Floating

Sitting on top of the scaffolding used to support a pavilion when the LGU holds a gathering up on my hill I can see the mountains that form this watershed towering behind me and the entire valley of Mayoyao opening up in front of me. The clouded sky is still full of stars and the moon peaking through and I can see the lights of the tricycles as they ferry people back and forth to their destinations. From here the world appears so incredibly gigantic. Stretching out in all directions overwhelming in its shear magnitude, threatening to crush my small existence with all its weight and troubles. Yet somehow the heavens remain arced in all their splendor above my head. I still manage to eke out my own little reality under the firmaments. And from here the world appears so small. The boundaries of that reality are so clearly delineated by the geography. My current reality and limits of which to operate in, in many ways, have already been defined and laid out for me by previous ones, as life tends to go. But whether I look up and consider the erratic wanderings that have gotten me this far and the void that follows these two years, or I look down and dwell on what my service and time here is supposed to mean and how to shape it into a worthwhile endeavor…

everything is lost. everything is confused. everything is grey and shadows.

I have come such a long way from the person I was when I first arrived in country. I’m still not sure what direction exactly I have been traveling in though. I am still searching for the big overall maxims under which I can operate and begin to give shape to the shadows; whether its for the overall directions I want to go in, or for the immediate approach to this time and place and task of “development.” I still don’t know exactly what it is I’m trying to do here. Some days the reasons I came in the first place blur and fade.

Yet the mornings still come and require some kind of answer. An answer of at least how to face that particular day. Sometimes I answer with overflowing confidence and joy at being alive. Sometimes my answer can barely be heard over the wildlife. I suppose that is the way of things depending on how much clarity I decide to pull out of the shadows and how much I let the darkness overwhelm. The world is grey. What to do with that is the only question.