#PyreSB : Why Sleeping Beauty Decided To Burn The World

I Already Found Heaven While I Am Living

PYRE XIII 
Already Found Heaven While I Am Living 

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Barbie

Nung bata pa ako, may isang paboritong kwento akong paulit ulit na pinapakwento sa nanay ko. Tungkol sa isang munting ibon na kahit na sobrang liit niya, nakakaya niya pa ring lumipad at mabuhay sa napakalawak na mundo. Wala namang ispesyal sa kwento. Katulad din lang ito ng mga kwentong pambata na kinalakihan ng karamihan sa atin. It was just the vastness of the world that caught my attention.

You see, I was always fascinated by the vastness of the world. There's something romantic about the endless possibilities that it holds for us. There's so many things to discover and to know. There's always something new.

I used to think that everyone started out as a free being. Born into this world with wings of their own. Everyone is able to soar and fly and glide and explore and grow with nothing to hold them or pin them down. Everyone is limitless.

But this world that we live in is a scary place after all. As soon as we start looking down, we'll notice how high we are. How free we are. And how unsafe we are. The freedom comes with a price. And sooner or later, we'll soon realize that compared to the vastness of the world, we're so tiny and insignificant.

We'll soon start feeling this irrational fear. This fear that what we're doing is pointless. That no matter how far we fly or how high we soar, we're still not accomplishing anything. We can't reach the top. The horizon is still far away. Everything is futile. Our efforts are all in vain. And no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, we are still not good enough. Then we start loathing the vastness of the world that we used to love.

And in an effort to reduce the vastness of the world, we'll start building cages around ourselves to ward off the horrors. Inside the limited area, we can finally soar to the top, we can finally reach the elusive horizon. We'll start feeling that somehow, somewhat, we're accomplishing something. That we're doing something. The cage can be anything. A job. School. Anything! The only requirement for the cage is that we feel normalcy and the sense of purpose and achievement. Even if most of the time, everything is contrived and fake. And so we learn to be contented inside the cage. We start accepting the cage as a way of life. We start loving the restrictions of the cage. And as our dependency of the cage increases, the size of our wings decreases. Little by little, our ability to fly dies. And we happily accept that thinking that it's the price that we must pay to be contented.

But even though it was us who built that cage it's not really entirely ours. Sooner or later, strangers will come inside that cage. Some of them are weaker than us. Some of them are stronger than us. Some of them we learn to accept into our lives. And some, we learn to fear. And through it all, we will endure. Because we think it's the price we must pay to be contented.

Sometimes, inside that cage filled with strangers, we'll start feeling alone. We'll start feeling that we're too tiny and insignificant to warrant attention from others. We'll start feeling that, when compared to them, we're not good enough. We then realize that the cage became, with its limited space, a vast world again.

And so to protect ourselves once more, to escape the horrors again, we'll start shrinking the area surrounding us. We'll start building walls around us.

The world is a scary place after all.

"Barbie, ano sa tingin mo ang mga basic needs ng tao?", pukaw ni Tyron sa lumilipad kong isipan. Nakahiga kami ngayon sa isang kwarto sa motel na madalas naming puntahan kapag gusto niya akong pahirapan. Kapag gusto niyang paglaruan ang kanyang paborito at kaisa isang manika.