Voices by the Sea

By Medardo M. Panlilio

Life, especially the examined life, is always a dialogue whether this is between two persons or between a person and his conscience. It always involves a question and answer, two feet carrying a person on the seashore of life in search of meaning. The book is about a dialogue of two friends, Mel and Ma-isha who started their dialogue by the seashore with a recognition that many people get waylaid in life not so much in the big issues of life which great minds have reflected on but in the ordinary things like eating and drinking,
bathing, working, and living with others. And yes, religion! Because they are so common, the ordinary things in life are taken so routinely and for granted that in the process the extraordinary in them is lost. The baby is thrown with the bath water! Mel and Ma-isha, having just gone out of school, engaged in a dialogue not so much to have a final say on the subjects that they discussed but to lead the yearnings in the hearts of people caught in the spreading desert of life to the extraordinary which is a shimmering oasis in the midst of the
ordinary for the tired travelers of life to have their fill. They do not need to look beyond the stars to quench their thirst for life. All they have to do is to open their hearts and minds to the extraordinary in the ordinary things in life. The divine is closer to our hearts than we often think!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 4, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453553282

Medardo M. Panlilio

Medardo M. Panlilio is an economic development planner who likes to write and who, just like everyone, has journeyed through the desert and garden of life, literally in the countries he had visited, studied, and lived, and metaphorically, through the hearts and minds of people he meets in life. He is a witness to the best and the bleakest in the human condition for which he hopes to someday contribute even more to the alleviation of unnecessary human sufferings around the world especially those caused by human corruptions and injustice, and iniquitous social structures. He likes to be by the sea and on mountaintops to reconnect to the extraordinary and the source of wonder in life and to take a breather from weariness in the seemingly ceaseless chase for shadows around a circuitous track called the clock. In doing so, he is able to take a glimpse beyond matter to what, at the end, really matters—life lived to the fullest even in apparent emptiness. Currently, Medardo M. Panlilio lives with his wife and son in Surrey, Canada.

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CONTENTS

Voices by the Sea

Eating and Drinking

Bathing

Being Alone

Work

Honesty

Parenting

Living with Others

Education

Religion

The Journey

VOICES BY THE SEA

After a long trek following the course of the river, Ma-isha, the son of a mining engineer, arrived at the delta where the river met the Great Sea. He sat in silence, gazing at the vast horizon, and then turned his eyes on the shore where the sea in whispers was lapping at children’s sand castles. Except for a few signs, the sand castles were barely recognizable. He knew they were sand castles and he knew that children made them for he constructed a lot himself when he was a child even though the memories of his early childhood were already vague to him now.

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From the distance, to his left, he could see two men unloading a boatful of seaweeds. These seaweeds, he thought, will find their way to the big houses to his far right in the form of gelatins, perfumes, and so forth. They will be labeled and named. The name becomes the thing. A gull swooped down and emerged with a fish in its beak and merged with the blue sky as it flew toward the horizon.

What are you thinking? A voice from afar punctuated the silent space. Ma-isha turned his head and saw his friend approaching with a big book clutched in his right hand to his breast. He sat down and opened the book. It was a book of poetry.

Ma-isha was still. He seemed to lose himself in space. His friend—about to read—paused in respect. Ma-isha then, as if emerging from the nothingness of space, asked what the book was all about.

Poetry, his friend replied proudly. I like poetry especially because they give something and bring out something from you—something that you have long known but have not really been conscious of and verbalized. You are a poet yourself. Maybe you know what I mean better.

Not really. Come to think of it. Sometimes when I most wanted to write, I couldn’t. While, at times, without planning to write, I see a leaf and I find myself writing . . . when my heart speaks, my mind translates. There is something that speaks through me. I just rearrange things. Just look around you. Is it not that what you see a poetry worth a thousand times better than what you have in your hands?

There was silence. The two friends just sat there as if they gathered everything in the surroundings to themselves. And as they looked up and far into the horizon, they seemed to offer their lives to a being they could only lose by naming.

You know, Mel, Ma-isha began. I came here wondering, at times painfully, what value are all the things that we have read have. We read a lot but we look awkward among men. The more we read the more we become misfits, while others who have not gone to school at all blend with others well. They are happy and they easily make others happy. I am afraid. We may have wasted years if not our whole life.

Well, we enjoy what we do, aren’t we? To be happy is the object of life. This may not be so but this is at least what everybody is aiming at, sometimes in spite of themselves.

But are we truly happy if our happiness is just a door to sorrow which may also be a door to happiness if not to another sorrow much greater than before? Is there not something in these doors of happiness and sorrows that is a constant source of balance and comfort? Maybe it’s the space—the space in our hearts and minds. No, not the emptiness. Space is not emptiness, do you agree? Often, this is what is lacking in our times, especially as our material environment speeds up faster. The space provides the opening for God to be a partner in our lives. That is, it is not enough that there is space, it may just be filled by something worse than before. In fact, this is what I was thinking when you came—how to create spaces, or call them rooms, for God to participate in our day-to-day lives which are burdened enough by the increasing concerns of our material existence. Many learn and know the virtues and righteousness, but beyond the glass cages of their thoughts these virtues and righteousness do not really exist, let alone live. They point to God in the sublime and the great, and they forget to point to God in the simple and the ordinary when, ironically, it is in the simple and the ordinary that most men lose their ways.

Yes, Mel agreed. The same thing came to my mind too, yesterday. The books that we read and the lessons that we learned are not specific enough to guide us in our day-to-day lives. They contain the seeds though. How can we make these seeds live in us is what we need to know. If they live, they make us strong and even to live to eternity. If we become strong, they bear good fruits and the world bears good fruits too.

And the world becomes good fruit too, Ma-isha joined in, easing the silence.

"We can water the good seeds in us by building with them good habits and more importantly, by imbuing our every act with good, the one and true good. But how? Mechanically acting out the good that were taught to us by others and read from books are not enough. I do not think that there is something lacking in my life. I know it. Filling that lack with lifeless thoughts is not enough. But again, how? The world of day-to-day living confronts me with details yet the books do not tell me everything.