the czar's page
I see the passion that’s missing.
The friends they do not know and the awful pressures that crush them.
In those moments, I realize how much I have and how much I have to give."
I imagine the love that they’re getting and the relief that comes from being really known.
The private pleaseures they share, the friends they have and the pressures they don’t.
Their sense of importance, the satisfaction of their work.
I imagine how fulfilled they are, how rich their life is.
And these moments, I feel EMPTY and WANTING."
By Anna Karina Samia
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 07, 2010
I CAN be a grammar Nazi if I want to be. But lately I’ve been more forgiving, choosing the path of kindness.
In other matters, however, I am more discriminating. I have standards. If there’s one non-negotiable quality I want to find in all my friends (and potential lovers), it would have to be smart.
Let me explain.
A friend once told me that I am “un-stereotype-able.” In her words, I am a “cheerleader that reads and eats.”
I think it was donning the five-inches-above-the-knee uniform that kept me from being completely consigned to the “nerd” archetype in high school. While I enjoyed smashing such notions of how people should be (a la “Glee”), I think that at the very core of my being I am exactly that.
The saying, “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,” is widely believed. If you subscribe to it, then knowing my friends would speak volumes. To this day, my mother calls my friends from the Ateneo Junior Summer Seminar (or AJSS, a two-month long taste of Ateneo college life offered to qualified high school juniors) my “nerd herd.” When I was still in high school, our conversations would go like this:
“Ma, puwede ba ko lumabas this Friday?”
“Sino kasama mo?”
“AJ people. Punta kaming Greenbelt.”
“Sige.”
Later I would find out that she had sent an SMS to my aunt saying, “Anna’s out with her nerd herd!”
We used to hang out in McDo Katipunan and instead of just “waving” goodbye like normal people, we’d proudly shout out, “Oscillate!” (I know—I’m cringing too. To be fair, we did “cool” things as well, like underage drinking.)
I have another barkada. In the very all-girls high school tradition of naming circles of friends, we once dubbed ourselves “SUA”. That’s “Samahang UP-Ateneo” to you, as freshman year found ourselves scrambling for the familiar and discovering that Katipunan was our best friend. We did arguably normal barkada things, such as going on trips and celebrating Christmas with themed celebrations.
One Christmas, however, a friend pointed out that we were the “DD” crowd. No, that is not our bra sizes. It’s our high school’s acronym for “Dugtong Dunong,” the not-wanting-to-be-but-the-closest-thing to an honors section in Math and Science. I used to wonder when we posted pictures if our other batch mates would be silently thinking, “Uy, nag-pa-party yung mga nerd!”
My first boyfriend fit the bill perfectly. I always had a ball reciting his litany of accomplishments. “SALUTATORIAN, OBLATION SCHOLAR, INTARMED, MATH WIZARD” always elicited impressed “oohs” and “ahhs” from friends and acquaintances, and I knew saying it out loud was skirting “trophy boyfriend” territory. However, it earned me approval from my very imposing and notoriously snobbish BC 100 professor at UP.
“May boyfriend ka na?” he asked me once.
“Opo,” I replied.
“Taga-UP?”
“Opo.”
“Diliman?”
“Manila po.”
“Anong course?”
“Medicine po.”
“Pre-med or med proper?”
“Med proper na po.”
“VERY GOOD! PAKASALAN MO NA!”
Maybe I am an intellectual elitist. It seems wrong though. To ease my guilt somehow, I had to think this through. I was pleased to realize that while I seemed to be picking favorites, it was the other intangibles that sealed the deal.
My favorite case in point would be the above-mentioned guy. There is no doubt about his math genius, his test-taking skills that earned him a 99+ percentile in the National Medical Admission Test, his prowess in matters academic. To the nerd-loving, he is a dream. To the untrained eye, he can be just as easily be dismissed. I’d like to believe I saw or eventually realized what others didn’t.
To this day, he is the only friend I know who consistently walks on the danger side when crossing the street, whether or not he wants to impress you. At the same time, his sense of humor is not for the faint-hearted and easily bruised. DJ Alvaro’s, “maginoo pero medyo bastos” describes him just right.
Honestly? It is the conversations. They are a mix of the witty-bordering-on-backstabbing, heartfelt-sometimes-emo, and the philosophical-hoping-to-be-profound. We spend hours dissecting thoughts, and finishing each other’s sentences. Just yesterday, I was casually supplying him with gossip.
“Uy, si ________ may boyfriend na.”
His reply: “Two less lonely people in the world!”
Where does this leave me? My penchant for the witty and the learned might lead me to overlook those whose potential still lies waiting, and whose strengths may not necessarily lie in the realm of knowledge. And yet I do believe that this requirement spells the difference, most of the time. As another friend said recently, “Iba pa rin ’ata magmahal ang mataas ang IQ.”
It’s quite reasonable, actually. If good conversations are key to starting lifelong friendships, and friendships are my prerequisites for relationships, then we have to go back to the ingredients of good conversations: wit, humor, sensibility. It is the beautiful minds of this world that win over beautiful faces. They win hearts by winning minds, and when everything else fails (and we know that looks are often the first to go) you will be left with the gift of priceless conversations, which hold unbridled potential. Life will never be boring.
If you don’t believe me, just consider The Big Bang Theory.
