Bro. John Quincy A.

Caballo, SDB
Don Bosco Sacred Heart Postnovitiate

Don Bosco College Compound J Yulo Sr Ave, Canlubang Calamba City, Laguna 4028 PHILIPPINES

Course: Metaphysics March 13, 2012 The Nothing of the Never Ending Story Perhaps, the most striking aspect of the Never Ending Story was that it was not exactly about the story of the protagonist or the antagonist and other key players in the story. It was all about the reader who providentially receives it as a gift, at a time when it was most needed. It was all about the story of their own lives, lives that seem to be consumed by the nothing. What is the nothing? Is it a being of reason with foundation in reality? The nothing is the state of desperation brought about by the loss of ones sense of imagination and dreaming. When one losses this seemingly senseless sense, there seems to be a vacuum that begins to consume lifes mundane realities. Para bang, wala ng say-say ang buhay. It seems as though life is but a boring routine, a mechanical functioning of human existence. When one looses the sense of the beyond mere mundane reality, we begin to dissipate and loose the very meaning of life itself. And what is that? The going beyond the horizon. When we come to grips with reality, there seems to be an inevitable limit. And so we come to ask, is this nothing which is the literal consumption of our imaginative reality a being not only of the mind but also of the reality? It is. Much of what we call life and what brings sense to it is the inspiration of something beyond the mere ordinary. A belief that we do not do these and that merely as an end in itself but as a means towards something. Our reality is grounded on this faith: that something, a reality beyond this life, awaits us and our imagination our hopes and dreams which all revolve in the mind are these impulses that bring us to a reality beyond our own: a metaphysical reality! And that this nothing is the privation of which we should have. And so we ask, what does this have to do with us? In the traditional message of the Rector Major, Fr Pascual Chavez Villanueva, SDB to the SYM the world-over, he mentions yet-again a recurring theme of his messages (which the writer himself once heard) that the great problem of young people is that they do not have a DREAM. There is no sense of the future, the beyond reality not an alternative reality (as one might naively suppose) but a metaphysical reality. A realm not only shared by our dreams and aspirations but most especially of the F-factor that is, the FAITH-factor. There is a great sense of depression, of pessimism, of synicism and why is that? Because people have remained too much in themselves and in the visible reality they are in. There is a grave sense of emptiness, a vacuum, that consumes their minds, their souls, their hearts. Thus, the nothing comes to destroy not only their imagination, not only their dreams, but most especially their FAITH which takes on the greatest blow. And so, the Never Ending Story continues in the lives of every young person or in any person for that matter. Everyday, we resist the temptation to give-in to mere worldliness. We continue to grow and rebuild it. Let us set our sights on something greater, going beyond the horizon. Here is where metaphysics opens our hearts and our minds so that we may not be consumed by the nothing that destroys not only the realm of the intellect but most especially the realm of faith that leads to life: Eternal life, that is. +Gb Ave Maria! Viva DON BOSCO!

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