I Am the Tarzan of My Jungle

Each one of us represents a Tarzan in ourselves in a constant battle with the enemy gorillas. And life is like a huge jungle that is full of tall odds we must face. Like the famous story of Tarzan, we come to knotty situations where we have to face the gorillas in our own jungles. These gorillas are manifested in our real lives as problems, difficulties, trials, setbacks, pressures and frustrations.

As the timeline of our lives lengthens, we meet more gorillas in our own jungles. As little children, we used to dread those ugly bugbears we imagine lurking in the hasty nook of our beds. And we feel elated everytime we wake up the following mornings discovering that we had won over those hideous creatures under our beds. Of course, they are just in our imagination inside our heads. As we grow up swift and big, more invincible of their kind wrestle with us. Sometimes we are pushed in situations without choice as jumping between the deep blue sea or the bad devil. And mind you when we are in such situation, we oftentimes find the point of no return and face our destiny courageously.

In our gritty study-a-day college lives, we used to find ourselves wide awake not until wee hours of dawn, forcing our nutshells to function as humanly possible – to do school stuffs such as assignments, projects, thesis and many other requirements too dreadful to mention that the world might drown in trivia. Every morning, it feels worth a ton of strength just to walk straight going to school to attend classes again and try not to make the scene a sequel of “The Mummy Returns”! Funny but it is nonetheless the bare truth of life. Now, isn’t that just too melodramatic? Sue me!

Young Tarzan: I`ll be the best ape ever!

However, despite and in spite of all our pursuits to stand tall and firm to show those ugly manifestations of gorilla in our lives what stubborn stuffs we are made of, ours is still some of the failures. No matter how we strive hard to be triumphant in every battle we take, we end up losers with broken dreams and shattered hopes. Sometimes we even find ourselves staring at the blank wall, bitterly realizing that the gorillas had won over us. At other times, we lose right perspectives in life... We cry a bucket, vanquish our fate and breath our last.

But so much about the tragedy that we might come across under the fatalistic heel of el sol. Isn’t it a fact that after the downpour of storm is the promise of rainbow? Life is ugly enough that we need to see the paradise side of the jungle; take time to observe the pretty flowers of wild grasses around, satisfy your olfactory nerves with the acacia smelling air outside, or tell a stranger in the street that you still appreciate life after all!

These and among many little and simple things around us we get unnoticed remind us that life goes on and the world does not stop spinning just because we are broken. The wrestle against the gorillas in our lives continues. We know we may be knocked down a dozen times but, cliche as it may sound,  it is how we stand up and fight again that truly count. 

Who says now that life is like Cinderella with her shimmering shoes or like any other damsel in distress rescued by a knight in shining armor? Life is more like the Tarzan, and each of us has a share of our own jungles to face. So, banana, moy?