Mr. Bicycle Man 2
Hello, Randy,
You’d shit yourself if you saw me now. I know you will. My friends who knew me from years back always tell me so. I am positive your eyes would pop out of their sockets and your mouth would reach the ground in disbelief, but you’ll be smiling. You'd be happy for me like always and our conversation would flow like the couple of years since we last parted didn’t exist at all. We'd talk about our grievances and at some point, laugh about them, but by the end of it, I’d be happy for you.
And you'd be alive.
An update on the things I told you in 2019:
a) I'm no longer nocturnal (doesn't necessarily equate to having enough sleep)
I am neither nocturnal nor a morning person. I will tell you that I can adapt readily to whatever schedule fits me and right now the only thing that I have determined to keep constant in relation to schedule is my routine after waking up:
cleaning the house a little, making coffee and drinking it while reading in the morning light, meditating for at least 3 minutes (10 if I feel like it) and drawing:
-all of these in the few hours I have before work starts at noon. We are working remotely still. We report to the office when we feel like it, and when we do, I move the routine after work or wake up just a little bit earlier. It is not important where this routine fits, only that it must occur.
This unchanging habit has done wonders to my mind and in a world everchanging, having this is an anchor.
b) I'm a tea person now.
Coffee no. 1. I am in love with the matcha/espresso fusion. Dirty matcha as they call it. I'm also slowly falling in love with Vietnamese coffee. Condensed milk in coffee? SCANDALOUS!
c) I go to social events (doesn't necessarily equate to socializing)
I have learned to say no to things that don’t matter to me, and this means saying yes to those that do. Now, I am surrounded by people dearest to me and I have cultivated the mind to always think the best of people. You’d be surprised, Randy. I told you so!
d) that story I was asking your input on actually got published,
I was ecstatic when it did, but it is a memory that I do not often look back to. It is a proud moment, but it is but a moment. I look at it with detached fondness. I have learned to treat hope and fear the same way. I will not be attached to the memory of it.
e) I no longer hide my face behind a wall of hair (doesn't necessarily equate to improved self-confidence)
I’m pretty fucking confident right now, Randy. I told you, you'd shit your pants! Not necessarily about physical appearances, though even with that, I no longer feel like trash, but I am confident on what I stand for, on how I treat my fellows and how I am with work. I am confident that I will not betray the people I love, and even those I do not favor, I will not hope misfortune to befall them. I refrain, as much as possible to speak if what’s going to come out of my mouth will slander another, even if there is an ounce of truth to them.
f) I biked from Imus to Silang (may have involved walking uphill at some points and getting pulled by my dad on a motorcycle...who knows)
I miss biking. It’s not that I don’t have the time to do it. It’s just that I have decided to allocate this time to reading and drawing instead.
The gist of it is that I know now that I am in control. In fact, I have decided to concern myself only with the things that I have control of.
What people think of me? Not in my control.
Traffic? Not in my control.
Long queues at the supermarket? Not in my control.
The first I realized stoicism getting a hold of me was when I found myself in a long queue and felt not an iota of irritation of having to stand for a longer period of time, a stark contrast to how I previously thought my personal hell must be standing in a never ending queue. In fact I even waited quite comfortably (as much I was able to have in that sweltering afternoon) for 8 hours to get my first vaccine.
It’s not that the constraint in time has made it impossible for me to ride my non-existent bicycle (this is also a factor, lol, but in my defense, I could have bought one), but that I have knowingly divided my time to prioritize reading and drawing over it. It was entirely my decision.
I did not go to a gathering not because I cannot, but because I chose to do something else which I considered to be of greater urgency or importance.
I have agency. WE, DO. I am not a slave to circumstances and even if things do not go my way, how I react to them is completely in my control.
Such is the fortitude that I have gleaned through devoting myself to the study of stoicism. It all sounds very scholarly, but really, it’s just me reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Ryan Holiday’s books (The Daily Stoic first and foremost), Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Atomic Habits, Epictetus and Socrates. I wish I was Anne Elliot and can quote accurate lines from these tomes, but my memory is always failing me and I always butcher them when prompted by my friends to give one that resonates with the current situation we are in.
I recall having once wrote, that it might be time to turn to self-help books to improve my temperance, having failed to do so with sheer will alone; something which I once thought to be enough. I willed myself to change with no sincere attempt to look back on my intention and systems that were already running in place, most of which I took for granted and thought to be ingrained in me. It was I who decided them as part of who I am, wholly and unchanging.
No…this is not true. If anything, I was all reflection, the quality of which is dubious, but I am no authority to judge the quality of reflections and am inclined to think that no self-introspection should be considered a bad thing.
But going back, my encounter with the philosophy of stoicism has empowered me to look over my thought systems, to deconstruct and rebuild them. I have set a standard for myself and can only consider myself successful if I am able to meet them.
Stoicism is an ideal and not a finish line. One must constantly work, day-in and day out to reach it, knowing that one never would.
I hope to write more about the ways that I have seen anew after encountering stoicism, the tenets of which, I realized after having known them, have surrounded me in various forms and just did not know it! But now, I must get back to work.
If you were here now, Randy, you’d ask me if I’m happy and I’d answer you in a heartbeat, I am.