FINALLY! After seven months, finally! I've finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love”. Normally, a book this size takes me a day or two to finish. But I actually re-lived bits and pieces of my life with this book. Every page seemed to “speak” to or about me.
I particularly liked her travel to Indonesia. In her pursuit for balance, she went to Bali, Indonesia where the Balinese are masters of balance and equilibrium. The Balinese “don’t wait and see how things go. They organize how things go.”
Three important questions the Balinese would ask of you are: 1) "Where are you going?" and 2) "Where are you coming from?" - to which you MUST state a specific direction or answer to, like Makati or Trinoma or CR, and nothing like "Dyan lang” or “Oh, I'm just wandering around." This answer would tip the balance of a Balinese and cause distress.
The third most important question a Balinese would most undoubtedly ask is: "Are you married?" - to which you must say “yes” if you are married and “not yet” if you are single or separated/divorced. An unmarried state throws one off the grid of security and comfort causing them, again, distress. So, just to be polite, “even if you are eighty years old, or a lesbian, or a strident feminist, or a nun, or an eighty-year old strident feminist lesbian nun who has never been married and never intends to get married, the politest possible answer is still: ‘Not yet.’”
The third most important question a Balinese would most undoubtedly ask is: "Are you married?" - to which you must say “yes” if you are married and “not yet” if you are single or separated/divorced. An unmarried state throws one off the grid of security and comfort causing them, again, distress. So, just to be polite, “even if you are eighty years old, or a lesbian, or a strident feminist, or a nun, or an eighty-year old strident feminist lesbian nun who has never been married and never intends to get married, the politest possible answer is still: ‘Not yet.’”
THIS we must have embraced with a passion from our Balinese brothers and sisters. I most certainly have been a “victim” of such passionate pursuit of balance.
Family and friends have been at it for the last 10 years (if that’s not passion, I don’t know what is). More actually if you think about it. I've been paired off and set up with all kinds of men - white, black, brown, young, old, shy, loud, sporty, sissy, manly, boring, interesting, cute, smart, thin, big, short, tall...name it.
Everyone (most especially my Mom) have just about tried every single tactic to marry me off. And if romance didn't bloom to warrant a marriage proposal, why not try another route to marriage, they probably thought. So...
One time, my life mentor/friend, Liza D., called me aside and, in excited tones, said, "My sister knows this man in the U.S. He's looking for someone to marry.” She paused for effect, looked at me with a hint of both mischief and hesitation and waited for some reaction.
I kept still, just looking at her and thinking to myself, “Go on, I’m listening. This should be interesting.”
“But…it’s a marriage for convenience…for Green Card” she made clear (she knew my mom would have looooved for me to live in the US, married of course).
I still kept quiet, wondering if a Green Card really IS green.
She continued: “A small fee would be given after the wedding. And the full amount after the Green Card is issued.”
I continued to just listen and stare, allowing her to finish.
“You’d have to live together, of course. BUT…” she said in a reassuring tone, “But, there’d be no hanky panky, I tell you.”
This time I reacted, appropriately so: “HUWAAT? NO HANKY PANKY? NOOO HANKY PANKY? MAGBABAYAD NA NGA AKO NG MALAKI, NO HANKY PANKY PA?’ DI NA LANG NOH!!!”
So…there goes another failed attempt to put equilibrium in my so-called unbalanced life (and here I thought it was only my diet and state of mind that were unbalanced).
Care for another attempt, anyone?
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