We live in a serendipitious world, a world of missed chances, and chance encounters which lead to second chances. A world where the ticktock of a clock's sweeping hand in one place is mirrored to the second by a clock in an opposite corner of the globe whose face may reflect a different hour of the day but whose hands nonetheless record exactly the same passage of time through the world as the other clock. All of us live in one time.

You pass by a corner on your regular route of the day and a little beggar stands there, barely dressed in rags, his face blackened with the exhaust from oblivious vehicles roaring past, much the same way you do. You take another road on the way back from wherever you were headed and you pass another corner, nothing much about this place similar to the first corner which you passed earlier but for the little girl in tatters holding her hand out to you, the too large eyes in the gaunt face which have seen too much, begging you not just for coins, but for the lost childhood, the stolen sense of humanity.

You're coasting down the road when out of nowhere a derelict looking passenger jeepney cuts in front of you with their trademark gall and rudeness, you jerk your foot down on the breaks and end up lurching forward from the sudden movement. You open your window and curse at the driver who pointedly ignores you as he speeds away. You continue on your way only to end up behind another accursed jeepney, which, judging from the cornucorpia gaudily adorning it and the rust holding it together, may have very well been the first, but for the differing plate numbers. Passengers make their way turtlelike out of the jeep which has decided considerately to let them off right smack in the middle of the road, fed up, you blast your horn, hoping to at least hurry them up. Apparently the passengers have all been prematurely deafened by the obnoxiously loud music blaring from the jeepney's speakers. All attempts at harrying them come to naught as besides being deaf they seem to have taken up permanent residence on the road judging from their pace.

I've been looking for the key to unlock last night's blog as always only to locate it in the most unusual place, in the belly of a Big Fish, though 'my precioousss' might very well be shaped in the form of a gold wedding band. Thoughts are strange that way. They can make your mind tingle for days on end, flaunting the idea in abstract right under your very nose, yet allowing themselves to be crafted into words only when they feel that the time is right, when the final piece falls into place.

That seemed to be the case last night.

For the last few days i've been wondering how is it that being human is to us both our greatest source of pride and our best excuse for behaving in the most wretched and reprehensible ways. How many times have we been afflicted with feelings of envy, jealousy, and spite towards our fellow human beings only to justify feeling this way by claiming that we are 'only' human? Since when did humanity sink below the level of the maggot in terms of courtesy and decency? Maggots at least profess no claim to greatness, humans believe themselves to be the crowning glory of evolution, blessed and divine, and yet we use the very fact that we belong to the human race to excuse all of our misdeeds and our bad behaviors.

It's no wonder then why we are so quick to categorize acts of extraordinary bravery and nobleness as the stuff out of legends, as myth which have no place in reality. People who would stand by their morals, who would go out of their way to show compassion, who would fight for what they believe in, and who would give others the benefit of the doubt instead of indulging in petty rumors are fools ripe for mockery, that is if they survive long enough. And if they die early fighting for their principles or for the good of others, they would make interesting characters to add to the roster of those who to us are more legend than real, as too big to have a place in our narrow minds. It's not that we stopped believing in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny and of course, the Tooth Fairy, it's not that we outgrew them, rather, they grew too large for the petty adult human world which we inhabit. We've reduced ourselves with our excuses into a level of dustlike, insignificant specks of smallness and spite.

What then can we make of our humanity when we consider those who are gallant, whose hearts are great, and whose visions and imaginations are vast as too good to be true? Dead our heroes might be, but by the very virtue that they could die it could only mean that they too are composed of flesh and blood the way we are, not fairy dust as we might mislead ourselves to believe. Why is it that we now wouldn't know what decency is if it walked right up to us and 'tapped' us politely on the head with a hammer? Since when was being human equated to being a turd?

I'm not aspiring for sainthood. For me martyrdom is for the birds, whereas justice might impassion me still, I was never much suited to public humiliation. When I lose my temper and when I thrash someone verbally for treating me rudely or unfairly, I even console myself in the aftermath by telling myself that I am no saint but neither am I a turd, turds end up stepped on, and not even willingly at that, and I don't make excuses for any inhuman behavior on my part either by claiming that I am 'just human'.

I strive to be human, wherein I can be noble without being consigned to fictitious lore, sainthood is beyond me, and it would cramp my style, there's a wickedness in me which no halo would tame, but at the same time enough decency to keep me from being a turd, enough to at least make me make something of myself worthy of man's original sin, pride.