I start anew.  The safety rails of academia's steady support and income is gone.  I am left with my own devices again.  A close friend once quipped:  "I am not worried.  You have always managed to survive your transitions."  The gift of articulating wit and wisdom graces our keyboard hacking; I hope to survive simply out of the assets of genetics and wordsmithing since my social net are hardly existing.  Newspaper opinion writing is hardly a living.

 

In every journey, it is a virtue to know what one is turning one's back from, as it is getting familiar with the arena and scope of what one is going to face.  As once said by Lolo Pepe Rizal: "ang hindi lilingon sa pinanggalingan, ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan" (ze who fails to know where ze comes from will not reach where ze is going).

 

I just left for good the geography of North America as well as my social relations and kin there.  I also left behind half a century of engagement in the affairs of a nation that I will continue to relate to in a tenuous relationship as a resident of its CNMI in Saipan, and Honolulu of its Pacific naval station.  But more than the departure of body and soul, I also leave behind a mind familiar with the mental maps that charted civilizational courses beginning in Greece and Rome, and culminating in the Westside of Chicago and the Bay area of San Francisco.

 

There is a rich throve of metaphors I am giving up that had served me deal with the fundamental human questions of identity, vocation and lifestyle.  My identity once was labeled as being "the child of the living YHWH, God, Allah"; my vocation was unconditional expenditure of one's life beyond one's self, in the liberating ways of Moses, the redeeming task of Jesus, and the prophetic lucidity of Mohammed; and the lifestyle of one who does not shrink from the challenge and responsibility of freedom - a Holy (wholesome) spirit.

 

In the scientific, secular, and urban surroundings of my current journey, I may or may not rephrase the life questions in similar fashion as the above, though the not doing so is more to avoid pat answers to standard questions.  Authentic life awaits to be lived, nonetheless.

 

What I do know given the current state of knowledge about the universe and my place in it is that the 14.5 billion years journey of my known universe and the 4.3 billion years of my planet makes a less than a century of my lifetime look petty and insignificant.  As a child of the universe where the carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen in my body preceded the big bang of my solar system, I am but a recycled NOBODY.

 

The odds, however, of my one, unique, unrepeatable gift of life happening to create me is in trillions.  The 200 million sperms alone that my father unleashed in one exchange of fluids with my mother, after several attempts, that brought me in being, is already considerable.  The permission of my mother's ovum to penetrate a shield to union is purely an indiscernible choice.  Created was a segment of time and a particular space where I can leave my footprints and hang the syllables of my name.  Statistical probability leads me to think that I am responsible for 86 years of existence for this body, heart, mind and soul, a SOMEBODY by choice.  Longevity is not the issue, quality of life is.

 

The NOBODY-SOMEBODY who walks this earth with my name does so from the practice and perspective of freedom.  Yes, sheer freedom.  There is no supernatural power that determined or works my 86 years.  There is nobody to blame; to whine is to waste energy.  I have no way of returning to what is already done, and the beginning of the fifth phase of this journey in 2014 in increments of 17, is now a decided period of gracious aging.  Old.  Forget the cosmetics of youth.  I wish to live the natural wilted-ness of my age!

 

The arrival point of life is birth; my departure is estimated at 2031.  Today, my life is not determined by what has transpired before, nor am I hung up in the despair or delight of failures and accomplishments.  I do not waste time regretting the first, nor engrossed in gloating over the second.  I have the here-and-now; my responsibility is simply to make choices and innovate on chosen options if possible, or to decide to create the path I travel every step of the way!

 

Before someone dubs my view as that of an ingrate, my fealty is not about the cult of rugged individualism, or urbane sophisticated self-centeredness without regard of the infinite mystery that is at the core of my existence.  I do take comfort on the simple nature of things: that life begets life when used and invested. 

 

I know that life, when unconditionally given away, manages to be significant.  I do not plan, factor, or expect anything from a return, yet, I am eternally grateful.  I am detached but with compassion on material wealth and spiritual poverty; totally engaged in meeting the unknown headlong single-mindedly with care; obedient to the way life is, not manipulating it nor being subdued by it.  If you are continually moving on, you have company on your side.