Coming of Age: A boy's story

Recently, I watched a critically-acclaimed and socially informed Mexican movie, Y tu mama tambien (And your mother too). The movie follows the story of two adolescent boys as they get to know more of the world and themselves. The movie brought back good, fun-filled, and naughty memories of my youthful years, a quintessential journey from boyhood to manhood. In short, my youthful years were my coming of age, a rupture of innocence, a break of dawn, an awakening of impulse, a discovery of innate and group power, a redefinition of the meaning of existence, and a question of whys and why nots.

This is my story.

Attending an all-male high school, I was introduced to adam's fantasy and eve's physical beauty. Freudian id was the usual suspect in the pursuit of pleasure and happiness (most of the time, I mean the other for the other and vice-versa). This is characteristically of an adolescent state in which unfathomable energies, persistent urges, and indescribable excitements toward pleasure, anti-establishment, rule-breaking, and ground-testing and experimenting dominate the experiential reality of the growing adolescents. An association to a peer-group furthers and multiplies the energies, urges, and excitements of the unassuming adolescents. I joined and associated myself with varied groups I deemed helpful in my journey to immortality of the significance of the present.

I was initiated to enter adam's fantasy by an older eve. Indeed, the apple was very inviting to be taken and I did bite a bit of it. The swiftness of the bite and the size of it caused me to wonder, "that was it." I had been to the "heaven's mouth." I wanted more to explore, I longed to be in it again and again. But I could not. One time, two time, three time... I could not fill the feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness afterwards. That was my fall from paradise to a wordly living. That was a good fall, a surrender. I suddenly felt I was living a life, my own, my only one.

Since the fall, everyday has become a struggle, to find meaning in what I do, what I think, I become. My God has provided me one. That is enough, more than enough.

I was made to believe that I am different. I am no ordinary. Sadly, the dailiness of living reminds me of everyday's lost opportunities to be different, to be unordinary. At times, it is easy to be ordinary, to swim

 like a fish in an aquarium, to be a star with a borrowed glitter.

I was taught that excellence is what should drive me to be able to become and be. Service to others is where I can express this drive to excellence. I believe so. And I intend to do so.

And so I am living my story. There is no given line, no advanced script, only the character and the Writer; y mi mama tambien.