Friday 3 April 2015

The meaning of being

When I was living in Lima, I used to attend a catholic school. Most schools there were. During the first years of high school they had these "spiritual retreats" that you had to go to in order to get your Confirmation done and be able to graduate. Most of them would be a whole day long retreat. I remember being there with all my classmates, mainly having fun that we had no classes that day and no parents around. But also I remember feeling hopelessly bored as I looked through the windows, while in the background a priest or a teacher would be reading us passages of the Bible. I thought I would never get out of that place! Time went by so slowly, between trying not to pass out and longing for lunch time.

Today, 12 -maybe 13- years later, sitting here at my second job's lunchroom, 14 days without a day off and eating my Chinese food leftovers, the images of those simple days came to my mind. Why? I don't know. I certainly wasn't missing the Bible's reading sessions. Perhaps it's the same hopeless boredom that recalled those memories. The "why am I even here?", "what am I doing?" query that haunts my mind. Like a little black hole that sucks all purpose in life.

Maybe I'm just waiting for a different kind of lunch time.