CHANGES IN MY LIFE

(July 12, 2012 at 9:11am)

Once more, it can now be told, I am inevitably getting old.

Exhibit A, my wobbly knee.

I had another big scare in my life one afternoon when the Doctors-bound Leganes jeepney I was riding in had to cross the UP Flyover-Infante junction. I was at the front seat hoping the jeepney would be stopped upon approaching the highway crossing by the assigned traffic aide, but he made a sign instead for my jeepney to proceed, pumping his fist up and down, which meant to cross at full speed ahead.

A few years back, I could jump out with no sweat from a running vehicle at minimum speed, which act a man in the street called “haybol,” thus right in that instant, I remembered the stunt, moved out my upper-half body from the jeepney as I studied how to jump through memory recall.

And when my mind yelled “Action,” I quickly jumped out of it for once as on the running pavement I took a glance. I had a sheepish smile of victory after I heard my own shoes sounded “taka-tak-tak-tak” on the asphalt as if I just did a perfect tap dance.

I may have made it but there was a price to pay. My feet went numb thereafter and it hurt my knee.

Exhibit B, my eyes which are now gloomy.

I honestly believed then I’d have my first reading glasses when I’m sixty, but like other mortals I’ve had it just barely past forty. It’s precisely so hard once your eyes depend on something else just to regain twenty-twenty. It’s truly a big deal if you’d mistaken something because your eyes would fail. It could cost you the truth, or worse, even your life itself as well.

Just like a boy who was initially intrigued by a poster inside an optical clinic he visited which poster as he read said, “God is nowhere.” He told the optometrist about it as he wondered if the latter was an atheist, and the man adjusted the boy’s goggles until he correctly read the words as they should be: “God is Now Here.”

Like a blurred vision of that boy and his own sunglasses, just a little readjustment of heart and sight in this life is what we only need.