Five Brothers, One Mother
by: Exie Abola
No matter what place you call home, the very word strikes a chord deep inside
each of us. Home means sanctuary, for every person, some places hold great
importance. At some point in our lives, we experience a culture as an outsider by
moving from one culture to another. Like so, the writer exhibited this kind of
experience of struggling towards shifting of houses and necessitates a vital conflict in
the essay.
At the outset, he describes his house in Marikina as fragmentary with no
electricity, unembellished windows and has a profusion of mosquitoes. Having the
sense of obligatory to move in, or as the writer asserted, an ultimatum hanging over
their head; showing the engagement of Man vs. Nature.
Moreover, the writer seems to contemplate himself about the home he
finds certainty and the home he is longing for; that timeless place of deep rest, place
of eternal freedom from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Hence, the writer was
fighting against himself. For him, the cherished memories his family made in their
home is something he really seeks, and those seemingly troublesome thoughts and
feelings – the ones he have been resisting in his whole life – are not actually enemies
or imperfections to be annihilated or rejected.
In seeking our true home outside of this present moment, we deny the
present moment its true home. And that is the establishment of all our suffering and
stress and longing for more. In recognizing ourselves as the home we have always
sought, in remembering who we really are, the writer teaches us to delight in every
second and as Ida McKinney quoted, “Do not look back and grieve over the past, for
it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has yet to come. Live in the
present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.”