Friday, June 15, 2012

Sand Castle

They call it "Wishful Thinking." I might as well call it "The Sand Castle Phenomenon."

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I spent my younger days in a humble town in Cagayan Valley, a 12-hour drive north of Manila.

Occasionally, my parents would take me, along with my sister and brother, to a weekend visit to the river, a 15 minute walk from our house. There, we as playful kids would wade in the water as we watched a herd of carabaos cross the mighty river for greener pasture.

Once, with the sun churning our backs, my siblings and I took turns digging the sand, arranging pebbles and rocks, mixing water, and voila! There we made our first sand castle – or so it seemed to be a sand castle. And it must be.


The Grand Design

You see, as a young lad, I had an idea of a sand castle based on a grand design of majestic fortitude, a shining fortress with guards, and gardens, and courts, and horses, as it stood briskly on a hill surrounded by a lake with water lilies and magical frogs.

But no matter how beautiful the idea was, every attempt in building the sand castle proved to be an amateur effort, making the castle turn out all wrong. The shape was wrong, the mixture was either too soft or too hard, and even the color and smell of the castle went wrong. Always an architectural blunder, it looked more like a pigsty.

And to make things worse, even before we went home, we would witness our artwork being engulfed by the upcoming tide, until it becomes part of the river bank once more.


Improving Skill

As time passed by, I learned how to make a sand castle by myself. With months of experience and a will to improve my skill and craftsmanship, I discovered that my sand castle began to finally take shape, gradually following the blueprint in my mind.

At the end of each attempt, I realized that the finished product was still far from the Grand Design, having several flaws each time. Either the towers are too short, or the gates are too wide.

Sometimes, in frustration, I ended up destroying the castle just before the tide rises to erase it from the shore.

But that was many years ago, since I retired from making sand castles.


A Sand Castle In My Heart

Now with my above-average IQ [ah, did I really have to mention it?], and whatevery relationships I had, I soon realized that love is so much like a sand castle in my heart.

We have an idea of how it should look like, the way we hoped it would be, just as we used to randomly dream of a marriage and a future family and a good job and a fat pocket, when we were kids.

But sometimes, the sand castle just becomes too elusive, that the grand design is not met.

Maybe the tide is just unfriendly. Or perhaps river sand is not appropriate, compared to that on the beach.

Or maybe the design was too grand.

But whatever the cause, and whatever the cost, we still try to make a sand castle day after day, despite the faults we see in it.

Love does not always come the way we want it to be, but it’s still there.

And we have to be happy with it, because it is real.

And we have to be thankful about it, because just like a sand castle - based on a grand design of majestic fortitude, a shining fortress with guards, and gardens, and courts, and horses, standing briskly on a hill surrounded by a lake with water lilies and magical frogs -, just like that sand castle in our hearts, love is not ultimately lost whenever the tide rushes in.

- John Emmanuel T. Manalo, M.D.
  March 22, 2006

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