It was during my latest trip to wonderful Cebu, while having breakfast at the Shangri-La Mactan, that I was confronted with something I hadn’t seen since I couldn’t even remember when. It was a slambook. You know – those pink and blue colored semi-hard bounds with cover designs of small people with big heads, big round eyes and small red lips with a thought bubble that says, "Friendship is Forever"? Inside the workbook you write down your name, nickname, pet peeves, favorite color, food and movie and a dedication to the owner. I’ve seen a thousand of these. And 995 of them had the common dedication, "You’re a great friend…" Time came soon enough I really thought the exercise to be so corny. Usually exchanged among grade school classmates, it is the slambook held by the approaching adult with the big, solicitous grin that would really make me want to skip the eggs at breakfast. This woman, about my age (and I’m way past slambook years), invites herself beside me and says, "Could you please?" I swear I can excuse myself from being ninang to someone I hardly know ("How could you want me as Ninang when I don’t even know you?") but think it to be utterly inescapable when asked to fill out a slambook. A friend who happened to be in the same restaurant was laughing at me from a distance and he knew what my arched eyebrows meant, "Who knows?" I was at the part where it says Favorite Expression ___________. And that’s what I wrote, yesiree… Who Knows? indeed.
It is now not only my newest expression. It is my emerging motto in life. Time was when I would crack my head thinking of the most impressive "motto in life" to write on a slambook. Let’s see… in grade school it would be Honesty is the Best Policy. In high school it was Live and Let Live. In college it was Reach for the Stars. Starting to work it was It’s Either You Got it or You Don’t. Losing my parents it became Be Happy, Life is Short. Or when I go totally blank I simply plagiarize and write, "Friendship is Forever." Today, from a trip to hell and back several times over, I think it most appropriate to survive this often beautiful but otherwise outrageously illogical existence with a motto that celebrates the sheer insanity of it all – with a question that mocks all those who’ve come before us and those who would dare attempt to figure it all out. That’s right, I throw it all back to the Universe! Who Knows?!
I’m sure you’ve had your fill of it, too. The good guys die young while the bad guy lives to be a hundred – a wealthy centenarian. You struggle while you’re young to afford the best things in life. By the time you can afford them, the best things in life are bad for your health. You kill yourself for years for the promotion. Then the new guy in the company, who constructs sentences in a memo like he cheated his way through high school, gets the post. You save your mother from a doctor’s erroneous diagnosis. Just two years later she goes in for routine surgery and dies just the same from another mistaken diagnosis. Your neighbor dies of lung cancer at 33 and he never smoked. George Burns lives to 90 years smoking a cigar every day of his life. How many graduates Most Likely to Succeed receive a fraction of the salary of the campus bimbo 15 years later? You buy jewelry from her, you invite her into your home, you break bread with her and lend her money when she needed it. Then you lose your husband to her. You wear a sleeveless blouse to the ballgame and boyfriend says you look great. Wear the same blouse a week later he makes you change because "it reveals your body!" You ask for a brown shirt, the house girl gives you a pink bag. You do it by the book, follow all the rules, resist temptation to detour, read all the signs and follow the map. Then you end up the opposite direction.WHO KNOWS?
In that Cebu trip with my family my four-year-old niece Tyra revealed the latest addition to her widening vocabulary. She was irritated my brother was forcing her to eat vegetables. "Daddy!", she said, "you’re so…so…so bodado!" "Bodado? And what’s bodado?" I asked. "Just bodado, Tita Korina…" Tyra grinned looking like she’s getting away with something. Her mom explains to me that Tyra uses the generic "bodado" to describe the indescribable. The family now gets it and the little girl seems content with her present worldview – however abstract it might be for her to grasp and accept. Even infants survive their existence unable to figure anything out. Children, for as long as they are safe and healthy and watching cartoons with gummy bears, never do try to figure out why ScoobyDoo can talk, or why Mickey Mouse’s head plops back in place even after being run over by a tank. And isn’t it the child in us that does allow us the calm amidst turmoil, the joy even around loss, the hope in every failure or the ability to forgive, forget and start again, every time?
In "The Devil’s Dictionary," Ambrose Bierce writes, BRAIN: an apparatus with which we think we think. And then I think about all the greatest thinkers world history has ever produced and imagine what sort of tortured existence they could have had figuring out the "unfigurable." I wonder if Aristotle ever wore a silly hat parading on the street and never had to explain to anyone why. I imagine if Nietzsche ever burst in uncontrollable laughter because he remembered a friend’s joke while watching a death scene in the theatre. I think about how cool it would be for Newton to have discovered the Law of Gravity while bungee jumping instead of waiting on an apple to fall from a tree branch. I wonder if Einstein ever allowed a question to pass unanswered. In the end they all died, as we all would, with more questions following the answers. Maybe Einstein figured it out after all. He said, "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction."
Maybe I will try letting go of the steering wheel some time. Someone else advised me that, sometimes, "it is when you let go of the wheel that you get to where you’re actually meant to be." When I am confronted with a puzzle that’s come my way too often and, whatever I do to find an answer, I never get it – I resort to the one question I know the answer to – for certain. The question is, "Who knows?" The answer is, "Nobody does." I must say I do feel a lot better after.