the god of small (minds)

pardon me arundhati roy, for i cannot find a title more apt for this post. i promise to read your book before summer ends. this post may come off a tad too self-righteous for some, so if you don't have time for rants based on reason, then stop reading.

i've been here in pinole four days. it's actually fun to have lots of people around you, but sometimes their narrowmindedness (or so i deem it) gets to me.
...

while talking about the my brother's bed sheet and his suggestion to my tita to buy one for my cousin:

tita O: mabait kasi ang kuya JR mo eh no, iniisip niya kung anong magugustuhan ng kuya georex mo. ang kuya louie mo kasi nag-asawa ng maaga.

cathy: ha?

tita O: kasi ngayon ang focus na niya yung pamilya niya...

argh. nawindang ako. i had to defend my brother, tell her that that's what makes him happy, and it's just natural that he go for it. hindi naman siya nagkukulang sa mga responsibilities niya, wala naman siyang inaapakang tao.

it just pissed me off that she sort of implied that just because my eldest brother does not have as much time for them as my kuya jr, hindi na siya mabait. and that this is because he married early. so is kindness now based on what age you get married? argh.

i remember the movie mona lisa smile. the character played by julia stiles chose to get married than to pursue further studies. julia roberts thought she was selling herself short but then stiles told her that she only followed what her heart told her.

some people think that settling down at an early age is a sign of weakness. some even frown upon it, thinking that these kids (or so they want to think of them) don't really know what they're doing. i guess they base this from the fact that a lot of people in their early twenties don't know what to do in their life yet.

but what if you do know what you want? what if you're certain that this is what you want out of life? isn't knowing at an early age a good thing? i'd like to think that it is so. some people way past their 30s don't have a clue as to where they're going, and i think that is more alarming.
hay, i think i put too much thought on this simple conversation. i bet she didn't even mean it the way i took it. or maybe she did, but knowing her, i need not make a big deal out of it. we are simply coming from two very different intellectual backgrounds (yes, i'm self-righteous. throw stones at me :p).

i think that the best thing i got out of philo is to be more open-minded about things. that we see, understand, and judge things differently. that what might be gray to me can be white for some. and that i should not call my tita smallminded because it might be true that in her world, things are so defined that there is no room for gray areas. that i should just let this slide because i know that no matter how i explain about this, she wouldn't understand.

in ariel's under water world, a pipe is a snarfblat, a corkscrew is a thingamabob. a fork is used to comb the hair. you can't just tell her she's mistaken and that all of the things that she knows are incorrect because for her, a snarfblat is a snarfblat. if you ask her for a pipe, she wouldn't understand that you were asking for her snarfblat. and you can't really blame her, because this is how she grew to know and understand things.

so what's the point really? i guess i just wanted to rant. i've been heraring so many hirits that make my eyes roll, and unlike my kuyas, im very impatient with these things. i just needed to remind myself to just keep my mouth shut and my eyes straight, if only because of respect.
...

just because i was half laughing and half rolling my eyes when i heard this comment my tito made while watching tomb raider:

tita T: yan pala si angelina jolie, maganda nga.

tito B: maganda nga, pero hindi siya bagay sa action.

tita T: bakit mo naman nasabi?

tito B: dapat kasi pag ganyang pelikula yung mukhang chinese ang artista.

haruu. spell s-t-e-r-e-o-t-y-p-i-c-a-l with me. buti pa sana kung tama yung stereotype na ginamit. hay. madami pa, pero i choose to just foggedabhoudit.