Taking a Break

Dusk at Cicada Hills (Lorega, Bukidnon)

Something about sunsets and dusks used to make me feel sentimental. There's a certain sadness in seeing the day coming to an end and in facing the prospect of darkness taking a center stage. In recent years, however, I had become more welcoming of the prospect of the day ending as it also signals rest and a break from the daily grind.

Watching the skies change colors as our first day in Cicada Hills came to a close left me with a quiet sense of joy and contentment. We were only there for the weekend, but I didn't feel harried at all. Perhaps it was because this was one of those times when I could cast my worries and my need for control away.  I was with an extended group of friends, and while I was meeting a couple of them for the first time, I didn't feel uncomfortable at all.  Not even having to sleep in a dormitory-type room with shared toilets dampened my high spirits. I just welcomed things without judgement and expectations.

Such was the attitude and spirit that I carried with me in the entirety of my 5-day stay in BUDA and Davao City proper. Letting things be. Being free of worries. Enjoying the moment.

For me and my two other friends who were together the entire time, the five days was a break. For O, it was a break from thesis writing work. For D, it was a break from the depressive mood that went with grieving his parents' death and from life alone in what used to be their family home. For me, it was a break from the routines of domestic chores, of being overly responsible for my teenaged son and elderly mother. As well, for both O and myself, the five days was a break from our keto diet. We declared the five days as a break from primal eating as we were celebrating O's birthday.

The five days was an anything-goes time. We had plans but were not attached to these plans.  We planned on having brunch on Saturday before traveling to Cicada Hills but ended up going to an artisan cheese outlet and having free taste cheese for breakfast. We woke up as our body dictated, which to our surprise was before 5:00 AM. One would go to the toilet to pee and the others would follow.  And instead of going back to sleep, we'd find ourselves chatting and laughing our hearts out like adolescents (except that we were doing these things in the early hours of the morning and not at midnight).

The time with O and D was Maya Angelou's "day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. . . . (a day) to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us."  It was a break from the cares and seriousness of our daily lives as well as from our auto-pilot mode of responding to life. Though we are now all back to regular programming not only in our diet but also in other areas of our lives, we continue to savor the joys of the five days.  We bathe in the energy that our break has generated for us - in going back to thesis writing, in facing the prospect of work and domestic concerns (foremost of which was the washer that broke down as I was loading my clothes from travel), in facing the grief of orphanhood and the tedious legal requirements that go with the death of one's parents. It was an experience I didn't realize would happen again in this lifetime.

Sunset and dusk, like the dawn and sunrise that follow it, signal new possibilities amidst darkness.