outgrownup

There are things you just have to outgrow: shoes, socks, bicycles, beds, toys, blankets, nursery songs. Hairstyles, books, outfits, shampoo, tv shows, pop music. Hobbies, diaries, dreams of ruling the world, dreams. The girlhood crush on Daddy eventually fades and infatuation flits toward the school bully or the classroom nerd, or the teacher--and later, the professor, the colleague, the CEO, the rebel without a cause, and so on.

You look back on who you were, and you are either nostalgic or appalled to realize how different you are now. How much you've grown. I just happened to be looking through old CVs and application letters that I still have on file from, god, eight or nine years ago. How embarassingly stupid I was. Today, I'd never hire that then me. The horrible graduation photo (which was what everyone did in Manila, how gauche). The references to obscure achievements that nobody would be able to relate to. The use of the words "fervently hope". Gaaaaah.

But I understand that me. That was the me who had, at the age of 10, thought that getting a job in the world (or anything that I would ever want career-wise) was all about some sort of kismet. Careers were about fate, romance and falling in love. Someone would come across me and my life crammed on a page, and think, "she's perfect" in this particular and unique way, like a soulmate finds his or her kindred spirit. Yeah, I think kindred spirit captures it. I had this idea that people were matched to their jobs by some alchemical ether in the universe. Unhappy people and accountants were just those that gave up on the search for true love.

Well, now I know better.

The same goes for school. I'm particularly obsessed with grad school. Getting my PhD. And for anyone who's applied to US grad schools, you know what I'm talking about. The Statement of Purpose. What an ominous, daunting name for an essay. Millions upon millions of Statements of Purpose, churned out by the machine that is the American University Application System. In 800 words, tell us your raison d'être. The first time round, I laid my bloody heart, guts and pancreas on the table. And asked them to pick me. Choose me. Love me. They politely declined.

On a tangent thought: when I was 22, an older friend, maybe 10 years older than I was, told me over coffee, I would realize that there are friends that I will need to cut loose. If people have no use for you, he reasoned tautologically, then you don't need them. I thought that his cynicism was absurd. However, by the time I cut him loose I was a number of years younger than he was that day at some Starbucks (bleah) in Makati. You outgrow people too. Then again, there are the people you never get over.

The day I realized I had finally come of age, or rather that I was finally an adult like my mom and people on that TV show thirtysomething, was the day I had to deal with a pitbull of an insurance agent. Taxes, insurance, mortgage, loans, preschool, all the trappings of bureaucratized social organization. Trappings.

At a climate change conference, someone said "the world of the future is not open to limitless choices; the choices we have left to define the world are very narrow".

Gabby told me the other day that when he grows up, he'll be a strong gorilla. I suppose that's one option I'll let him mull over for the time being.

Me, I'm all outgrownup.


Gaaaaah.