obiter dicta

from 2005

****

On our way back from the hospital, my mother and I were comfortably seated at the passenger’s seat when a passing pedicab plunged me deep in thought. To the pedicab’s rear, this blameless one-liner was written: Apparent loss is real gain.

Cynics out there must be screaming. The aphorism is swelling with optimism to be real. Well, what can I do? Aside from the obvious economic downturn to a “road to perdition” our country is facing, just recently I received this message from a dear friend: “I find nothing more depressing than optimism.”(Paul Fussell) For a moment, I thought, my friend must have ESP, as right at that time, I was nursing ambivalence: am I a quasi-optimist or a blasted skeptic?

Apparent loss is real gain. From the quasi-optimist point of view, it would be wonderful to believe that indeed, some of “God’s refusals are His real mercies”. That nothing can be all wrong because, “even a clock that has stopped running is right twice in a day.” If a little bit of Hollywood trivia could convince cynics out there, you must be familiar that most of the characters in Friends, were cast off in some other popular TV shows then? Take Chandler for instance, according to sources (huh?), he wanted to be part of the Melrose Place, hoping to snatch the role of “Billy” but was R-E-J-E-C-T-E-D (do you even think it would have suited Matthew Perry?) Apparently, Lisa Kudrow was also up for a role in a different show but was not accepted. In their case, their apparent loss was real gain, as they would not have bagged their respective roles in Friends and last ten seasons, doing something they were simply born to be part of. But then John Mayer sings, “Everything happens for a reason, is no reason not to ask myself, if I am living it riiiiiiiight….”, and you backtrack to the other side.

Apparent loss is real gain. It’s now calamity howler’s turn on the rostrum (huh?). Quit wearing your rose-colored spectacles my child. Everything is not what it seems. Why fool yourself into believing that you can actually make things happen? Come-on, you surely have seen the worst. People are born losers and you’re not about to drown yourself with quixotic ideas and end-up deeper in the mud…

Static…I hear static…I’m losing signal….

If we judge this based on the previous depositions, perhaps you’d say, the optimist wins. Then again, the cynics insist, it was merely due to a lack of more ‘physical evidence’.

‘guess we have just witnessed a concession and we now rest our case.