The lessons Professor Frank taught me

No I’ve never had a teacher named Frank before. I don’t even remember ever personally knowing anyone who goes by the name Frank. Not even someone who uses it as an alias, nickname, or pseudonym. I mean Frank or Fengshen or whatever other meteorological nomenclature it’s designated, the latest tropical storm that entered and left, in all its devastating glory, Philippine shores. Yes, the tropical storm that violently swept through the country during the weekend left me, aside from all the floating debris and human implements and cold corpses, many lessons in its wake. Nature has always been, despite (and maybe because of) its ruthlessness, one of the best teachers of humanity.

While the storm unleashed Nature’s fury upon all of us poor, helpless mortals, I found it had also unearthed many lessons buried deep in the fathomless pits of my mind, lessons I’m sure I’ve been taught before, lessons I’m sure I’ve learned in the past but had somehow unlearned and already long forgotten. Still, finding those lessons again despite the fact that a storm was ripping and tearing the city to shreds was a pleasant gift of knowledge and wisdom from an otherwise vicious force of nature. It was as if the storm dragged me by the hand, made me sit still inside a small classroom in my mind, pulled out some chalk and charts and flash cards, and began lecturing me while scribbling down some very important lessons on the blackboard. I diligently took down notes on my mental pad somewhere, and highlighted them just to be sure.

One would think that witnessing yet another terrifying exhibition of the earth’s power and wrath would scare the hell out of me, remind me not to mess with the sacred balance of nature, and maybe warn everybody else to stop cutting down old trees and do the same. Ironically, lessons on respecting life and nature and throwing one’s garbage where one ought to, never, not even once, crossed my mind throughout the rather fierce tempest. Seeing the storm lash out at everything did not surprise me. To me, we’ve always had it coming, and it was only a matter of time before our irresponsible exploitation of the already dying environment would trigger it to brutally retaliate and give us a tragic taste of our own harsh medicine. We are now merely reaping the putrid fruits of our abusive labor, suffering the consequences of decades upon decades of unrelenting environmental devastation in exchange of seemingly unnecessary industrial advancement. The calamity was merely waiting to happen, a catastrophe waiting to explode. Once again, we’ve no one else to blame but ourselves.

Anyway, the disastrous weather failed to remind me of all that. There was no need to. Instead, it made me think of other things. Last week I worked on a graveyard shift. I was on my way to work one night, and the storm had barely made itself known yet. There was hardly any sign of rain. Shortly after I had boarded an empty jeepney to leave home, however, rain began to pour in a way that it had not in recent months. It was like someone had suddenly remembered we had not had our share of rain in the past few months, and poured the entire bucket of cold rainwater over our heads right there and then. Suddenly, while musingly looking out at the rain through the jeepney’s now plastic-covered window, a little epiphany was born in my mind. The universe always seems able to find its balance. Lately I’ve had problems dealing with loneliness and depression and confusion, the kind of sad dilemmas that typify mid-life crises, tying old people down like heavy manacles and anvils. And to think I’m barely out of adolescence. I’ve had difficulty figuring out my direction in life, the path I want to take in moving on to the future, and I’ve been feeling lost in all the uncertainty as it has been increasingly difficult to keep in touch with people I’ve always had around me until very recently. I found it hard being alone.

That rainy night, however, I was not bothered by it at all. Even while I rode the jeepney alone, loneliness couldn’t creep its way into me, the melodic falling of the rain entertaining me and keeping all petty thoughts out of mind. I was alone with myself, but I wasn’t lonely at all. I was happy by myself, just staring out at ephemeral ripples on the drenched streets and keeping myself wonderfully warm against the chill of the breeze. Indeed, the universe has ways of keeping its balance. While, upon getting home after being stranded in the office for half a day as the storm raged on, I found out that water supply disappeared as power lines, among other things, were toppled down by the furious winds and electricity blacked out, the typhoon brought with it more than enough ice-cold rainwater to meet our needs, filling our tubs and pails and tabos and pitchers to the brim. While the TV, radio, and computer were rendered inert and useless by the widespread blackout, I had new comic books to read and new thoughts to ponder on to keep myself entertained.

Despite the external turmoil, I found inner peace. As the wind bellowed ominously outside, thrashing and beating its strong, hard fists against all that stood defiantly in its way, and the rain fell heavily like angry war era bombs and missiles on the ground, I was quiet on my bed, almost serene. The ensuing disaster did not scare me. It lulled me to sleep, whispering comforting nonsense into my ears. All the ironically pleasant noise the environment around me created drowned whatever troubling mental chaos that was swirling around me, allowing me to think the way I would always like to, clearly and peacefully.

In those rare moments of lucid tranquility, I realized that it sometimes takes as much as a storm to change one’s state of mind. Sometimes all you really need is an entirely new perspective, another point of view, to see the beauty in an otherwise ugly life. Before you can find and appreciate the calm in the eye of the storm, you must first lose it in all the surrounding chaos.

Sometimes you have to lose something before you realize you already had it. I haven’t washed any of the dirty clothes sitting patiently on my hamper the past few days, putting off doing the laundry one tomorrow after another. What monumental difference would one day make in washing off the dirt and dust of everyday life from my clothes anyway? I found better things to do than hauling all that dirty apparel into the washing machine, filling it up with water, pouring in foamy detergent soap, turning the dial and sitting on a stool beside the humming and churning electrical appliance while washing some more shirts by hand inside a plastic basin. I had to it on a weekend, when my time was my own and when life was running at a pace that I alone commanded. Then came the weekend. And the storm. Just like that, I lost a bright, sunny day or two that would have been perfect for doing the laundry. Obviously now I couldn’t wash my clothes, wring them and leave them hanging to dry up on the clothes line under all that wind and rain.

The opportunity had stopped knocking on my door, turned around upset and left stomping its feet heavily on the ground. Good thing some opportunities, like doing the laundry and other household chores, don’t just knock once. They do so persistently every once in a while. But what if it were the last chance I would have ever had to wash my clothes and dry them under the sun? What if the storm had never stopped and the sun didn’t come out ever again? I would have most certainly been stuck with damp, dirty clothes forever.

Never let an opportunity pass you by. Never hesitate to grab it by the neck (or whatever body part you prefer grabbing) the first instant it presents itself. Every moment spent thinking twice about whether or not to take the opportunity is a moment lost forever, a moment that could have possibly cost you the opportunity itself. You never know, the same opportunity might not come your way again, and it would have completely disappeared from your life permanently. In one seemingly harmless moment of hesitation, you could have lost something that was really meant for you in the first place, and sadly, you will never have the chance of finding it again.

Amazing how it took an entire tropical storm annihilating civilization as we presently know it just to make me realize all these things. I guess the storm taught me well. I’ll try and keep those lessons in mind as long as I can. Just in case some substitute typhoon comes and gives a pop quiz.