“Bakit siya ganyan? Para siyang Bata!” (Why is she behaving that way? It’s so childish!), I heard somebody said while seeing me merrily checking the dishes on the table during our group gathering one time. I immediately got conscious and stopped checking, moving, and even stopped smiling for a moment. I sat quietly to the side and felt awful for the rest of the event. (Too sensitive I have been, yes)

I thought I was probably allowing myself to enjoy too much that other people got scandalized when I was behaving like a carefree child. Initially, I got upset with that person, but eventually, I realized that I was upset with the fact that I allowed somebody’s remark to turn the joy I was feeling into humiliation. 

And to make it worse, I was quietly hoping that that person will say good things about me once she tasted the food I brought iin, which she did as she verbally expressed how she liked the food while giving me a thumbs up. That appeased me (at least at that time) to know that she was pleased, thinking that she probably had changed the way she thought about me. (People-pleaser, I know.)

Several years after that, something similar occured when I was also happily checking out the food on the table and in the fridge during a group outing, and somebody was watching, amused at how I look like a happy kid enjoying around, not minding the crowd around me. 

While this person’s expression of being ‘amused’ was a lot less offensive to me than the one way back then, I can’t help but wonder if her reaction, as well as that of the first one, could possibly be coming from a place of pain?

I do not know much about the first one whose remarks humiliated me, other than what I have observed during our years together in the community, I knew much more about the second one whose reaction was, to me, more of an amusement than a rebuke. And with what I know, I can’t help but wonder a bit deeper.

Were these people not allowed to be a child when they were just kids? Did they have to grow up fast and fend for themselves when they were supposed to just freely play and to be cared for? Were they forced to constantly present a polished, mature, no-nonsense, ‘I-got-it-together’ facade in front of everyone while growing up? Have they not been free to express how they feel and move like how they want to? 

I know I was blessed to have all that freedom to be carefree, at least at home, though not when I step out of the house. Anyway, I am still considered ‘swerte’ in that department as a pampered, ‘everybody’s baby’ kind of person, even when I don’t always feel like it. But I am aware that a lot more people did not have that privilege, especially those who grew up feeling neglected, unloved, and unwanted. 

So, if those two people happen to be just that, I hope I could have more compassion and empathy than resentment and grudge. I’m trying not to rationalize and spiritualize this too much, but I would like to think that the invitation now, after allowing myself to feel what their remarks had made me feel, is for me to love those who may not have felt loved (understand where they may be coming from) while not allowing their pain diminish my joy. 

Because whatever good thing I have received–love, joy, hope, etc.–is meant to be shared and be multiplied.