The case for loving life, in all its mess and mundanity

A week before Christmas, in perhaps the most anticlimactic near-death experience of all time, I think I was bitten by a stray dog.

- By ANDREA PANALIGAN

"Bite" even feels too intense of a descriptor. It was more like "grazed by a single tooth," and not even deep enough to cause bleeding. Like many wounds I've come to sustain, physical or otherwise, I wasn't quite sure how it happened. And like many wounds, etc., I couldn't stop thinking I was going to die.

It felt like an apt closer to a very exhausting year. More than ever, I found myself wondering how other people do it—not even in terms of achieving success, but just carrying on from one day to the next.

Where do they get the energy to resist the difficulty; the courage to keep going despite the knowledge that things will not change in our lifetime?

I wasn't very good at having dreams, so in the beginning of 2024 I put forth a very modest New Year's resolution: To be a "person in the world." This meant trying my very best to be part of things, to meet new people, see my friends more, read new books, and maybe just listen to more music. I was attempting to jolt myself awake, to imagine myself beyond what I'd already been.

It was incredibly frustrating to fail at something so simple. But I was always too tired. I was perpetually 50 emails behind and there was always laundry to do. I chose to stay in my hometown after failed attempts to move to the city, so all the hours I spent not working, I spent traveling to and from work. I felt the loneliest whenever I was in Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange, standing in line for over an hour to catch the last bus to Dasmariñas City. I was at my most cynical whenever I had to travel three hours for an errand that took 10 minutes.