PARADOXICAL
The faith chroniclesThursday, January 01, 2026
Lament of the oblivious
Lament of the oblivious
I dunno why I’m getting the blues these days. I didn't just boycott the Olympics and the 27th anniv of the EDSA revolution, I boycotted the Oscars too. Must be my exclusion from the recent conclave. I was hoping to be in the running for Papabile. Instead, all I could hope for was being encased in a popemobile, or worse, an autoclave. :P
Oh, I feel like a class-A fake (class A, but still fake) when this friend of mine asked me over the phone who among us in our batch in high school was successful. "Define success," I shot back, the hint of resentment in my voice as solid as a lump of tumor.
I think that did it. Maybe my mind was hyperactive, jumping to conclusions fast like that, but I didn’t just like feel like a class-A fake handbag, I also felt like a China phone -- or in keeping with the times, a China-made tablet.
(I remember how I spotted by accident who the cell-phone snatchers are in Pasay Rotonda when I flashed my China phone (which I had bought because my Nokia phone was pickpocketed; now since retired) as I negotiated the steps down the MRT). The red-eyed bunch seated from their separate lookout nooks in the thick crowd at the landing suddenly looked in unison in my direction. Seeing with their discerning eye that I was flashing a China phone (on purpose), the
I replied, "You might have a job that pays top dollar, but if you are stuck in some psychological rut, and haven't found a way out, then, for me, you're not successful."
I was right, of course, but why be defensive? Why so insecure? Not being that dumb, I got the drift in my high school pal’s otherwise innocent question: “What are you doing at the pits?” Ugh, I hate this dialogue, I told myself. It’s as though I was the subject of an Erma Bombeck or David Sedaris joke -- that is, the joke was on me and it's hilariously negative. This must be how it feels to be no longer a trending topic on Twitter. (I can’t even tell a hashtag from a handle, e.g. #Pontifex vs @Pontifex -- what's that all about?) At least I'm still being trolled.
But this is far from being the go-to guy before Googling was the rage. Where is everybody? Everyone who used to be a baby bump to me seems to have spammer-zoned me, after uncle-zoning me for quite some time. If I find them dancing the Harlem Shake, will they allow me to join, at least as the worm wriggling on the floor?
I am left out in the cold, obviously, with the rest becoming celebrity chefs FTW, from the proudly thick-accented Boy Logro to this young upstart named Erwan Heussaf. How sad is that? Maybe as sad as getting stuck with planking or getting schooled in the Gangnam style.
Things escalate. I choke on my maintenance meds, attacked by panic at the thought that I have nothing left to do in life, as though I was afflicted by progeria, the premature ageing disease. It’s like I’ve reached senior citizen age prematurely, gripped by senior moments in advance. I cringe in horror at the prospect of being ill and dependent, lucky to be shacked up in a nursing home, at the mercy of paid strangers, no longer texted by family and friends. I am reduced to a wilting curmudgeon, so irritated at living that he forbids the birds in the trees from chirping and the butterflies not to fly too close by. And the worst part of it is that I am not even exaggerating, this time without the solace of hilarious hyperboles.
Then some kind of clarity hits me. At least not going viral anymore means, um, no longer being infected by a virus? Or not being photobombed by fans? Or not feeling the pain of Team Pacquiao's loss? It could also mean ignorance is bliss, like being spared from wondering how One Direction's "Young, Wild and Free" would fare two years from now.
And when it's gone, ah, withdrawal syndrome.
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