The time is nigh
The timing of things in my life has always been painfully cliché.
Before I blabber on, let me drop the bomb: I’m moving to Cebu. Mom’s getting relocated there for work (she’s that good at what she does that Globe begged her to take care of the stores there), and as a faithful mama’s boy, I’ll be accompanying her. Crazy to think about it, right? I just graduated college, with my sights set on the wild, wild world of possibilities in front of me. And then I get news that I’m going to start living in Visayas after barely leaving Luzon my entire life.
The timing is scarily uncanny. Changing the setting right when a huge and very significant chapter of the story has concluded. I’ve always seen my life as one endless sit-com, with the most opportune things occurring at the most opportune instances. “Speaking of the devil” moments happen quite a lot — whenever I’d be talking or thinking about someone, they’d show up right behind me all of a sudden. Class suspensions due to heavy rains sandwiched the OrSem I co-hosted. It was as if the sun came out and warded off the storm clouds just for those two days of the event to successfully and safely happen. On March 9, 2020, the last day of classes before the pandemic broke out, I noticed that I got to spend the entire day with different sets of friends. I remember feeling like it was so suspicious that I got to see all the people I’m close with on that day. True enough, it was like life was letting me see all my favorite people before indefinitely locking all of us up at home. These perfectly-timed moments honestly get me riled up; how is it possible that all these events transpire at the exact moments they “needed” to?
I’d like to believe that there’s a reason things always end up happening “at the right time.” It couldn’t possibly just be my imagination, nor could it all just be pure coincidences. They needed to happen at the specific hour. If I look back and observe my history, there are some things that would’ve turned out differently if they occurred any later or earlier. If I didn’t make the spontaneous decision to go to that party in junior year, I wouldn’t have had the most youthful night with friends I consider as family now. If I lined up at the printing station of our library any later, the ink would’ve ran out and I would’ve missed the deadline for a really important research paper. If my Grade 4 class salu-salo was scheduled on any other day, then my family and I would’ve been stranded in our condo unit due to floods brought about by Ondoy. If a time traveler were to go back in time and change any aspect, big or small, about the past 21 years and ten months, I’m certain that I would be living a very different life now.
It’s still so wild to me how essential timing is in things. Time has matured me. It has changed me, and is continually changing me and my perspective on things. I’m learning not to rush things, or on the flipside, to not delay them. Yung tama lang. I’ve also learned that the clock doesn’t decide what happens in my life, it only determines when they do. What I’ll go and live through is up to me — and I’m hinging on the fact that if something is meant to happen, it will. It might happen tomorrow, next month, or in 10 years; it can also never happen. In any case, I let life take its course on me.
I’m publishing this on July 2, the midpoint of 2021. I just helped my dad unearth and dust off our luggage bags from the depths of our storage room. I’ll be turning 22 just a couple days after we land in Cebu, another scarily uncanny timing. We’d barely be settled in by then. If ever the world needed to give me an indicator that it’s time for a new chapter of my life to begin unfolding, I guess this is it. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.
