IMHO

The Seven Year Itch

Just a few days ago, we were talking about Paolo Coelho's body of work and his style of writing and of "personal legends" (per The Alchemist). This is the last article I wrote for the Star prior to my conversion - appropriately enough, it saw print on May 31, the Friday before my renewal weekend of June 1 and 2, when I started to discover exactly what my personal legend was. And Who I'd be living it for.

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH

The only thing I can remember about The Celestine Prophecy is that there supposedly is no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason; there are no such things as “isolated incidents” (which was how NAPOCOR officials described the last Luzon-wide blackout). Each and every event in our lives, no matter how trivial, is woven into the fabric of our existence, or, if you believe in predestination, has already been tightly sewn into it.

Strange things have been happening to me over the last few weeks (I can’t really speak for *ex-writing partner*, but strange things have always happened to him). At a wedding, I had an attack of depression when a former professor said that it was too late for him to give up the law and do something else, since the law was all he knew. A few days later, right before our cases came up for hearing, a fellow lawyer and I were joking about how far we had gone since graduation, when he wistfully mentioned that all he wanted to do was drive a taxi for a living (a ridiculous idea, given the state of the city’s traffic; I said I wanted to count screws in a hardware store). Later on, at a fashion show, I bumped into another fellow lawyer who looked absolutely mahhhvelous – he said he was working as a “go-fer” for an events outfit. Two other friends from law school appear to have chucked out their legal careers to become Howard Stern wannabes. And when a photographer friend noticed the grimace behind my smile after he asked how I liked being a lawyer, he said “girl, you’re ready for your next career change!”

Maybe it’s the seven-year (career) itch. The certificate on my ego wall says that I was admitted to the Bar on the 2nd day of May 1995, so I guess this explains why I’ve been scratching myself sore lately. Once upon a time I thought that all I wanted to be was a lawyer, and after that (miraculously) happened, I thought that all I wanted to be was a partner in my own firm (that too, by some stroke of luck, came to be). But what happens after your five-year (or seven-year, in this case) plan has run its course?

Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist had been on my “to-read” list for quite some time, especially after it was highly recommended by a friend (who would later leave mainstream corporate life to become a chef and put up a B&B). And so one day when I strolled into a bookstore without meaning to buy anything, I picked it off the rack, noticed that they’d knocked the price down by several hundred pesos, and headed to the check-out counter. The premise of the book is startlingly simple: it’s about realizing one’s Personal Legend, or “what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.” And, while that mysterious force “appears to be negative, (it) actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.”

How I miss those days when life was so much simpler; when adults would ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up and you could change your answer every time. As an adult, you don’t have the same luxury, although there are more and more doctors who want to be musicians, bankers who want to be poets, lawyers who want to be anything but. Even though they’re all grown up. “People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being. Maybe that’s why they give up on it so early, too. But that’s the way it is.”

Personal Legends need not be grandiose, nor do they need to be realistic. They can be as simple as fulfilling the desire to travel, just like the young shepherd in the book, or as far-out and fantastic as *ex-writing partner*’s dream of becoming a matinee idol. The most difficult thing perhaps is pinpointing what exactly your Personal Legend is, after which it’s all a matter of “following the omens” (or the “strange” things that seem to keep happening to you) until you reach your treasure at the end. And “the closer one gets to realizing his Personal Legend, the more that Personal Legend becomes his true reason for being.” However, as Santiago the shepherd came to realize for himself, the closer you get to the realization of your dream, the more difficult things become.

I don’t know what my Personal Legend is. Perhaps I haven’t been paying close enough attention. Perhaps I have yet to discover what it is. Perhaps, like the old merchant in the book, “I’m afraid that if my dream is realized, I’ll have no reason to go on living.” Or perhaps, after rereading the definition of a Personal Legend, I’ve been living my Personal Legend all along, and just don’t know it.

“To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation. And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.” I guess my Personal Legend and I need to sort each other out first, hopefully within the next seven years, before I start itching again. Someone pass the calamine lotion.

31 May 2002

posted by Honey Oliveros @ 12:58 PM