Life is Imperfectly Fun

The word “perfect” lacks U and N so there’s literally no fun in it. When things come out “not perfect”, it has both N and F and just needs YOU to recognize it and make it FUN. -REJ

Before leaving for Tagaytay last Saturday, I wrote on air that I believed things will be perfect and ended it with a happy face just like this one – :)

One of our high school friends was to get married to the man of her dreams and vice versa. The wedding was in a chapel in Midlands, ten minutes away from the main gate of Tagaytay Highlands.

And so, my other high school friends and I have been planning for quite a time about logistics so we could sleep over in Highlands and stay until the end of reception. When everything has been settled, I truly believed that things would turn out perfectly as planned. But maybe I have slightly jinxed it as I typed the word “perfect” because not everything fell into place as we hoped.

I was asked to be commentator for the wedding and gladly accepted that role. I forwarded copies of the misalette to our friends who were assigned as readers. I’ve tried the role of reader in weddings for various friends and cousins but I’ve never been a commentator before so I took this as an extra important role. And because of positive thinking, I truly believed that the wedding would be just perfect because we took time to prepare for it.

We coordinated the meeting place and time in Manila. Those who arrived in our house were on time and we left to pick up the others. Somewhere along the way, there were details that were forgotten so detours and Plan B then Plan C were proposed and executed. All these contingent plans were deemed best at the time.

If there’s anything that one should remember during planned meet-ups, the entire group is only as fast as the last person to arrive, something that slightly deterred our plans. Other than that, there were external factors that one could not control such as traffic and bottlenecks in our supposedly called “highways’ and “expressways”. There were also two weddings in Tagaytay that Saturday and being the start of a long weekend (Monday, today is a holiday), traffic was the worst.

When it was nearing our call time and we were still in Sta. Rosa, I felt so pressured to reach the wedding on time that I found myself constantly checking our speed, asking if we could go faster. But one could only do so much especially when there are other factors involved. As Franco said, he could not fly his car like a plane and we could only push such things to their limits.

To cut this part of the story short because remembering that portion of the ride makes my heart thump with tension, we did not arrive on time.

I felt sorry and terrible about the fact that I had failed in my promise to be a commentator. Since the First Reading and the Second Reading were also part of our group who met up first in Manila, they missed their parts too. With missing our liturgical roles, I felt bad because the last thing I wanted was our friend to feel that her friends had let her down by being late on her wedding day with particular roles to fill.

The good side of the story was that we had two friends who arrived on time and saved all of us. We then exchanged roles by offering in the mass instead, without the other guests knowing that we’ve been changing plans by the minute. We played everything by ear and the mass went smoothly with the beautiful couple kissing as husband and wife in the end. (Still, our group must have been part of the wedding coordinator’s list of nightmares.)

I realized how small decisions along the way could have changed the outcome but then when I look back and view everything as a whole, we could not change any of those anymore. And the learning is now far more important. For one, I re-learned something I read in a children’s storybook about taking firm hold of the nettle. I now know how to handle future situations much better, how to make sure things can go on as planned, and how to go about things that do not flow as planned.

I’m also grateful for the things that worked out that day. We arrived there safely as an entire group of friends. We were able to listen to the gospel and homily and witness all the important parts of the wedding. There were no blames. Just saves. And we celebrated happily with everyone until the wee hours during and after the reception.

Telling this story to another friend who now lives in another country, she said “at least there’s something you’d laugh about in the future.” And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing years from now, laughing and thinking of how we saved each other’s butts.

Just like in theater, the bad dress rehearsal means a smashing play. With the booboos we created, I think the last-minute changes in the wedding meant a smashing reception and a much better marriage. ;)

I think it’s so apt that the married couple chose 060708 as their wedding date. It’s more of a progression rather than a perfect 777 or 888. Life is like that. Things get better everyday and they aren’t perfect. Because when things are just perfect, there’s no room for progress. And there’s no room for fun. After everything that happened that day, oh boy, we definitely had so much room for those two.