finally, I belong
spiritual ideology of Tao, “the call”
The story of how a boy, once scarred and afraid, found adventures around the world featuring love and belonging.
I woke up from the nightmare, tears in my eyes and memories in my head. I slept alone back then, and so the only entities to hear my gasps were the walls that knew my terrors. I pulled the trigger. I did what I was told. I was following orders. I did what I was told. I did what I was told. Breathing in, breathing out, I wept. When my voice was hoarse and my tears dry, I breathed once more and fell back asleep.
Awake. Before all this, I was molded to wake up at 4am with my body ready for war and my mind sculpted for action. — I now wake up when my soul is ready to trudge on throughout the day. It’s 1pm.
After I finish getting ready, I make sure my baby brother have his lunch and we initiate the day with our heads held high and ready to take on whatever we get. At least, that’s what I tell him. It’s 1pm but my mind is dying and my motivation has disappeared. No where am I in a position to attempt to take care of another human being, let alone a child. I push on through, knowing that it is my actions today that shape my baby brother’s future. I can still feel the tears dry on my cheeks and my fatigue from the nightmares of last night. Now, as we walk on the sidewalk to take him to school as I find a way to explain once again why my baby brother is late on my behalf, I feel the gust of cold wind. Winter in Virginia.
Everything changed after my second deployment. My first deployment, It was mostly about taking care of my brothers in my left and right. By the time the second deployment rolled in, it was about finding a god who had the mercy of taking me home alive. Back then, I was filled with adventure, energy and joy. By the time I got older and after the military, I became less fruitful, sad, and unmotivated for life.
This went on for years after the military. I lost all hope in life and all beliefs in what is considered the art and sacred. I lost all views in life, I lost my spiritual journey, and I didn’t even want to seek for it. I simply trenched on life for a few years. Work. Sleep. Wake. Work. Sleep. Wake.
It wasn’t until a friend of mine visited me was when I rose from the shadows of my own mourning and spiritual loss. He wept for me, claiming of the worries I’ve cause. He shared with me how he noticed I have become lost, without spirit or art. He exclaimed that he knew there was still hope for me yet, that the art and the sacred can still enlighten me and shine a light of hope for me to continue on with my life. He told me to stand up and pick up where I left off. He recommended that I take achance with life again, to try to find what life means for me. To do that, he explained, I would have to attend school. School. the conitnuation of the timeline of this life to succeed and find interests elsewhere or in anything that societies standards dictate plausible. I already have a bad taste of it in my mouth. Although the inital reaction was bitterness, I was truly terrified. Terrified of all counts and steps. I’ve lived a life of order, of being told what to do and how to do it. Now, now I would potentially enter a world where all my decisions are free, and those deicisions would eventually mold the ratings of my life. That terrified me. A large part of me delayed answering, and even delayed the thought of it after the conversation with my friend. It has been about 4 years since I left the military, and about 4 years since I even thought of moving towards further educaiton. In the past attempts of my life, I have usually tried and failed. I consistenly repeated my statement that I was going to try, and kept pushing this idea and image of my trying as hard as I can… but nothing. Nothing was ever done.
After pondering with it for a bit, I decided. I knew, deep inside as well as with the help of the friend who helped me see, that there was more for me in life. I finally got up and found my energy once more as I finished and submitted my application to Dominican University’s Accelerated Computer Science Undergraduate Program. It was thrilling. It was scary. It was amazing when I got accepted. For the first time in a long time, I looked up to the heavens, finding hope once again.
When I think about it nowadays, I can’t help but be grateful of my journey, traveling and being lost in all aspect of sacredness and beliefs. All of my previous experiences led me here — and here is where I wanna stay and continue to live. I enjoy all my classes, my teachers have shown kindness I have never seen in people before until now, and I truly feel that my education is worth it as I am learning a variety of interests. I am learning. I am happy. I am me. This feeling I describe remind me of our reading from the story of The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff, more specifically when he talk about how vinegar tatstes. “(Taoism) is simply a particular way of appreciating, learning from, and working with whatever happens in everyday life.” (17). This quote is relevant to how I feel learning from social classes such as the Art and the Sacred to even more outspoken technical classes. I appreciate that I am learning. I found where I belong. I found my call.
The largest part of experiencing this call of mine is to be able to view it with a newly founded open and willing mind. To be able to experience and face whatever comes your way and to be able to understand and adapt and grow is what’s important. Anything in life worth doing is worth overdoing and growing and learning from it.
This calling has made me reminiscent, as I look back towards my childhood. Memories flow back to how life was easier, life was more innocent, life was more care free. After my Art and Sacred class, I understand the meaning and options I had to cleanse myself, to open my soul and spiritual being up, and see more transparently both in me and at the world. It was with this class that guided me to view my thoughts and emotions differently rather that close minded as before. This class shifted my processing, allowing for sacredness to be accepted into my heart once again. “Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred.” (27). This was stated by Thich Nhat Hanh in the story of the dishes. I cleanse my mind. I empty it. I understand that statement now. I feel that more than ever. This is me. Finally, I belong.
“The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence.” — Norman Vincent Peale
“As I rise from being lost, I see the expression of my own.
Finally happy.
Be it God or a god or even just the soul within yourself, it’s made my being happy. I have finally found my way. Finally, I belong.”
— Aldrin Brillante (2021)
Citations
Good News Network, et al. “‘The Life of Inner Peace, Being Harmonious and without Stress, Is the Easiest Type of Existence.” — Norman Vincent Peale.” Good News Network, 6 Feb. 2020, https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/norman-vincent-peale-quote-about-inner-peace/.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. “Washing Dishes.” Peace Is Every Step, Bantam Books, Toronto, 1991, pp. 26–27.
Hoff, Benjamin. “The How of Pooh.” Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, Penguin Books, London, 1994, pp. 13–19.