(By Rae Dawn Balagot Maestrado)
“Wherever you go, there you are” is a profound string of words, so simple, and rings deeply true, that it never left my mind once it was known to me. Turns out, it was going to be a foreshadowing.
I heard that line when I was watching a movie critique about a film called “Paris, Texas.” In the beginning, we find a man in the dessert who walks for miles along the vast dunes of nowhere, under the scorching heat of the southern American sun.
As a first-time viewer, you are left wondering if he is hurrying to go somewhere but it becomes apparent that he is a man with no direction. He just trudges along and drags his feet step by step: right foot forward and then left foot, and back again – the same movement he has repeated more than a thousand times.
Later, we learn that he was walking away from his past, and all those years he had succumbed to shame so deeply. He kept running away from everything without realizing that the only thing he was really running away from was himself.
I don’t think we’re any different than this man. There’s always something in our lives that we need to move forward from or even run away from. But we can never run away from ourselves.
While I didn’t walk for miles through the Americas, I did hop on a plane to Europe where I would be living with total strangers whom I shall consider my family for a year. Initially, I thought this would magically erase all of my worries away: the worry of proving myself after college, the worry of being a “palamunin,” and the worry of figuring out exactly what my role in the world is.
Funny, I thought I would find it in Europe. Instead, I learned that nothing will ever be enough and worries never go away. Life will always be a journey with a long way to go, more things to prove, and now I’m more confused about what to do with my life after the year is over. It’s like I’m right back where I started – a full circle moment if you will. Ironic, isn’t it?
I find that flying to another continent and living in a foreign country isn’t what people make it out to be. Technically, I’m just on another piece of land. There’s so much fuss with going abroad, but it isn’t that grand really. When I arrived at the airport, the people milling around were just people, except that they looked and sounded different. On the ride to my foreign home, the trees and the scenery were the same as the ones I have seen at home in Valencia.
Granted, I was a bit excited, but it wasn’t the wave of overwhelm that I had hoped. It is a little disappointing because how could I, a twenty-something girl, with no experience in a foreign country, who travelled a thousand miles that took almost twenty-four hours, manage to feel comme si comme ça? And what a waste how fast the novelty wore off!
Then it hit me: Wherever you go, there you are. Just because I’m in a different place does not automatically make me a different person. I am still me, at the end of the day. Same thoughts, same worries, same me. Wherever I go, there I am.
This venture is not a lost cause though, because I have grown in some ways. I’m bound to, given the circumstances. I’ve toughened up a bit, discovered new parts of myself (the good, the bad, and the ugly), gained new friends, learned new things, made new memories, and basically all that jazz about self-discovery. My case isn’t special. Like the man and most people in this world, we keep walking in the journey of life because the round earth doesn’t stop turning. We’ll keep dragging ourselves as long as we live. And before we know it, life has caught us in the humdrum of it all.
There is no beginning and there is no end. Like the man, it’s just us, the unmoving sky, the ground our feet are planted on, and the constant decision to keep moving. Along the way, we find surprises here and there, both good and bad. And in those encounters, we’re expected to “gain some and lose some” – that’s how we become the person we are: constantly building, taking apart, and reinventing the self. No matter what we do, we can tweak here and there but we can never leave ourselves behind.
Wherever we go, there we are.
***
Woman Talk with Belinda Sales is taking a wellness break. Email to belindabelsales@gmail.com. Follow us on X at @ShilohRuthie./PN
