taking the plunge

"Taking the Plunge". photo by Gina Matchinsky, Freemont Street, Las Vegas, Nevada

January 22, 2013 question is "Are you seeking security or adventure?

There was a time when I used to be one of those kinds of people, Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letter to a Young Poet  describe as one who "knew only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, and one narrow strip on which they keep going back and forth."

When I was a child, I had a very protective father who would not let me sleep over on relative houses or join campings or attend field trips without an older and more responsible companion. When I was in my teens, I was not even allowed to attend parties without a chaperone if allowed at all. If allowed it was strictly up to a certain hour only and at that exact appointed time I got to be fetched by no other than my father himself and not a minute time extension whatsoever.

It was home to school and school to home and just going out from time to time during weekends with him for long walks at Rizal Park or the coastal areas along Roxas Blvd near the CCP complex in my early elementary days. I almost contracted polio and the doctor thought it would be a  good therapy to exercise the legs more to build muscles just to be safe.

In higher elementary, high school and college, I got to tag along with him to auctions and conventions because he was a numismatist. He thought I gave him luck in his dealings. Those weekends were fun because after that I got to be treated to good food and shopping galore and most of whatever I wanted I got. With him it was always a taxi ride and never a passenger jeepney commute that my mom made me ride every time we shopped after buying too many things..

I used to be sickly when I was small and while he earned a lot during those times, most of the money went to paying hospital bills and buying medicine. As a businessman with his own manufacturing company, we did not have Medicare benefits and health insurance were not that popular in the Philippines at the time. So that accounted for him being overly protective of me long after the time when I was not sickly anymore. So it was still basically school and home, and home and school and a few "monitored" diversions in between.

10 days after graduating college, I got a job, so after that it was home to work and work to home. The 3 of us siblings were not allowed to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend while we were still studying. So I was already working when I had my first boyfriend whom I married. After marriage, he preferred that I be a stay-at-home mom for the children so it was home and shopping, and shopping and home from then on.

So I had a pretty much sheltered and relatively secured life for the most part. I have not even toured most parts of the Philippines. I never even had the chance to explore the world or even my own personal potentials and possibilities.

So back to the question if I am seeking security or adventure - it is probably both.

But first let me define how I take security. I take it to mean being free from harm, danger, threat, fear or anxiety. But more importantly I take it as the feeling of being secured in a loved-one's love, and that there is still somebody there to catch me when I fall.

Having a father whose business folded just when I was about to go to college back then had been a trying experience for me after experiencing the "good life" our bag business had to offer. I don't want to go through the same feeling of uncertainty again. There was the anxiety that I would not be able to finish school college at the time and I so really wanted to. It even made me worry if there will be food on the table the next time.

Same thing happened with the father of my children who work as a freelancer. But it was not just worry about having food on the table the next time and the children being able to finish a college education. After him not allowing me to work so I can take care of the children properly or as how he wanted it, there was also the constant threat of him leaving me and the children and how that would make me the loser. Whenever there was an argument, he threatened to no longer work or to leave and he won each time. So I used to have a feeling of being dispensable and not being loved enough to matter so I left him. I don't want to go through the same feeling again.

After not being allowed to work and being treated unfairly just because, my motivation to work now is to be financially independent so I will not be so dependent again and controlled or treated so low and without respect. So maybe I seek that kind of security. I want to be secured enough to be independent but still stick to a relationship because I wanted to.

Also after having just 3 years of regular work experience and long years of intermittent freelance job and then stopping for a long time, there seems to be a feeling of insecurity in fitting in a regular 8 to 5 job again. So I also need to feel secure of being accepted no matter what.

As for being adventurous, I can go so long as it is not debilitating or life threatening and although there is risk, just calculated ones.

I think, I just had my share of "adventure" when I went to the United States all by myself for the first time and decided to alter the course of my life, which I hope will be for good. With that big step it changed the way I view the world, too. I realized that there is more to life than the everyday routine and safety or uncertainty of the four corners of the room I frequently stayed in back home. I now understand why white can't be all that white or black through and though black and how sometimes it has to be the color in between. I also discovered the free-spirited person in me surfaced after being used to living by a given set of conventions. It felt like a breath of fresh air after being stifled for so long.

So now I felt that I have missed on a lot -- a lot of "I have not seen that..." and "I have not done that...". So maybe with adventure it is more of seeing the world more, being less conventional in my views, experiencing things I have not experienced before, learning to actually live and taking the plunge to love again, the biggest adventure of all."