A weekend without Friendster (December 18, 2007)

A weekend without Friendster
By: Maria Reylan M. Garcia

The 1200 paged anatomy book crashed with a silent thump against the foam filled bed. I satisfied myself with a lungful of air, a first in four hours. My body purposely slammed into the cotton haven of my pillows, as my back couldn’t get any curved in posture. It’s like the fluid inside of me was dehydrated into a desert of exhaustion and boredom. Yes, for four hours, all I have been doing was chit-chatting with the organelles of the cells and sharing some updated gossips with the ribosome in the endoplasmic reticulum. None of these would have happened if not for the brain diffusing chapter exam next Monday. My weekends are usually spent in front of the computer editing my shout-outs and profile skins on Friendster. But, in laying all the cards on the table, the aces have to be picked, priorities have to be considered. It’s between the joyful keyboard tapping hours or some dull page-flipping moments assigned by your pedantic professor.

Choices and priorities, they may seem so universal, yet only a few succeed in making the right ones. A simple housewife pushing her trolley across the aisles of the grocery, rummaging her coin purse on which brand of detergent to purchase, yes, she has to make a choice. A business tycoon scratching his head for the third time, looking at the pros and con on which proposal to sign, yes, he has to make a choice. The weight of the decision does not determine immediately the significance of the choice. That housewife may pick the better detergent while the business tycoon may sign the proposal he’ll soon regret. Though the housewife’s decision may appear menial compared to the make or break it decision of the business tycoon, it isn’t completely so. What if the housewife made a wrong choice of detergent that might possibly spread dye from a colored shirt to her husband’s white uniform? What if that petty accident may cause a heated babble between wife and husband? What if that heated babble may lure some lawyers to arrange their legal separation? Funny, how a wrong choice of detergent powder can ruin some years of marriage.

Man has not yet perfected the art of choosing. Man has still yet to improve in making his priorities. Evidences are the continually brewing arguments in the senate and congress, each having different priorities that to my own belief should be set aside for the essential ones. Having some controversial government officials impeached is of greater priority to them, than some hundreds of families in the evacuation centers after a recent typhoon. Writing blame all over the backs of fellow lawmakers is of greater priority to them, than some thousands of out of school youth driven to human trafficking and drug addiction. Looking good in front of the television during assemblies with their half an hour speeches is of greater priority than some millions of Filipinos that couldn’t even afford to buy televisions. Indeed, they made “right” choices. Yes, they “did” prioritize. But these weren’t the essential ones.

Abraham Maslow made a hierarchy of human needs which classifies them into seven ranks, each lower level much be satisfied first before proceeding to the higher one. Maslow prioritized human needs, making oxygen and body fluids more important than feeling secured in a social group. He was kind enough to point out the obvious. Truly, you can’t exactly murmur by yourself being out of place in a peer group while grasping for some air and slowly deteriorating because of dehydration. But to some extent, man rebels to this obvious and no-nonsense concept. During fiestas on a densely populated barrio, Mang Juan would utilize all his resources and even seek the intercession of his Indian friends just to prepare a king’s worth of a banquet for his “friends”. In the end making, poor Mang Juan drowned in 5’6 debts and Aling Pacing’s rage because her pieces of jewelry were loaned in the nearby pawnshop. Man could get so stupid at times. Amusing it is that all of these were because of a wrong choice, an error in priorities.

Those four hours of anatomy fever, literally, became nine hours of merciless mental draining. I did not get to change my shout-out in Friendster that weekend nor pushed the on button on the CPU to the very least. Yet, I’m still satisfied with my decision, with my choice, with my priority. I’m equipped with a mind full of anatomical terms that hopefully would lure me to a priority one point zero (1.0) grade in the nearing chapter test. If Hamlet chose between to be and not to be, so did I.

Honestly, I did not regret a single bit of having a weekend without logging in to Friendster. Maybe because I have fooled—err—encouraged my mind unto thinking that the lipid bilayer of the plasma membrane would give me more advantages than some rhythmic tapping of the keyboard.

The world is full of choices.
Make the right one.
Prioritize.