Hilot

I’ve been getting massages since I was little. It wasn’t those hi-tech stone massage/ thai massage things that they have in spas; it was just the usual hilot kind. I didn’t realize, however, that not all my classmates had the same practice. I just took it for granted. When I was away at college, I couldn’t afford to get a massage so it became yet another one of those things that I really missed.

Maybe it is touch therapy, or maybe the masseuse really can figure out where my hilanat (fever), or pamaul (muscle cramps) or panuhot (I have no idea what this translates into!) really are. Or maybe it’s the circulatory system that gets jump started. Or maybe it’s all psychological. I suppose a doctor could explain it much better than I can. All I know is, after a massage, I always feel better, like I’ve had a minor healing experience.

Hilot does for my body what prayer does for my soul, what a good conversation does for my emotional state, what a good laugh does for my low spirits and what my mother’s hug does for a long crying bout.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized how an understanding of who I am enables me to seek out ways of being healed. And this hasn’t always been an easy truth to accept because asking for healing also means accepting that I am in some way sick or broken. That I am not a perfect, omnipotent human being who can control the world with the choices I make. Society sometimes brainwashes us to think that we control the world and that our choices will change our lives. Although there is some truth to this, there is also truth to the reality that we cannot control other people’s choices and that we are still affected by them, still hurt by them, still broken by them.

We are all broken people walking around this world. We are not whole because of our fears, our insecurities, our imperfections and our experiences. But the sad reality is that not everyone is aware of their brokenness and so they go around the world making choices that create an environment that is neither nurturing nor healing and break people’s hearts in the process. But there are others who despite their circumstances and their brokenness (or perhaps even because of them) can remain happy. They do not need to be perfect to be perfectly happy. They do not need to be invincible to be at peace. They do not need to be completely healed to be kind.

The difference between them and the rest of the world is that while they have looked for ways to heal, the rest of the world has chosen to just deal. To deal with an issue is to set it aside or ignore it, like the dust we sweep under the carpet. We know it’s there; we’ve just convinced ourselves that hopefully it’ll go away on its own. But healing it means bringing it out in the harsh light of day, looking at it closely not so we can scrutinize it away but so we can be aware of how it affects us and how we can move on despite its presence and how we need to ask others for help. Because effective healing, I’ve noticed, never exists in a vacuum. Even when we need to heal alone we cannot do it by ourselves. When we feel a slight fever coming on or when we fear that our cholesterol level and our blood pressure are too high, we make an appointment with the doctor (or the manghihilot). And yet, when our spirit is ill or when our soul is hurting we are afraid to cry out for help. The alternative to living a life of healing and being healed is living a life of hurting. And well, life’s too short and too precious for that.