for theirs.

Non sibi, sed suis.