Vulnerability

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

TREES are vulnerable to certain predators, and more and more, they are vulnerable to the unabated push for non-sustainable development and human greed. Vulnerability is the state of exposure to the impact of development concepts, natural elements, and personal agenda, present and sometimes imagined, so that trees can face extinction when perceived as getting in the way of a paradigm of development, or can be a victim of injury for an imagined danger to motorists, by agencies tasked to monitor road safety.

Like trees, people are susceptible to physical and emotional injury, whether intentionally or unintentionally inflicted. I speak about a vulnerability that is attached to a personal core, something less understood, because it comes from the depths of our being that even physicists do not have the mathematical equation, or a plausible theory to explain. Not even the CIA or Obama or G7 can explain this kind of vulnerability, as certainly as they can explain away culpability of damnable actions, by invoking the doctrine of plausible deniability. Not even the church, or any religion, in their exercise of self-denial.

The vulnerability in love, for example, or an attachment to a person, is not something that one can fully control. To control is a temporary measure, because the bond grows inside, and takes the form of something deeper. To stop loving a person with an “inappropriate” condition or under circumstances that are not acceptable to societal norms is an oxymoron, because one does not stop to love, he or she just stops to show physical manifestation or emotion.

The vulnerability then is not like the trees, because somehow, control is possible, in its external manifestations, while the trees have no control over their fate. The vulnerability in love is worse, because it is raw and undefined, and while one can pinpoint to a person to whom such vulnerability may be exhibited, one can not exactly understand how it happened, how it will evolve, and how it will end.

Love does not choose its object, it just loves, and denying it aggravates the vulnerability, to a point where, the person vulnerable, in managing the intensity of emotions, may take actions that in the end subverts and denies the core of his or her own existence. It is therefore wise to soak in, allow expression of the emotions, and having expressed them, to accept the confluence of events in the universe to unfold.

PULYANAN TA KA LABAT

manlalapu ka ed aralem ya pasen ko

manmamaliw ya sakey ya ag nepeg

unsusumlang ed antan maong

mairap ya natalusan

mairap ya paliisan

sikaton

pupulyanan ta ka labat

ya manbilay ed sanka-araleman ya pasen ko

maeta tan ag ni naanta-ay inka to, undadaloy ed ilog

na dalak, ampetang tan unaapoy

maples ya akila ed delap na arum niran nalilikna

ed lugar ya ag makaunla su panagnunot

pulyanan ta ka labat

 

LET YOU BE

you are coming from the depth of me
taking the shape of something that should not be
subverting norms long held to be right
much too complex for comprehension
much too strong for resistance
and so I let you be
to exist in the deepest part of me
raw and undefined, flowing in the stream
of my blood, warm and ablaze

drawn into the flood of mixed emotions,
where thinking will never go,
I let you be

(For your comments and reactions, please email to: punch.sunday@gmail.com)

Back to Homepage

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments