Azure Wings Café

Back and Still the Same

2011-09-28T21:08:00.000+08:00

Hi again. It's been almost a month since my last blog post (3 hours and 22 minutes to be exact) and I felt like I needed somewhere to release my emotions again since I'm re-entering the state of on and off self-pity I usually do when I can't express myself. It's not that I ran out of thoughts or anything, actually I even tried one or two times a week to write something whenever an idea comes to my head before I lose them (which I did, sadly). It's just that there is something in me aside from being lazy that prevents me from writing down my spur of the moment ideas at that time. Maybe they'll just become some idealistic useless ideas that nobody cares about in the first place, or maybe just the ever hypocritical side of me who talks about how to live a good life without being good?

These train of thoughts come all of a sudden wherever I may go or whatever I might be doing. Other people might see me quietly eating or laughing whenever a joke is cracked but a portion of me inside is always thinking about things people would consider useless nowadays. I guess that's a disadvantage of an introverted person who never tells anyone anything real for fear of not being understood or being humiliated or hurting someone. The problem, however, about these thoughts is just that; they are spur of the moment thoughts that are never thought of properly. I tend to become rash in many things, doing things when instinct drives me, like crossing the street when a rushing car is about to pass and nearly getting me killed because I jumped like a ballet dancer to reach the other side. I really don't care about doing things properly or doing weird things and all that since I'm more of a counter-culture person who thinks that society is already demanding too much from its masters.

So what has changed since the last hard headed post I wrote? Probably nothing. Probably tomorrow I'll be busy with school again and forget I wrote anything like this. I'll be my usual self, which I hate so much. My usual self is a confused person who cannot get his goals done because he doesn't know what he will do to get there and doesn't like to ask around for help. But you know, these thoughts are my thoughts. They are not necessarily thoughts that others would agree with, nor would they even find these thoughts ordinary. It's not new to me whenever I hear someone telling me that I have an eccentric way of thinking and an unorthodox perspective on life. Sometimes I think if I like that fact.

I hate people who tolerate my wrongdoings. If I have an attitude problem, I would prefer it to be told in front of me straight face and then be helped in fixing the problem. While I understand why no one would want to tell me straight to my nose that I am a proud insensitive radical impossible dream-chaser, especially among my friends, I tend to see the passiveness as a road block to my finding of my identity as a person. Maybe hate would be too strong of a word. Maybe non-preference should do it.

So what else has not changed? I'm still frustrated over the only things that make me smile that I cannot do, like music, math or making friends. I only have a simple desire in life: to do what I want to do the way I want to do it. Since I am neither expert in music nor in math and probably never in being a socialite, there is only hope in one thing and that is to teach. But I want to remain in this forsaken third-world country and teach here. Yes, I want to be materially and environmentally deprived if I have to. I want to teach the future of this forsaken land so that the future may save it because from my point of view the youth of the next generation to ours is destroying it even more with their preferences for expensive overpriced gadgets and foreign materials. I want to inculcate a value of principle over price. We are not who we economically are; we are who we believe ourselves to be and who we are willing to work hard to become. But sadly, out of familial love this remaining dream might become another frustration.

I'm tired of complaining about the pain. I want to cry tears of joy. I want to find meaning in my life. But the way I see it, given the internal and external factors surrounding me presently, I am still yet to find that meaning; a very difficult task as it is. But you know what's so funny about this? I might be thinking like this now but when I wake up tomorrow I would have forgotten about what I am saying right now. That's why it's so nice that I have a blog to which I can post random things. I really don't care if I have an audience who reads my blogs; I just post to post. That's why I don't even use tags. To do so would be to put my thoughts into tiny stereotypes and destroy their uniqueness.

Oh, and one last thing. Faith. I believe in a God who will lead me to a right path if I give myself to Him. For my thoughts will not lead me to a brighter future. These thoughts that continuously complicate my life will not help me live it simply. These goals of reaching expert level on my hobbies will not make me happy with small things. Sometimes I just want to be someone else's puppet with no thought of my own. Maybe I can be more useful that way.

*end of long-ass post*

Bakit Kailangan ng mga Epal sa Mundo

2011-08-29T16:03:00.000+08:00

Pagpasensyahan niyo na at hindi ko na paiiralin ang tuwid na Filipino sa post na ito dahil ika nga, ang Filipino ay hindi Filipino kung hindi ito ginagamit ng nakararaming Pilipino. At dahil ang ginagamit ng nakararami ay hindi pormal, nararapat lang na gumamit ng hindi pormal na pagsasalita sa mga ganitong pagkakataon.

Ganyang mga kataga ang maririnig mo sa isang taong epal, panira ng trip, pampagulo ng buhay, o kung ano man ang gusto mong itawag. Kaso dapat lang muna natin intindihin na ang ibig sabihin ko sa salitang "epal" sa post na ito ay yung mga taong pakialamero, usisero, tsismoso at tsismosa at kahit sinumang taong mahilig makialam sa mga desisyon natin sa buhay.

Mahalaga ang mga taong epal. Bakit? Hindi naman kasi lahat tayo perpekto. Minsan kailangan natin lahat ng isang taong epal para ituwid tayo sa mga baluktot nating desisyong hindi natin itutuwid dahil pinaniniwalaan natin itong tama. Kailangan natin ng mga KJ na taong kaiinisan dahil kung wala sila, tayo ang magiging pinakabatayan natin ng tama o mali. Tayo lang ang magiging boses ng konsensya natin kaya sa pangyayaring bumaluktot ito ay wala na tayong magagawa.

Kung tutuusin, nagiging epal lang naman ang epal kung iniisip nating hindi na kailangan ng ibang taong sumabat sa mga isipan at usapan natin. Kung magiging bukas tayo sa mga opinyon ng iba at hindi maiinis sa mga nais ipahayag ng ibang tao, gaano man ito kapanira ng kasiyahan (KJ) sa atin.

Isipin mo na lang: Gusto natin ng pagbabago pero ang gusto lang nating pagbabago ay pagbabagong nagmumula sa atin. Tama naman, kaso ang pagkakaintindi ng iba rito ay dahil sa kanila ang pagbabago, ang mga gawain lang nila ang makakapagpabago sa kanila at anumang sabihin ng iba ay makakasira lang ng gusto nilang mangyari. Dito rin lalabas ang likas na ugali nating pagpili sa sarili natin bago ang iba. Ngunit tulad rin ng sinabi ni Hesus sa Bibliya: "Ang sinumang magnanais iligtas ang kaniyang buhay ay mawawalan nito, at ang sinumang mawalan ng kaniyang buhay dahil sa akin ay makakasumpong niyon." Ang Diyos ay hindi nasa iisang tao lamang. Kung susundin natin ang prinsipyong ito na para siyang totoo, eh di hindi ba dapat makinig tayo sa mga sinasabi o ginagawa ng iba, gaano man ka epal pakinggan?

Kaya nga bilang isa ring epal, napakahalaga ng mga epal sa mundo. Sino pa ba ang kakatok sa mga saradong isipan kung lahat ng tao sarado ang isipan.

Talinghaga ng Saradong Pinto

2011-08-02T16:44:00.000+08:00

Ipagpalagay muna natin na isang kuwarto ang buhay, at sa kuwartong iyon ay naroon ang lahat ng iyong mga pinakamahalagang pangangailangan sa buhay tulad ng pagkain, tubig at pananamit. Sabihin rin nating wala tayong kamuwang-muwang sa kung ano man ang nasa labas ng kuwarto na iyon. Ano sa tingin niyo ang magiging pagtanaw ng kung sino man ang nasa loob ng kuwarto na iyon sa kaniyang buhay?

Marahil ang iisipin ng ibang mga nakakabasa nito ay maghahangad ng kalayaan ang taong iyon o bubuksan ang pinto palabas at tutuklasin ang nasa kabilang dako ng pintuang iyon. Tama sila. Pero sabihin nating tatanggalin ang pinto na iyon at hindi malalaman ng tao sa loob na mayroon pang mundo sa labas ng kwartong ginagalawan niya. Maghahangad pa kaya siya ng kalayaan? Marahil hindi.

Hindi, kasi una, hindi niya nalalaman na mayroon pa palang mundo sa likod ng apat na sulok ng kuwartong kaniyang ginagalawan at wala namang lumalabas na sitwasyon na nangangailangan ng bagay na wala sa loob ng kuwartong iyon. Ikalawa, maski alam niya na may mundo sa labas ng ginagalawan niya, ang paraan para makarating sa mundong iyon ay hindi kaagad magagawa at nangangailangan ng matinding pagsisikap. Ngunit dahil na rin sa hindi niya nakikita bilang isang matinding pangangailangan ang paglabas sa mundong kaniyang ginagalawan, hindi na rin siya magaaksaya ng pagod at panahon para lumabas.

Dahil isa lamang maliit na bahagi ng mas malaking mundo sa labas ang mundong kaniyang ginagalawan, madaling isipin na nakikita ng mga tao sa labas ang apat na sulok ng kaniyang kuwartong walang pinto, ngunit hindi nakikita ng tao sa loob ang mga tao sa labas. Ano kaya kung may kakatok ngayon na tao mula sa labas sa kuwarto ng taong nasa loob? Sasagutin kaya ng tao sa loob ang katok na ito sa pamamagitan ng paglabas? Kung gusto niya, pwede. Pero maaari rin namang hindi niya sagutin at iparamdam sa mga tao sa labas na ang kuwarto sa malaking mundo na iyon ay isa lamang palamuti na wala talagang tao sa loob, at sa kadahilanang hindi sigurado ang mga tao sa pagkakaroon ng tao sa loob ng kuwarto, iiwan na lamang ito ng mga tao at hahayaang manahimik, kung hindi man nila sirain.

Ano ngayon ang saysay ng paglalarawan ng sitwasyong ito sa mga nagaganap sa araw-araw nating buhay? Minsan kasi, kung hindi man madalas, ay nakukuntento na tayo sa kung ano ang mayroon tayo at hindi natin nakikita ang paglabas sa paulit-ulit na daloy ng buhay bilang isang pangangailangan. Wala namang masama rito, at kung tutuusin ay mas mainam pa nga ito upang tayo ay hindi maging masyadong mapaghangad sa mga bagay na pwede namang wala sa atin. Ngunit ang nagiging problema rito ay ang katotohanang hindi lang tayo ang tao sa mundo at kahit hindi tayo magbago ay magbabago ang mga tao at bagay sa paligid natin. Minsan may mga tao o sitwasyon na kakatok sa kuwartong nakasanayan natin na naghahatid ng mga tanong na ang kasagutan ay malabo sa atin sa kadalihanang ang nasabing sitwasyon ay bago sa ating pandinig at malayo sa ating nakasanayan na hindi natin nakitang kailangang pagtuunan ng pansin noong una. Ang nagiging resulta ay pagkalito, pagkalito kung pagbubuksan ba natin ng puso't isipan ang kumakatok na sitwasyon.

Oportunidad ba ito o kapahamakan? Hindi tayo sigurado. Minsan wala na lang tayong ginagawa at nananahimik na lang tayo sa loob ng apat na sulok ng mundong ating nakasanayan, sarado sa mga kumakatok sa buhay natin. Pero dahil kinatok na tayo ng pagkakataong ito, hindi natin matatamasa ang mga bunga ng pagsagot sa katok na ito, mabuti man o hindi. Mananatili tayo sa kadiliman na nag-iisip kung may liwanag ba talaga o kung paano mamuhay sa labas ng nakasanayan. Para bang tayo ay naduduwag harapin ang hamon ng buhay, o 'di naman kaya'y tinatamad lang na magbigay ng hinihinging pagod at panahon para makalabas sa kuwartong walang pintuan.

Siguro mas mainam mamatay ng kuntento at hindi naghahangad. Ngunit baka hindi lang natin napapansin na may nakakalimutan tayong isa pang pangangailangan maliban sa pagkain, inumin at pananamit: pakikipagkapwa at pagmamahal. Dahil hindi tayo nag-iisa sa mundo, at patuloy na nagbabago ang mundo, hindi posible na manatili tayo sa kung ano tayo ngayon habambuhay. Mahirap magbukas ng pinto pero alang-alang sa pangangailang magmahal at mahalin. Sa totoo lang, kaunting lakas lang naman ang kailangan: ang lakas para makita ang kagandahan sa sarili natin, at maipamahagi sa mundo ang kagandahang ito.

Prisoner of Freedom

2011-07-26T22:00:00.000+08:00

Finally, I found time to write another blog post and get over with my laziness and stress.

There was this poem I found on the internet while looking for one that I will recite for our speech class. It's entitled "Hypocrisy" by Mark Spencer. You can read it here. Simply put, it's a poem telling someone who doesn't like to believe in God the hypocrisies of the actions of the said person in line with his beliefs.

What makes this idea stand out for me was that the situation it describes is very much prevalent in our modern society where life becomes complicated and ultimately we're losing our faith. As a matter of fact some people have already lost their faith and consider this loss of faith as freedom. With the belief that they are free, they begin to call themselves as freethinkers.

What is so free about freethinkers? From my humble perspective, to be a freethinker is to be open to all ideas the world has to offer and accept their existence and understanding why such ideas move and exist. Given our disunited situation today, I really don't think that freethinkers really exist. These people who call themselves freethinkers are the hypocrites described by Mark Spencer who tell others not to speak when they share their beliefs or treat others as freaks when they get offended in the ears.

If this prison of closed-mindedness to the possibility of the existence of a Divine Being is what they would call freedom, then I would rather remain a prisoner of my own thoughts. Even if the information I put on that box to the top right states that I consider myself a free thinker, I am only as free as to ideas that I can accept. But probably I am more free than people who call themselves free, for to declare freedom under a state of blindness is futile.

In the case where freedom is truth, which is also claimed by these freethinkers, the only way to attain freedom is ultimate death. For as the poems says, "Not one of us can offer proof for the things we believe; and anyone who says they can is trying to deceive."

So why claim that you are free when you have just put yourself in another cell of this hell of a prison we call life? Why consider yourselves as people who think out of the box, when you simply moved into a narrower box deprived of hope on things that are not concrete? In the first place, the fact that you do not respect the freedom of another is not, and will never be, true freedom.

Flawed Paradox

2011-06-20T13:11:00.000+08:00

What is happiness? Some would say it is the absence of sadness. What is goodness? Some would say it is the absence of evil. What is darkness? Some would say it is the absence of light.

Some would say that we define the things in our lives by their opposites. You cannot have a concept of happiness if everybody in the world is happy. If everyone would be happy, then the need to define a term that is the opposite of sadness would no longer be existent, as well as the need to define sadness itself. We cannot become something without becoming nothing. In order for us to know goodness, we must first know evilness.

This is the paradoxical nature of life. We can't be happy if we were not sad, and we can't be sad if we were not happy. Life would not be life without its flaws. Without these flaws, nobody would say that 'life is good' and we would be living in a literally monotonous world where the opposite forces that make it turn do not exist. Simply put, life would not have meaning if we there is no light. But the same can be said when there is no darkness.

That being said, why then is this paradox flawed? We answer it by answering the following questions. Is cold the absence of heat? or is black the absence of white? Some would argue that the answers to those questions would be yes, and would use physics to explain such. But that is not the case when we look at human life. Not all men are physicists.

To a lot of people, cold is simply something that describes what they feel when they do not feel hot. But even in the ordinary sense, this is also not true. Why? Let's define another term, and let that term be 'warm'. Warm is neither hot nor cold. It is a feeling that's comfortable while neither of the extremes are. The existence of warm defeats now the definition of hot as 'not being cold' and vice versa. The existence of an inbetween factor shows how the definitions by opposite is flawed.

So the not not true paradox is really not not not true. What does this imply? Recall in the above post that without one of the opposites, life would be meaningless. When we began to show the flaw to that reasoning, its outcomes are also consequently flawed. This means that when life loses sadness, or happiness, or both, it does not become meaningless. When we see ourselves as directionless beings living lives simply waiting for dying deaths, when we think that we are dull beings who are too numb to make drastic differences to this world, we never really become meaningless. For as long as there is life itself, not the good or the bad life, there will always be meaning in it, and it is our task to find that meaning and not give on searching for it.

A Second Look

2011-05-12T19:44:00.000+08:00

If you are not a fan, then you are a hater.

This argument is wrong is not being a fan doesn't necessarily mean being a hater. You can simply not care. It is like saying that if a fruit is not an orange, then it is a pear, which we all know is wrong. This kind of logic is what some people would call as thinking in black and white, which is defined in art as the extreme ends of color values. Let us take a look at one important word in the said definition: extreme. Using this, we now define thinking in black and white as thinking in predetermined extremes, something like declaring the evilness of an act which is not good without thinking over.

Somewhere between black and white is another color with probably more white than black, or more black than white, or even an equal amount of black and white, but nevertheless is a mix of both. If we see the colors black and white as values or points of view, this statement takes on a new definition: it tells us that there are points which agree in varying magnitude to both values. Take, for example, the fan and hater situation. What situation can we give such that the case will agree in some way to both situations. Well, we can say that both agree that the artist being talked about is an artist, or that the media could be writing complete lies about the artist in question. Such a situation is definitely found between the black and the white, but it isn't found on the first look.

The first look is not true in a lot of cases, such as those where people judge people with bias. It can be true, though, like when we judge a paint to be wet simply by believing in its sign. To make sure that it is true, we must look at it from a different way than how we looked at it before; because by looking at it from the same way we looked at it from the first look, the second look simply loses importance. And once we have a first, second, or even third look, then we decide based on our standing principles. By then our judgment would be what we would usually call a well-thought judgment that is worth respecting, even if it is not respected.

People who argue over unimportant things are those who think in black and white. Those who think in color know when to argue and when to find peace. Peace is neither black nor white. It is a beautiful art full of hues and values. It is something attained by painting over the darkness and blankness with a blanket of colors, colors which are between black and white, colors which take a second, or even a third, look before being found.

The inbetween or neutral value is something not everyone will agree upon. For example, people would rather see gray as a dull color compared to black and white, or 0 as an insignificant number compared to 1 or -1. It is for this reason that those who choose to be in the middle are labeled wimps or losers. However, the middle value should not be looked at as something meaningless, but rather, it is something that can represent the set of good and bad scores (in Math, this is known as the arithmetic mean, a single number that can represent the value of several scores taken together). It should be the standing point where peace can begin and wounds are fixed. Maybe, in some way, it could mean nothingness; since it is only through nothingness that we can begin again.

To conclude, I would like to ask a question:

If a number is not positive what is it? Think about your answer before looking at the next paragraph.

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Some might say that it is negative, but this is in fact false. While it can be negative, it is not always negative. It can be neutral, or the number zero. If you still thought that it would be negative, then I think it's time to give our perspectives on life a second look.

Red Horse Bill

2011-05-10T17:54:00.000+08:00

Come on. We've had enough of it and made so big of a fuss so it's nearly impossible if you don't know what the RH Bill is. In case you were born just this morning and for some reason you already know how to read, write and access the internet then let me explain in brief: basically it's a bill in Philippine congress that aims to provide better care for the reproductive health of the Filipino people, but due to its highly unreasonable focus on artificial contraception, it has been the subject of many issues and debates within both political and social worlds. Since, as mentioned, it is affecting even the social world, and some people are hating me for reiterating a stance that will satisfy neither pro or anti proponents of the bill, I'll make a statement on this post.

Before we make a statement on anything we would like to give a fuck about, we should take note of a few things.

1. Are we aware of what we are talking about?
Usually the educated win over the uneducated in this sense because they actually do their research before giving a damn. However, in a country where anyone can freely claim that the world is locally flat, or that the exact value of pi is 4, it's really hard to determine who are the educated and who are those who simply claim to be educated. We may also note the fact that our country if full of people with the bandwagon mentally as well as people with the mentality of always having to create bandwagons. If you read my post on the minor majority, we can actually see that the people who are in the bandwagons are not aware that they are the ones in the bandwagon. They should be, however, more or less aware of their ignorance regarding the fact at hand, and it should be through this that they base their opinions from. Sad to say that the majority of the people who give opinions regarding this bill are no different that two monkeys bickering at each other for a piece of banana.

2. Are we ready to stand for what we believe in?
There are people who are only good with giving a yes or a no out of randomness, like Manny Pacquiao's vote on Twitter regarding the impeachment of the Ombudsman. Such an uninformed and not well thought opinion is very much subject to change the moment scrutiny arrives, such as antis becoming pros because they cannot defend what they want to defend, or pros becoming antis because they realize that there is something wrong in the propositions they are giving. Such cases also follow from the above mentioned ignorance on the topic, which causes us to stand for things that we have no idea about and then stand on other things when what we initially stand on begin to crumble. Why? We did not build a solid foundation. And without a solid foundation, we are bound to fall.

3. Are the steps we are taking logical and in support of the already existing principles we have already established?
This is where my stand in the bill comes. There goes a saying, "Methods are many, principles are few. Methods change, but principles never do." Under what principles do we ground our methods on? Are these methods consistent with our principles? For example, if we are for physical, spiritual and mental health why are we making big arguments that only hurt the spiritual and mental health of the Filipino people? Note that a body without a soul is lifeless; a physically and reproductively healthy body would be nothing with a dead spirit and mind. Or if we are for life and peace, why are we fighting and punishing those who are against what we believe in? Is this what our principles call for?

Through these questions we can now discuss the following question: If the bill does get passed, will the pros reap the product of their labor? Or will the Church be prepared for it? Knowing the history of the Philippines, we can tell that Filipinos have fought for things they condemned in the end, beginning with freedom from the Spaniards. While I believe that the Filipinos really did deserve freedom, they did not deserve freedom with complete ignorance. Only a man like Jose Rizal back then could think of this. Now the people like Rizal would most likely be regretting attaining such an early freedom since it has left us in intellectual poverty, the worst poverty next to spiritual poverty. In modern times we have elected presidents, despite opposition, that we later hated, like the ranks of Marcos, Estrada, Arroyo and Aquino.

On the second question, which I have retold my answers over and over again, as my Facebook friends should know, the Church should be channeling its efforts into something that is more lasting and productive: teaching its faithful strong and solid moral foundations so that if the earthquake of temptation does come, they would be prepared and remain solid despite the storms and weapons of the enemies. But what are they doing right now? They're blinding the faithful into blindly following against rather than enlightening them to why they should be against an immoral law. Join this, pray that, etc etc. While I am a devout Catholic and have nothing against prayers, these formulated prayers we keep on doing do not necessarily tell us why we have to pray. I also posted something like this in my post on mechanicality, or doing things for the sake of doing them. This is what I'm pointing at when I said that the methods should be consistent with the principles. For an establishment that seeks to spreading light, it is giving darkness to the people so that they may find a light that could never be found in darkness.

I am, by all means, against the bill. However, I find the methods the Church is doing right now very questionable and unconvincing. It's like putting a stopper on a leaking pipe instead of fixing the pipe altogether. A waste of resources and ineffective over long periods of stress. Very Filipino, in a negative way.

If you read (present and past tenses) between the lines, you might have noticed a certain emphasis I gave on this post. Education. Education is something we lack, while ignorance is something we have in abundance. In a country where powerful people feed on ignorance, it's really hard to find the need for good education, and add in the negative perspective of present day society on teachers because of their economic value. We are not Marxists, and neither are we communists. We are living in a democracy, a people for a people. And if we would just be making informed choices and stopped being media hogging assholes, then probably the passage of this bill would be settled and everyone would be happy. A discussion on media hogging would probably lengthen this post a lot more so I would not just give it, however I do assume that everyone who's reading is aware of the negative effects of media on society. If not, ask for the intercession of holy mother Google to find some readings.

On a lighter side of this, I would like to share a story that happened not too far in the past, just around a month ago and which some of you would probably be familiar with. On March 14, 2011 a UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) student by the name of Alexandra Wallace made a YouTube video ranting about how the Asians in their library go all annoying with their "Ching Chong Ling Long Ting Tong" on the phone, effectively making her racist. It doesn't take much thinking to figure out that she gained a lot of negative video responses by Asians who make equally offensive rants against her (some even becoming more racist, but against Whites.) Of special importance is a very light hearted video response by a 24 year old actor and musician Jimmy Wong, the younger brother of Freddie Wong in case the latter is more familiar:

It took a lot of creativity and probably painful restraint to make such a hit selling video response, which made some critics claim the response as one that "saved the internet" due to its positive and intelligent outlook on cyber-bullying. I may not be one like Jimmy in oh so many ways but I'm presenting this video to show that in a world where so much information is available, we shouldn't be resorting to primitive and ineffective means of arguments especially on those cases that matter to our lives as Filipinos, Catholics or humans for that matter since life is a universal treasure.

And yeah, I know, title unrelated. I just tried to make it sound lighter to the eyes. I really suck at being creative with arguments. :(

Not So Common

2011-05-05T00:03:00.000+08:00

Common sense is not so common. But you know what else is not so common?

In a world where common sense is always defined to be one that is common to the person speaking, or expecting. In other words, it is something that is known to be beneficial to the person declaring the commonness of something: it is good for that person. Ironically, common sense, in this sense, did not promote what everyone would expect to be "common": the common good.

Common good, defined, is good that is beneficial for everyone, such as social stability, freedom from disease and other health hazards and financial stability. Unfortunately, the common good is also not so common. We, especially those who "live the good life" can only see the good for them, and not necessarily good for others. So again, ironically, those who serve to promote common good do not realize the value of common good.

Deep in the story of this "apparent goodness" is a vice: selfishness. We know that something that is bad cannot promote good, and thus apparently good. Contrasting now this vice with the virtue of common good, we can therefore say that common good is promoted through something different, something like unselfishness. The ability to give what is good to others in need of it is indeed something good.

To do good, and not to lose something, is probably not doing good. Take for example the act of giving only spare change to those who truly (I repeat, truly) need it is not losing something that is good to the person giving, and thus it is not that good. It may good, in one way or another, but the feeling of doing something wholly good and the act of sacrifice is not present. Thus, it becomes nothing but a meaningless act. If it is good for the receiver and not good for the giver, then it is certainly not common good.

In a world that has only excess to give away, very rarely can we find true common good, and thus it is uncommon. The reasoning presented here may leave you thinking and somehow not convinced, but the point of this is not to convince, but to make room for thought.

Fundamental

2011-04-18T12:46:00.000+08:00

We are in an age so modern that, whether we care about it or not, the speed of modernization is already faster than the rate of our progress. Rate is defined as the ratio of the distance traveled per unit of time. It then follows from this definition that the world is getting further away from us as time progresses, unless we move faster to catch up with it. However, with the need to move faster not found as a necessity, we move into a pace which we can travel comfortably. But what causes this deceleration?

The process of analysis involves taking something and breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces, often to just as small as we need in order to find some sort of crucial detail. This can also happen to our lives in this changing world. When we find ourselves too empty even with what we already have in life, we analyze, we look at our lives at the minuscule scale and look for that crucial detail. Eventually when we find that detail we strive to fill it up in order to give us a sense of satisfaction.

Our inability to cope up with the global change is probably unknown to us, and it is only through this introspective analysis that we can find the reason why. And through this analysis, we are led to a sometimes counterintuitive detail: the basics. Just like how a sphere can be broken down into circles, and a circle broken down into arcs, and arcs into points, our lives can also be broken down into the simplest possible unit from which we can live it, that is, the basics, like how to ask for directions or what makes a person sad, etc.

Sometimes these small details are overlooked, probably because of our desires to move on and catch up with the fast paced development the world is experiencing. But what we don't know is that in order for us to make a step forward, we must first pass through the step before it. Take a staircase for example, you can climb it by skipping 2 or even 3 steps at a time, but if the staircase is long, you get tired easily as compared to taking it one step at a time. This is also the cycle that is called life, it's a long staircase that we can move by skipping steps in the beginning, but in the end this very act of skipping slows us down because when we are already at the higher steps, we have already consumed much energy and we are tired and then we will stop. However, the staircase is just like garter with a snail crawling in it. The snail travels at a constant speed and the garter extends at the same constant rate as the snail's speed. The snail has, mind bogglingly, a chance to reach the end of the garter after some very large time. However, if the snail stops to rest even for just a second, the time required for it to catch would become larger.

So what does this post emphasize? Well, the small things often overlooked in life are sometimes the most important. We often look at goals that are not immediately attainable, and attain them, calling this action a feat worthy of praise. But in the end, it is this feat that hinders us from attaining much higher goals than what we used to think is the ultimate goal.

Copy Paste: An Essay on What I Learned from the Internet

2011-03-25T20:50:00.002+08:00

(Beware. This is a VERY long post.)

This is the exact text of an essay I wrote a few days ago, towards the first day of my exams week, for something that would have given me a chance at national recognition if I ever had the guts to actually submit it. On the last spur of the moment, I suddenly realized that only the privileged could have their works read, and there are millions of people who are great writers who do not need national recognition in order to be recognized. I may be a great writer to some, but one thing is certain: I write because I simply want to write, without asking for anything in return. (Well, except comments, since I am rather paranoid about how others think of me. :P)

So here it goes...

COPY PASTE

After completing the endless requirements and hassles of school work, I arrived home, dropping my bag sluggishly unto the unkempt floor and began to climb the ladder towards the upper bed of the double deck from which I and my dorm mate sleep every night. I opened my notebook, not the one made of paper, but the one made of copper wires and semiconductors. I then began to double click the icon of my Internet browser and in the span of a second I was already looking at my search engine homepage. I was going to look for facts to support a reflection paper on being human that I was tasked to submit the morning of the following day, so I clicked the search bar and was barely finished typing “fac-” when the search engine suggested “Facebook.”

A funny experience, I thought at first, that a search engine suggests the name of a social networking site when a student searches for facts to support reflection on human-ness. All of a sudden, however, the experience suddenly came to me with a new face and a new message: the familiar social networking site which became part of my daily routine does indeed provide facts to support my reflection on my humanity. It has my name, address, contact information, the names of my friends, my likes and dislikes, where I was two hours ago, and all those things that tell others what I am. But then there were those posts on my wall which reflected my opinions on nearly everything from what the latest newspaper headline is to ideas on how life should be lived. It became my avenue for expressing who I am, on how good I think of the acts of myself and of others, and how bad I can be by simply expressing myself. It showed me that this networking site revealed a side of me I never showed outside the virtual world.
Looking from a third person perspective at how good or how bad I can be paves the way for much eye opening. How a simple experience could create so much realization of truths previously unknown to oneself is simply amazing. It’s as if a whole new world was made right in front of my eyes, and I felt like discovering my bareness and deciding to put on clothes to show my modesty...

Wait. Isn’t this story familiar?

There was once a garden in the backyards of heaven, where there was a man, a woman and a serpent. In the middle of the garden was a tree whose fruits God strictly forbade anyone from eating. Then the serpent went to the woman, and all the rest is history. Eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil really was an eye opener to the woman. To God, it was an eyesore. This fateful event began the death of man’s ultimate favor and the beginning of pains for both man and woman. The serpent, meanwhile, was cursed to crawl on its belly and eat dust forever. Then we return to reality, facing our favorite social networking sites and thinking of what to post next that will not make us look like a socially deprived wimp. Again there is a man and a woman, but there is no serpent. Instead, there’s the Internet. In the middle of the Internet is a website whose contents’ truth value can never be verified. Reading the content of this website was an eye opener to the man and the woman. To everyone else, it’s just an anonymous person being anonymous and not caring about their lives. This event happens nearly every day.

Man only needed one fruit of knowledge of good and evil to fall from God twice. The other thing he needed was the Internet. Yes, this series of tubes brought once more upon us knowledge of good and evil through its interconnected networks, so wittingly designed that it is seemingly able to satisfy our hunger for information and social importance. The truth, however, is it does not.

Like a plagiarized essay off of the Internet for the sake of being used in a motivational speech, are we, too, simply copying and pasting the mistakes of our first parents? Are the edits we do to our copy pasted works simply the removal of hyperlinks and footnotes? Are we contented with knowing that what we did is wrong, and no longer caring about rectifying this mistake we have committed? The answer, sadly, is yes. Consequently, this means that we are also bringing pains to ourselves. But does the answer have to be always yes? You see, the realizations we learn from this information superhighway known as the Internet is not a copied and pasted form of the realizations Adam and Eve found upon biting of that magical fruit. We are in a different context that, while not exactly very different from the context we all know from the Bible, provides enough difference to make drastic changes possible. This context is our knowledge of good and evil prior to the discovery of the Internet. While it does provide us as much goods and evils as Pandora’s Box can hold, our very advantage to overcoming these mistakes is our knowledge itself of their goodness and badness. The first men were innocent, and were vulnerable to the temptations the serpent holds. The digital age men are not.

The Internet, while it holds so much more temptations than the serpent was able to offer, is not the result when we select the serpent and perform the keystroke Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. What makes it different is not its physical or spiritual structure, but the way we look at it in our changing times. God made the serpent, and God punished the serpent for its mistakes. Man made the Internet, and man can even kill the Internet if it offends him in any way. The only way the Internet can beat man is if man let it. Since man is real and the Internet is not real, this should not be the case, unless for some reason man is doomed to fall to stupidity, another harsh realization which if explained would occupy paragraphs the length of this whole essay. In the virtual world of cyberspace, where everyone is anonymous and a woman can be a man and vice versa, there exists a true freedom of thought that the physical world would never be able to accommodate. Everyone can be a troll, a faggot, a flamer, or a forum moderator with an awesome ban hammer. Everyone can be as powerful as he wants himself to be. But recall again how our knowledge of good and evil allows us to bypass these temptations that we can fall into without being seen by anyone else except God. This goes to show that reality is still more powerful than the Internet, no matter how many terabytes of data your Internet connection can transfer per second.

So I went back to my notebook, opened my browser once again to the search engine homepage, and typed “fac.” The familiar suggestion appeared once more. Knowing what I really need to do, and that the social networking site would not help me accomplish my paper no matter how inspired it made me to reflect on my life, I ignored the suggestion and continued, “Facts for reflection on humanity.” I found a very inspiring quotation of an ancient occult truism on one of the website results:

"God thought, God visualized, God spoke and the world was made and is sustained."

This simply means, according to my mere understanding of it, that no matter how many advancements man continues to create, we are still but creations of the one true Being. We may recreate all of His works through our copy and paste methods, but the output will never be exactly the same perfection God made in the beginning. Why? As I have already mentioned, our knowledge of good and evil, also known as our conscience if you haven’t figured that out yet, makes a small, but very drastic difference.

Think Different

2011-03-19T21:42:00.000+08:00

Be happy when you think different, when people disagree with you because you can't just join the bandwagon and be contented, when you question indefinitely until there is no more loophole. As the Apple motto implies, the people who are branded crazy for thinking that they can change the world are the ones who do. The real crazy ones are the ones who call others crazy, just like how the people who call other people dumb and stupid are the ones who are dumb and stupid.

If you see that the conventional way of doing things fail, then by all means find a way to resolve the failure. Do not fall into what you consider failure just for the conventionality of it. Otherwise it will remain a failure to your perspective. Who would want to remain in failure? Why accept failure if there is a clear cut way to resolve it? Just like honesty, the quest for truth entails doing things that others would not do and that others cannot do.

Maybe it has something to do with breeding a culture of failure that creates further failure. Just like how local artists have to first be recognized in other lands before their own brethren recognize their potentials, we have to prove ourselves right to the eyes of a group of people who don't care about who we are but what we can do before we prove ourselves to our real targets. In a society that never listens, the best resolve would be to make them see.

So how do we make people see if they have already built brick walls in front of their eyes that only show what they want to see? Well the mentally easiest way would be to break the said brick walls. Mentally easiest, because even if it is easy to plan, the task would be physically and emotionally painful.

It saddens me to see that we are giving our future to people who cannot think different, and those who can simply become slaves of the established tradition of failure. We are giving our future to people who fail. But we are the ones who are in charge of our future. Does this mean, then, that we are failures in ourselves because we cannot think out of the box? Probably.

Over and Under

2011-03-07T22:46:00.000+08:00

If you listen to the music of today's generation, you'd generally find voices that are really awesome. Kidding aside, we find these songs really great. Whether it has a classical feel, or one that makes your feet dance to the rhythm, we like it. One possible reaction we might have is, "Wow look at him/her/both, his/her/its voice is very high and it's something I can only dream of having." True, it is difficult to sing high notes. But it's just as hard to sing low notes, if not harder. And this is where the argument begins.

Aim high, they say. Always strive for the best. Bring home the bacon. Be the best that you can ever be. We often hear these things as motivations for one who is generally underachieving. But when we read or hear these, the usual conclusion would be that the best for any person would be what is high. And what is high is difficult. Guess what, being low is harder. It's hard for a low person to stay low, and even harder for a high person to become low. But who would want to be low?

In music for example, we always get amazed at the power of a soprano sing and breaking a crystal glass with just her voice. But I've never heard of a bass who was applauded because his voice served as the foundation of the whole choral music in which he is a part of. Or even in a band, we often applaud the lead guitarist with his master fingers, but without the bass (who also does some nifty finger work) the music of the band would sound dry. Wouldn't you want to be a bass or a bass guitar, being the foundation upon all of those high buildings were built, and your disappearance would mean the collapse of everything? It's the same way in life. Without the lowly, there would be no high people.

By the way, how do we count? Do we count beginning from infinity and downwards until there is nothing left? No. We begin with nothing and we end with everything. It just goes to prove what the Bible teaches, that the lowly will have the Kingdom of Heaven. But then again, in a society who glorifies altitude and scrutinizes depth, who would understand all these things? Time would just pass and everyone would want to be on top of one another, always wanting to escape that state of being low. How difficult it would be if we were to let go of our high aspirations for a lower aspiration. But that's exactly what the world needs.

If everyone aimed high and leaves what is low the moment they can leave it, then who would be in charge of guiding the future of the land? If every child from rural villages study medicine in some prestigious place and never returns to that rural village, what would happen to the children in that village? If every teacher leaves the country to work as a domestic helper with higher salary, then where's the dignity of the profession heading? Ironically, downward. And it is only when everything is down that we strive to move up some more, eventually causing us to fall down.

There will be some who might ask, "But isn't moving downward a cause of under achievement?" Not really. Underachieving is when you are given the opportunity to act, and do not act as you should. Underachieving is not gaining anything. Being low gives the opportunity to see the world from a perspective no one else has seen before. How do we fix a problem that seems impossible to fix? We go back to the beginning, and work our way up again right? We can now say that to reach the top, we must first go to the bottom. If we forget our foundations, everything would collapse.

The Minor Majority

2011-02-17T17:49:00.000+08:00

When you're a very opinionated person who looks for arguments of others to support your own arguments, from time to time you'll find some sort of argument where a certain stand is being defended by those who support it individually (as in the person defends the stand as himself and not as a member of a group). The situation gets ironically funny from the view of a spectator when the individual calls "herd attack", or strength in numbers with no intellect, while his comment is actually in the middle of a long line of comments defending his point. To add to the irony is that the people who are against the fact are actually very few.

Let's face it, we all have some sort of need to prove ourselves, as well as possess a hidden desire for never losing. This is probably the reason why we are often defensive and rarely offensive. This is also the reason why, I think, the situation above happens. We don't want to lose so we claim that any opposing argument is invalid because it feeds on majority over intellect as a basis, but what really happens is that we become part of the majority who claim that we are being overshadowed by dumb majority. This is actually where it gets ironic.

Another thing we can point out in situations like this is that we only value our own opinions over the opinions of others, while ignoring opinions that support our opinions and looking only at some sort of invisible context that arises from those opinions which contradict ours. It's something like looking at only the negative aspects of our enemies, but more. More in the sense that we also create contexts that do not really exist in the hope of making our argument more convincing (i.e. calling herd attack when the ones actually herd attacking are the ones on your side).

In the same way, we can also describe the inverse proportionality of the number of people "attacking" and their mentality levels. We defined earlier the herd mentality as strength in numbers over intellectual reason, but the real case is that the ones who call herd mentality are the ones who are not using their mental capacities. In these situations, it's not hard to find one argument that is against the majority stand that completely devastates the majority stand. The reason why these arguments go on is that the majority does not listen, showing more of their lack of higher faculties.

To be put simply, the irony in this commentary is that the ones who think that they are being overpowered by dumb herds are actually the ones who comprise that same dumb herd. When this is done against a comment made by a fairly popular entity, (i.e. the Catholic Church) the people who are calling hypocrites are actually the hypocrites in themselves. They attack and attack with low class, unread and uninformed arguments.

A less controversial example than the RH Bill issue in the Philippines I can give, was the old "K-Pop" trend where fans flooded social networking sites with defensive posts about being mobbed by anti-K-Pop people who cannot simply respect their likes. What really happened though was that they were the one who were mobbing the people who were against their like and they were the ones who were not respecting the dislike of K-Pop non-fanatics. Want evidence? Get the ratio of anti-anti-K-Pop to anti-K-Pop articles. It should be self-evident.

And in the end, due to their lack of unity (most of these people act as separate individuals/groups) as well, every insult they throw eventually goes back to them. Do they care about it? I guess not.

Deaf, Dumb and Stupid

2011-02-14T22:26:00.000+08:00

There are things that happen in our lives that could probably be beyond what physics could explain. This gives rise to the term 'metaphysics' which refers to any philosophical or psychological perspectives about life. This concept also defines the criteria for existentially intelligent people according to Gardner. It includes things that are subjective and abstract, like joy and sorrow, life and death or existence and non-existence. They happen everyday, at every moment in our life. This poses the challenge of reflecting and appreciating.

What is it if a person is not able to appreciate any small emotion that passes by his day to day routine? Well, we can compare that person to a blind person who claims that he can see the physical world, or a deaf who says that he can hear everything you say, or a dumb person who claims to have solved the mysteries of the universe on a whim. This person claims on being able to do something that he is really unable to do. In this case, this task is nothing else but living. So why am I saying that a person who lives without appreciation is not really living?

Logically the above statement seems false, but if we look at it figuratively, we see that living can be defined beyond the biological definitions. We can define it to include things such as appreciation and criticism. When a person fails to fall into any of these two sides, he remains at the middle, mutually incapable of seeing good or bad. When this person is in such a state, we can compare him to the number zero on the number line: neither positive nor negative, and represents a state of non-existence. Therefore a person who is neither appreciative or critical of his life is living a life of non-existence.

It's sad to be in a case like that, and even sadder if the person is well aware of that fact, and is aware that he is doing nothing. It's like adding nothing to nothing, the result will still be nothing. In this sense, he is nothing. And he knows that he is nothing. An act of humility, some may suggest, but when taken this way we know that it only springs from a habit of laziness and the hypocritical act of condemning without doing anything.

The case remains dark unless the person finds some sort of enlightenment or a big push in the back towards moving on, staying out of the gray area, and starting to live. Unfortunately this sudden inspiration is unlikely to happen to the person concerned by himself. As a person, he cannot do anything about it. But there are things that could cause the person to change, such as great experiences that force the person to change. But the greatest source of light to a person being nothing in his gray area, in my opinion, is always a true and caring set of friends and family.

I do not really understand. I still seem to be looking for that true and caring set of friends and family; but I know that I already have them. Maybe I really just fail to appreciate. And that is where it becomes safe to say that I fail at life.

Certainly Uncertain

2011-02-07T22:16:00.000+08:00

Uncertainty is something that isn't rocket science to us anymore. It's a crucial part of our daily activities, most especially in decision making. Before we become certain of our decisions, there is a phase in our thought that we are uncertain; say for example choosing between salami or pepperoni. We do not just grab one we are already sure we are going to buy, we become uncertain first; but through weighing the pros and cons of buying either one, we arrive at a point of certainty.

Now there is a situation when we are pressured to be certain at a phase when we are uncertain. Using the salami example above, imagine that the supermarket will close in two minutes and that the time it takes for you to grab one, get to the counter and pay for everything is a minute and a half. The most likely reaction just to grab a random one and justify the reason for getting that later, and then either regret getting that or be satisfied of your decision.

Now here's the question: say you did not like the outcome of making that haste decision, what would be you reaction towards performing that situation? Well it all depends on many things, like time constraint, failed excuses, sloth, gluttony, lust, anger... let me get straight to the point. PRIDE. If pride was measured in calories, a lot of people would be livelier and jollier than the energizer bunny. When faced with a situation where one must admit lacking something or failing at something (like being questioned on something which you should have done and didn't do), even a koala or the cat frequently caught sleeping on the sidewalk is more exciting.

There are only two reactions to these situations: one is the person will deny the responsibility, or deny knowledge of the responsibility. The latter is now what gives reactions like "I don't know" or "It's your fault" from the said kinds of people. And this is when the uncertain magically transforms into solid certainty. When I said "magical" I'm using the term to mean non-canon, or not legal. We discussed earlier that the process of reaching certainty from uncertainty requires weighting choices carefully before deciding. In the situation I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the uncertainty illogically becomes certainty because of a need to be justified (which, ironically, does not really happen; it just seems that way). In another view, this is what we can actually call being "certainly uncertain".

Some prime time soap operas usually have this feature of certain uncertainty in the personification of some high profile villain who does low profile crimes using goons and guns. So does that meant that when we are guilty of the traits stated above, we behave like the dirty criminals we see on afternoon and evening dramas? Yes! But of course if we were really guilty, then we would be denying being guilty. Haha.

Unfortunately, we have a large tendency to be like this especially if we are made to hold important responsibilities. While it is understandable that the responsibility may be to hard to bear, it is not justifiable that we deny our uncertainty for a fake certainty in our actions.

So how do we correct this error? Well the best method to make a crooked way turn straight again is to make the crooked way straighten itself. What's funny about this is that the crooked way will never find a motivation to straighten itself if it does not see the consequences of the uncertainty because it never passed through that stage before becoming certain.

A Broken Anecdote

2011-01-18T22:40:00.000+08:00

Almost six years ago, I wrote a two page essay entitled "A Broken Home" for a contest a religious magazine organized. I forgot the exact words, or what the theme was that made me write it, or if it was something I made earlier and just submitted for the sake of the contest. Either way, all I could remember was that I wrote it in some sort of reference to the state of my family then, which it still is right now: broken.

I have very little memory of it, and if I wasn't able to appreciate a story about a father and son I would not have been able to remember that I made one. It was three years before my mother left the country to work abroad, eleven years after my father married another woman during my mother's gestation, for reasons I cannot explain clearly enough. I was aware of this at a very early age, so almost fourteen years after I knew about it I am almost expressionless at that event.

"Hindi ka ba galit?" Was a question that I commonly hear every time I tell someone this story. I tend to tell this story freely and without shyness or whatever, probably because I have already learned to accept the situation and my inability to change it into a more ideal one. My mom once told me, "Anak 'wag mo naman masyadong pinagkakalat sa 'skwelahan buhay natin."

Most of my early writings was regarding the same situation: some woman gets impregnated and then the father marries another person. I remember the journalism teacher during one of his workshops in features writing remark to the class, "Do more than the usual mother broken family thing," which I guessed was hinted at my works of similar nature during elementary that always seems to make it to the top works during contests.

It's always been the same for me, and it has not really bothered me much. But then again there are those curious moments, especially when people discuss typical father behaviors or when I read stories about father-son relationships, like Rick Barrett's "Running Shoes," minus the "the son is gay" part. When these happen, there's this curiosity of wanting to know how those situations would have felt from my perspective, and at some point realizing that I have never experienced any of these things, which ends with some sort of emotional outburst from me.

And of course, being the illegitimate eldest son, I'm also curious of things that are unusual to a typical family situation: half-siblings. Or half-brothers. It's safe to say that since I know that they are all male. Unfortunately they have as much idea of having an illegitimate elder brother as a cockroach that underwent the state we call "death by slipper." None, to be put simply. And when curiosity is not satisfied, it becomes frustrating. More so when it can never be satisfied unless the object permits curiosity to find its own answer. Obviously it's difficult for me.

Then again, there is that father and son thing that never existed in my life which is something that I would forever be curious about. In this sense, you might say that I have not really moved on. Rather, I just suppressed the usual dramatic emotions that this situations usually convey. The truth value of this statement is something even I cannot justify right now.

There I go again, telling the whole world part of our life's story.

Mechanicality

2011-01-17T21:56:00.000+08:00

Life is marked by spontaneity. You never know what will happen. The only thing to do to make something happen is to make it happen. In order for a person to be doing something, he or she must do it. But why do we do these things? Do we do them just for the sake of doing them? Supposedly, we do not. However, a part of reality is also that we do some things for the sake of doing them because of routine. This is when we become mechanical; like a machine where moving gears will always do the same type of motion and get the exact same result every time.

Man, however, is not a machine. This is true even if he acts like a machine. Unlike pressing the "copy" button on the photocopier will make the photocopier do the exact task expected for it to do, a person doing the same thing over and over again will not have the same output for every attempt to do the action. For example, waking up early in the morning and rote memorizing textbooks in preparation for an exam will not work for every exam. This kind of result yields from a thing we call context. Machines will act and bear fruit the same way regardless of context, but man will have varying results of the same actions depending on the context by which the action is done.

Context is unique for every person at every instance of his life. The context at which a person performs a task in the morning is not the same context under which he does the same task in the evening. And it is through this context that a person formulates his reasons for doing a certain action. That being said, a person cannot really do an action for the sake of doing it; because as we have said, context is never constant.

We do not wake up early on an examination day because we want to wake up early, rather we wake up early because we need to have additional time to study lessons before answering the examination. We do not wake up early on a day where we need to travel to a far location because we want to wake up early, rather we wake up early because by leaving early, we can arrive at our destination early.

It is this "mechanicality" that removes the thing called "purpose" in any act. By doing things for the sake of doing them, we kill the intended purpose of doing such things. Like going to church, for example. We should be going to church because we want a nourishment of faith, not because we are required to do so. The consequence is that, if we go to church to have a nourishment of faith, we are able to appreciate the things that go on inside the church, such as the mysteries and miracles of prayers and actions. But when we go to church in order to go to church, everything else is meaningless, because the act itself is the end.

Another example I think I will be able to justify is in mathematics. When we solve equations in order to solve equations, we become like those who are failing in this subject because they cannot find values to plot into formulas in finding solutions. The funny reality in mathematical problem solving is that the actual mathematics is less than 50% of the solving method. Of greater importance is the process of expressing the problem being asked mathematically, which varies as much as there are different types of problems. This is also why those who have difficulty in math are those who think that solving equations are done in order to solve equations. Again, this reason lacks a context, and is similar to how a machine works. It is these people who could never find an application of such an intellectual science; they are the people who say "Dear Math, grow up and solve your own problems" or "Math is useless in real life."

But there is a concept we call procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge defined is "knowledge of being able to do something." It is learning how to do something. And the only way to obtain it is through practice. Therefore, this practice is what we can consider as doing for the sake of doing, which if taken as it is should be contrary to the point we're trying to prove. Or is it?

Recall again what makes a mechanical act different from a purposeful act: Context. In the light of learning procedural knowledge, context is very much present. Why do we need to do in order to do? Because being able to do this procedure will allow us to use it for purposes we intend to do it for. Thus, it becomes very contextual, purposive and non-mechanical. What have we just discussed here? In learning procedural knowledge, the act of doing for doing is not the end itself. It is a means to another end, in contrast to the previous example of going to church, where the act is the end itself.

So is there a need to avoid doing things for the sake of doing them? As ends, yes. As means to greater ends, no. Note that the product is not the same for men who do the same actions in different contexts. If there is no context, then the action is meaningless and mechanical. To conclude, we can restate a previously said statement: "Man is not a machine." He is much greater than a machine, and to act mechanically is an insult to himself.

Advantages of a Pessimist

2010-12-20T13:52:00.000+08:00

When things go well, we have this primitive tendency to think that things will always go well. And when things do not go well, we get frustrated, and much worse is we behave contrary to what is socially acceptable. This is, I guess, a weakness of good thinking, of being too good that it is already bad. And with that is the strength of something bad, so bad that it becomes good.

One saying could probably summarize this whole discussion: "Expect the worst." Why? Well, first we can say that when the worst does come, we are prepared for it and we can find reasonable ways to get over it. Would anyone be able to prepare for a tsunami if he or she would simply dismiss the early warning signs of the disaster as a neighbor's roof under construction? Of course not.

The thing that is so bad about "all things shall be good" is that in reality they are not. Probably in the end they will be good; but as they are right now, they could be the worst, and this so-called goodness will only come if we are able to circumnavigate this bad entity.

Next thing we can say is that if you are expecting the worst, and the worst does not come, you do not become frustrated, more so that you are even given something to be thankful about. What person in his regular mind would say that "I was so pissed off that the flood didn't hit our town"? Shouldn't that person be thankful that even though the worst could have arrived, it did not arrive to ruin them?

Think about the opposite of the situation I mentioned above. A person is not expecting a fire to reach his house, even though signals of thick smoke are already coming from a nearby house. And then the fire reaches his house and burns everything he has. Wouldn't that person say "I wish I had prepared since there is a chance that I could lose a lot more"?

You see, it's not really about thinking bad of everything that is good. It is simply accepting reality as it is, full of risks. But then again, it could also be denying reality, a reality which states that life is fundamentally good. A negative number is simply the difference between zero and a positive number. Darkness is the absence of light, but light is not the absence of darkness. Running away from frustrations is denying the fact that failures are what make people strong, and the strength of a person is the magnitude of how much failures he can overcome.

In the end, thinking the worst is not really the best. But so is thinking the best. Both could be worst. What is important is what is accepting what is real. And what is real isn't necessarily the best, nor the worst. Probably the best thing to think about now is what would be best, while being aware that it could be worse.

A "How to" Fail

2010-11-13T20:37:00.000+08:00

Procedural knowledge, as we can infer from the term itself, refers to knowledge of procedures or steps in the performance of a task such as how to drive, or how to open a refrigerator or how to solve a system of linear equations using Gauss-Jordan elimination. Generally, this type of knowledge requires no effort in recalling once mastered. Why am I saying this? We'll find out later on.

Let's discuss another kind of knowledge, called declarative knowledge. This is basically the type of knowledge in the form of pure information, such as knowing what the green pigment in leaves is called or recalling who discovered the printing press and when was it discovered. This type of knowledge requires a lot of effort to recall especially if the knowledge being recalled is not well reinforced.

While some information are meant to remain declarative, there are some that must become procedural to become meaningful. What is knowing the contents of a troubleshooting manual if one cannot perform it? What is knowing that a live wire is dangerous if you will just touch it carelessly?

What is knowing what is right if you don't know how to do it?

Take this example. A teenager knows that there is a developmental task expected of him for his age, such as being able to do the laundry by himself. But how can he do the laundry by himself if he has no idea on what to do to begin with? He just knows that he has to do something but he has no way of knowing how to do it. Moreover, if there are any attempts and he makes wrong moves, he only gets rejection and punishment.

Now let's look at another example. A person finds that he has a need to make friends. But he has no idea how to. And he feels that if he just randomly approaches his "friends" they would just think that he's forcing himself to fit in and that he may be just taking advantage of them. The tendency is that this person will not do anything to achieve his goal and the end result is frustration.

Frustration is the ability to do something but not being able to do it. It's like saying, "You could have done it, but you didn't." And if frustration is left untreated, it leads to more frustration.

A decent conclusion would be formed if we look at the transitivity in this situation. Declarative knowledge is learned in school and in books but it cannot become procedural knowledge if it is not practiced, and it cannot be practiced if there is no way for it to be practiced or no way of knowing how to practice it. To not be able to turn it into procedural knowledge while having a strong declarative knowledge leads to frustration. So how can frustration be helped? Guidance.

Someone To Live By

2010-11-06T01:32:00.000+08:00

I haven't done any personal posts lately and I thought that I would never again because I usually think long hours before making a post. This one, however, will be as spontaneous as it is. Haha.

Some might say I've felt it all, or I've felt none at all. But whatever is the real case, there's something I've always wanted to feel that I've probably just forgotten in these past years. I've never bothered to pose this question to others because I would probably get a different answer than what I expect. (It is now a sad reality that I expect answers for some of my questions. I'm not that specific though.) Because I've always believed that everyone defines things in different ways because everyone is not the same.

However, I'd still like to hope that there's someone similar to me. Not physically like a twin or something, otherwise I'd be very sorry for that person for having the same monster killing physical characteristics I have. Someone who simply has the same interests more or less, the same perspective in life, someone who I can completely trust. I guess this is how I define a best friend. But my question is: How would it feel like to have one?

I feel lonely. There I said it. Probably the reason I hate a lot of things and love none is because I cannot love it with someone. I'm afraid that showing appreciation for something that doesn't usually gain appreciation would give me rejection or failure. I have a low tolerance for emotional pain. But probably, (probably since I cannot say for certain) that fear of pain might turn into confidence if there is someone who I know can live through it.

But same pains also mean same fears. And that complicates things. But I'm not looking for someone who is a carbon copy of me, I would probably kill him if I see him. I just want someone similar, if that's not too demanding. Say someone who also has an interest in music, math and hating things. LOL.

It's not that I'm not contented with the friends who I live by. As a matter of fact I can't live without them. But recently I began feeling outcast. And not just because I can't relate with them. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I'm sure they don't mean to offend me either. But I feel like I'm being outcast on purpose. Probably because I'm with these people because of the fact that I'm forcing myself to be with these people. They say friendship is mutual. It's mutually understanding and mutually annoying. It can never be one-sided. And that's where I fail.

This is beginning to sound like a "Wanted: Best Friend. Apply Inside." rant from a demanding person, but I believe that I'm not asking for too much, and I'm not asking anyone in particular to be a best friend because we all know that that doesn't work. I'm just expressing a feeling close to loneliness, though not completely. Maybe that's why I'm happy with the choirs I belong to more than anything; because it's my interest and I get to practice it. Hopefully it would be the same for teaching in the future.

But personal goals aside, I wonder how would it feel like to have a goal with someone else. And no, I'm not talking about sexual attraction. I'm taking my time being single. And sadly it's very hard to believe someone who comes to you and says, "I can be your best friend." It's like that person is applying which, like what I have already said, doesn't work. The problem with this is that it seems like I'm just expecting someone to come into my life, knock some sense into me and give me satisfaction. I'm not even sure how that works.

It's hard to face your problems if your problem is your self. I feel so selfish and sorry in advance to the person who becomes my best friend because I'm looking for him while expecting so much of him.

I used to think back in high school that maybe I'm just being impatient and the time will come when I'll find that person. But now I'm feeling that I've wasted so many opportunities to find him. Or maybe I'm just being impatient again. Whether it's impatience or not, what I do know is that I'm relying my self-fulfillment on someone else right now. And since I'm relying on it, I basically am saddened about not having him yet. So much, actually. So much that I feel so stupid. But don't I always feel stupid?

Of Actions and Identities

2010-11-04T21:27:00.000+08:00

A quote from Aristotle goes, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit." We'll go on into discussing this further into this post, but let us first focus on the first sentence in the quote: We are what we repeatedly do.

Life, even though it's hard to believe, is partly a habit. Partly in the sense that not everything in life is habit, such as unique experiences. But there are things which are habitual in nature, such as eating breakfast, or going to work. The latter, though, is more than just a habit. Your work (unemployment does not guarantee no work) is not just something you do that gives you money to buy your needs and wants. It's what you will do for the rest of your life if you choose to develop yourself in it.

For Khalil Gibran, "When you work, you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born." Work is, somehow, our destiny. Such as when a student decides to take up education, or when a man chooses a welding job in a foreign country. It might have been a choice, but the circumstances that made us make that choice could be very complex. Somehow it was meant to be a part of our life, a part of who we are.

When a person teaches, he's not only teaching, but he is also a teacher. When a person draws the plans for a new building, he's not only drawing plans, but he is also an architect. When a person brings heavy cargo load dropped from the bus to the shipping room, he does not just carry things around, he is a porter. When a person builds a house, he's not just building the house, he is a carpenter. These examples show us that what we do is not just merely doing things, it is an integral part of our identity.

When we continue doing our jobs as part of our daily routine, we are strengthening that identity. A person who has saved someone's life once may not be called a rescuer forever, but one who saves lives almost everyday is clearly defined as a rescuer. And by that person being a rescuer, he gains experience and uses his experiences to develop himself more. Using that point, we can now say that excellence is, indeed a habit.

Back to the original point. Our jobs are partially what we are, and consequently, what we are known for. Furthermore, it will also dictate what the world expects from us. A teacher, for example, has a role of guiding the learners in his care. This is what he is known for. Now, what he is expected to do is to behave in a manner that reinforces what he teaches so that the goal of his profession may be fulfilled, and his job completed for his learners.

Noblesse oblige. Nobility obliges. Act according to your position. We are objectively judged primarily by those who do not know us personally through our role in society. This judgment does not include how much we earn, but by the quality of what we do and how we do it.

And finally, because our work (or role for that matter) is our identity, we must take care not to ruin it. More importantly, we should take care of it. We should love it. We should do it by our love of it.

"And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your own heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth." - Khalil Gibran, "On Work", 1923

What to Know

2010-11-01T02:27:00.000+08:00

Why do we need to know? Can't we just live without knowing anything and walk around moving by instinct like animals? The obvious answer to that is no. Intellect is one thing that separates man from the rest of the world, the other being free will. And from this, we can conclude that there is indeed an endless need to know. Knowing things is what makes as human.

And now that we know why, we can ask another question: What do we need to know? Knowledge is any piece of information that we can learn about, but learning is relating knowledge to life experiences. Therefore, we learn what is related to us personally. Therefore, what we need to know is those that will be of importance to our actual and potential goals.

Since we are human, and we have aspirations and goals, it is then necessary for us to know certain things that are of importance to us. Which brings us to another question: What is important to us? Well this is a question in which there is no general answer. We individually create our hierarchy of values from our experiences and from our personal aspirations. That is, even knowing how to operate a shotgun for the purpose of killing someone could be an important piece of knowledge to someone. Because as ethics dictates us, no one could impose their own conscience upon that of another.

So now that that's settled, let's get on to business. Say a person is part of a group that works as a group and cannot exist as individuals. Wouldn't it be justified to expect that what one member of the group does that involves the group should be disseminated to all of the group's members regardless of position? This then, is something relevant and important to the group's existence. Therefore it is needed to be known by the group and the composition of the group.

This also goes to the universal scale because we can see the world as a group of people living together. Thus the principle we have just established, which is that the group members have all rights to know what each person does that affects the whole group, also applies.

It may sound far-fetched and impossible, but each person in the world deserves to know when each person burns plastic in his or her front lawn, or when a forest is being deforestated. This is also why we study things that we don't seemingly care about, like physics and calculus.

We all deserve and need to know. But the only way we can know is by exerting effort to learn. We can all know, but the difference lies in whether we want to know what we deserve to know.

From Innovation to Ritualization: The Process of Losing Meaning

2010-10-28T15:46:00.000+08:00

What a remarkable world we live in right now. Sending messages across far distances is now as easy as saying them directly to the person through various means of communication. We are able to easily describe hypothetical situations and solve great values without too much effort. We can build a breathtaking house in half the time it takes using only tape measures, hammers and nails. Behind these things which we consider unimportant now are actually products of the works of great men from the past, things they gave their lives for, recognized only so much years after their deaths.

If it was not discovering these things that made the task so difficult back then, it was the large amount of rejection these people had to fight for so that others would believe. Now we just accept them without argument. When these things were accepted, they were given importance and full force was used to transfer this knowledge to all the points on the globe. But now, they're seen as boring requirements unappreciated by students of the generation. They think it's some thing that nobody cares about and nobody gets to apply anyway. They take them for granted.

One thing we could say to explain this lack of interest, and thus effort, is that life for people today is becoming routine. You do a thing once, find importance in it, then do it again. When you do it again though, you find less importance, but somehow find the need to do it again. It continues until eventually there is little purpose to the act other than doing the act itself. For example, when we celebrate birthdays, do all of us actually visit the celebrant to make them feel special for having a life worth living in all their years? Or do we just come for the food and the drink that comes with it. When we give a flower to our loved one, do we give it out of appreciation or because it's how everyone else shows their affection? We're fitting more and more into a stereotype without meaning.

During the age of animism, people worshiped sticks and stones to thank what they believe to be the cause of their good harvests and prosperous lives. Now people go to church just for the heck of doing it or because their parents are forcing them to do it, or because it's the only valid reason they can use to get out of home. Worse is that they're doing it to affect their academic performance, which it shouldn't in the first place.

As there is a time for everything, there is a purpose for everything. Life is not a mere routine. Otherwise waking up in the morning and eating breakfast means nothing. Friends are nothing. We don't need anything. We just live, then die. Then suicide would be so much easier. Then probably we'll have half the people in the world gone.

What we should understand is that the life we live now is not the life others lived some 10 or 20 years ago. It's not a life of technology, it's a life built on us creating what we want from what we already know and doing what we can for some goal we want to achieve. Life's not about robotics or rocket science, it's about us using these things for our gain and the good of others. Learning things in school is not about knowing theories, but using theories in real life because these theories were meant to be applied to life and not to be printed in books for people to memorize.

Basically, that's the flow of time and space: What is the greatest now becomes not-so-great to totally useless in the future. But the reason it becomes useless is not because it is useless, it's because we consider it useless. Maybe someday, when we see how much the next generation becomes unappreciative of our work, we'll understand what we did back when we were their ages. But then it would be too late.

Change From = Change For

2010-10-13T21:26:00.000+08:00

We always say that the only thing constant in this world is change. Sometimes we ask "Why does change have to happen?" But some may never have even arrived at thinking how change happens, particularly in the change of behavior, which some would call the process of learning.

So, how does learning take place? Horne and Pine (1990) tell us that learning is an experience which occurs inside the learner and is activated by the learner. Needless to say that the most important thing that is required for learning to take place is the learner. It is the learner who makes change happen to himself, and thus the person that he has changed from is physically the same person he has changed for.

If behavioral change is activated solely by the learner, what might be the implications of knowing such a fact? Gines, et al. (1998) cites Hurlock (1980) to determine the three conditions in which change will occur: (a)if there is help and guidance (b)if treated in new and different ways (c)if there is a strong motivation in the individual himself to change. We can say that the other two conditions would be worthless if the third condition is not met. This goes to show this key point to be emphasized: that no one can make a person change but the person himself.

It is not good to always give compliments and no criticism to people. The tendency is that if the individual doing something wrong gets used to being praised for being right while there is no opposition to his wrong act, this individual will come to think that what he or she is doing is not wrong. Thus the only way for him to realize that he is wrong is if others tell him that it is wrong. But since we cannot enforce our conscience upon the conscience of others, no matter how erroneous or calloused their conscience might be, the least we could is to somehow motivate them to change for themselves.

To get this motivation, the person who wants the change to happen should make sure that the person who will change changes for himself; that is he must find something good in changing, or in another way he must find something bad in not changing. Usually the latter is much more easier to do than the former. Take this for example: What would you tell someone who wants to touch a hot kettle so that he will not touch it? Wouldn't you rather say that "Touching the kettle might give you a burn," rather than "Not touching the kettle will not give you a burn"?

However, as I already explained in this post, people will not take lightly criticism and disapproval. But if we look at it, the consequences are far more important. We don't punish the people or degrade them, however degrading it may seem to them. We make them realize that their faults lead to more failures so that they may, in themselves, change for themselves and not for others.

We don't change people, we guide people into changing for themselves.

Object, Intention and Circumstance

2010-09-21T20:29:00.000+08:00

The expression "The question is not 'Why?' but 'Why not?'" does not hold true for all cases. So to use it as a valid conclusion is false. Because when we ask the question "Why not?" we are sort of expecting an exception to some generally true statement. But since the truthfulness of the statement is only an assumption, asking "Why not?" proves to be an unjustified method of reasoning. There must always be a "Why?" side to things, because the reason for any action is solidly provided when this question is asked. This reason, no matter how seemingly obvious, provides a solid and tangible foundation to what we want to do. This is in contrast to the opposite question, where the validity rests completely on an assumption.

So why am I explaining this? It's been almost a month since the bloody hostage drama that the whole world saw, where a lot of people died. Recently, the supposed "investigation committee" released a report recommending the filing of charges against everyone whose name appeared in the "investigation". Basically they just blame every proper noun that a certain group of people will point. Where is the justice in that? The answer to that question is still vague; however, there's this point that the report was made not for the sake of justice, but for the positive attention of a foreign country.

Think about it: there are so much hostage taking incidents that take place in the world every single minute, especially in our country. And yet, very few are given justice and a lot of people die from false practices of incompetent authorities. What makes this particular incident different from the others is that (a) there are foreign people involved and (b) there is wide media coverage. Let us now take each point and analyze.

There are foreign people involved. Probably the incident would not gain this much attention if it was an ordinary Filipino person involved, say a woman with a kid whose pouch could not pay the demand of the hostage taker. Ordinary in the sense that it's not a big name that is involved, say a Lopez or an Ayala. Nobody would care in that case. But if it were otherwise, there would be long and complicated processes involved in a crisis that was poorly managed in the first place. So it's either that the authorities are media-driven or do not care about locals over foreign tourists. It's all about the image of our country to the world other than the welfare of its locals. I guess this is where 4th world countries beat any country in the globalized community.

Second point, there is wide media coverage. If there were no cameras all around, then who knows what greater failure could the authorities in charge have incurred. Some might say that since nobody knows, they could just put of small casualties as collateral damage, even if such casualties could be caused by neglect or malpractice. But if you have the whole country watching, then of course you wouldn't just do things for the sake of doing them.

Personally I don't believe what Mayor Lim said when the policemen risked their lives just for their job. Again, since I've seen more than one exception, then the statement does not hold true for all cases, and is therefore false. Again we see how the purpose of the duty is not being fulfilled and the intention is then changed. While I'm not saying that policemen should die because it's part of their job, they should at least show some courage and not do the SWAT (Sugod Wait Atras Takbo) tactic we all saw.

I will now pose this question: If the purpose of the investigation of giving justice is only secondary to relieving the ire of a larger country, then could the random pointing of official fingers at people with the basis of "Why not?" be justified?

Hold That Thought

2010-09-18T20:43:00.000+08:00

"Hold that thought."

We often hear this said when we are in a conversation and a sudden interruption happens so that the conversation may continue even if their is an interruption.

What does it signify? We lose what we put in our short term memory in under 20 seconds if not reinforced. Therefore the neurons that signify the connection between this new experience die if not used again. Basically it dies out if it is not repeated. When we memorize something for an exam, is it not that we repeat it over and over so we can recall it when it is needed? Therefore we are actually giving importance to it. It also follows that what we repeat, or hold on to, is what we consider as important to us.

This morning I had a thought on why there are so many unnecessary things that we pay attention to and we get distracted. I was going to say something about that on this post because at that time I thought it was important. But I realized that it's not really that crucial that I rant on it on this post so I didn't bother saying something about it and instead you have this post. I felt it was important so I did not let any distractions interfere with my knowledge of that thought and I kept it in my head.

But there is still some part in this morning's idea that somehow contributes to developing the point I'm trying to show. There are unnecessary things that we pay attention to and we get distracted from important things. And the problem rises again. We sometimes put importance into things that aren't really important. Of course nobody can impose his conscience upon another; but when the question is choosing a hamburger over saving a life, it's kind of obvious on what choice is important.

You love someone. You think this thought is important. Therefore you hold on to it. At the end of the day you find another thing to do and you forget this someone. Therefore you consider this thing of greater importance, and your perception of his/her importance is diminished, for that time at least. Thus to say that someone can be important every single minute of life is telling a lie.

Sure things are important, but we can not hold on to a certain thought long enough for us to consider them truly important. We should consider now that we have different priorities, at different places, different times and different conditions.

Isang Masayang Pagtanaw

2010-08-29T21:29:00.000+08:00

Ayoko ko muna maging masyadong formal to kaya pasensya na kung taglish na to na may kasama pang bad grammar.

Masaya ako ngayong araw na to. Bakit? Iniisip ko rin kung ano ang nagpasaya sa kin ngayon. Tapos bigla kong napagtanto na masaya ako dahil nakita kong masaya ang mga taong gusto kong makitang masaya, at naipapakita nila ang gusto nilang sabihin nang walang alanganin na baka makasakit o kung magkamali man ng sasabihin o kung tama ba sa okasyon ang salitang gagamitin. Isa pa habang nanonood ako ng concert ng Bukas Palad kanina may isang member dun na kahit anong kanta eh ang ganda ng ngiti. Napapangiti rin ako. Haha.

Sana ganun lagi no. Yung tipong hindi ko pinipigil yung siraulong gago na nasa loob ko. Para bang wala na kong paki kahit magmukhang tanga ako dahil masaya ako at ganun ako magpahayag ng kasiyahan ko. Kasi malungkot lagi ang mundo. Given na yun, ika nga. Pero kung gusto mong maging masaya, ang bagay na lang na pumipigil sa yo eh ang sarili mo. Eh ano kung pagtinginan ka? At least naipahayag mo ang gusto mong iparating. Mas mahirap din kasi yung pinipigil mo ang mga emosyon mo. Lalo na pag pinipigil ang kasiyahan.

Hindi ko alam kung ako lang ba ang nakakapansin, pero mas madaling ipahayag ang kalungkutan kaysa sa kasiyahan. Mas natural kapag umiyak ka o sumimangot o magdabog dahil may hindi magandang nangyari kaysa sa sumigaw, humiyaw at magbunyi dahil may nararamdaman kang kakaibang kasayahan na hindi mo nararamdaman araw-araw. Bakit ka magiging ordinaryo kung kaya mo namang maging kakaiba?

Ngayong araw nagkaroon ako ng bagong pagtingin at naramdaman ko na mahalaga ako. Na-realize ko rin na hindi binigay ng Diyos ang taong hinihingi ko na magpaparamdam na mahalaga ako. Siya mismo ang lumapit ang pinakitang may dahilan para maging masaya ako. Sa totoo nga eh maraming dahilan para maging masaya ako. Panalangin ko lang ulit, mahabag sana Siya, na magkaroon pa ako ng kaunti pang kasiyahan sa buhay na sunod-sunod para kahit na makakita ako uli ng kalungkutan, mas mabigat na ang magiging hatak ng kasiyahan.

Siguro kung may mga tao man na hindi magiging masaya eh hindi ko na maiiwasan. Ang mahalaga na lang ay may mga nakipagsaya sa kin at naging masaya ako. Kaya minsan eh masarap din maging tanga. Kasi sa pagkakaala ko mas tanga ang taong hindi pinapakawalan ang mga napakagandang kulay ng emosyon sa puso niya at pinaghahalo halo sa loob kaya pumapangit. Ika nga tumatanda ang itsura kapag laging nakasimangot (Hmm... kapag kaya laging nakangiti/nakatawa eh gagwapo ako? masubukan nga. haha).

Masaya ako ngayon. At dahil naging masaya ako, nalaman ko rin na may dahilan pa para maging masaya at kaya ko pang maging masaya, at kaya ko pang buuin ang mga panahong binasag ko; na marami pang pagkakataon na darating sa buhay ko, at balang araw ay matatagpuan ko rin ang magbibigay sa kin ng contentment sa buhay. Siguro masyado lang kasi akong nagmamadali. Sabi nga ng nanay ko, bata pa ko, wag masyadong magseryoso dahil marami pang magagandang bagay na darating. Nagkaroon ako ng pag-asang tumuloy.

Sa opinyon ko lang, hindi pa rin talaga maipapaliwanag ng kahit sino ang mga dahilan natin kung bakit tayo may dignidad at may karapatan tayong magmukhang-tanga nang hindi nasisira ang dignidad. May karapatan tayong maging masaya.

Nakakaiyak rin pala madiskubre na may pag-asa pa no. Sana tuloy-tuloy na to. Para hindi na lang puro blog at facebook kaharap ko. Mga totoong tao na sana, mga taong magpapasaya sa kin at higit sa lahat, mapapasaya ko. Balang araw matatanggap ko rin na sa kabila ng maraming panahon ng pagtapon ko sa sarili ko at sa pagpuna ng mga maliliit na mali ko ay may taong tatanggap at magmamahal sa kin hindi dahil sa magaling ako, kundi dahil tanggap ko ang sarili ko at papangatawanan ko ang gusto kong gawin nang walang problemang iniisip.

Ayoko pa sanang magwakas ang araw na to. Pero kung magwawakas man, dasal ko na lang sa Taas na sana bigyan Niya pa ako kahit konti pang mga araw para maisip kong mahalaga ako, hindi lang sa paningin ng iba at sa paningin Niya, kundi pati na rin sa paningin ko.

Yan tuloy, natetears of joy ako. :'D

Sino'ng May Sala?

2010-08-24T15:07:00.000+08:00

"Isang bagay lang ang nakakahiya: kasalanan."
- Fr. Romulo V. Rodriguez, OP

Sabihin na nating lahat ng tao nagkakamali. Dahil isa sa mga likas na bagay sa tao ang kaniyang kakayahang magkamali. Nagkakatalo na lang siguro sa kung paano natin nalalaman na nagkamali ang isang tao.

Para malinawan natin ang sitwasyon na aking nais bigyang pokus, magbigay tayo ng isang halimbawa. Isang mag-aaral ang palaging bumabagsak sa lahat ng kaniyang mga pagsusulit. Pagkatapos ay sasabihin ng kaniyang magulang na hindi siya nag-aral nang mabuti, at iyon ang kaniyang pagkakamali. Maaaring tama ito, pero maaari din na hindi binigay ng guro ng sapat na impormasyon ang mag-aaral na ito para masagutan ang mga taong sa kaniyang mga pagsusulit. Sa ganitong pananaw, lalabas na mali ang guro. Pero maaari rin naman na naituro naman ng guro ang lahat ng dapat maituro, ngunit biglaang iniba ng punong-guro ang kaniyang nilikhang pagsusulit dahil iniisip ng punong-guro na hindi ito nasusukat ng tama ang mga dapat malaman ng mga mag-aaral para sa konseptong iyon. Sa kasong ito, nagkamali naman ang punong-guro dahil hindi niya inisip ang pamamaraang ginagamit ng gurong gumawa ng pagsusulit sa pagtuturo.

Ngayon, maaari bang malaman kung sino ang nagkamali sa kasong iyon? Ayon sa palaasalan, ang isang gawaing mali ay nananatiling mali sa kabila ng kondition at intensyon ng gumagawa. Pero hindi mo naman pwedeng sabihing mali ang pagbagsak ng mag-aaral sa pagsusulit, dahil sa simula naman ay hindi pwedeng patawan ng paghusga ang pagbagsak sa pagsusulit dahil hindi naman ito boluntaryong ginawa at may buong pagkakaalam ng gumawa. Hindi niya ginustong bumagsak. Isa lamang itong bunga ng isang gawain na maaaring husgahan (nag-aral/hindi nag-aral) at maaari rin naman na ang gawaing nagbunga rito ay bunga rin ng iba pang gawain (hindi napag-aralan ang pagsusulit dahil hindi naituro ang mga konseptong nilalaman ng pagsusulit).

Samakatuwid, ang tanging bagay lang na masasabi nating mali ay hinusgahan agad ang mag-aaral na gumawa ng pagkakamali dahil sa naging bunga ng isang bagay na hindi nalalaman. Ika nga, hindi mabibigyang hustisya ng bunga ang pamamaraan. Sino ngayon ang nagkamali?

Maaari rin namang sabihin na ang pagkakamali ay nasa nanghusga pa rin kahit na maganda pa ang naging paghusga nito. Halimbawa ay sinabihan ng magulang ang mag-aaral na bumagsak sa pagsusulit na mag-aral na lang nang mabuti para sa susunod na pagsusulit kung talagang pinabayaan ng sadya ng mag-aaral ang pag-aaral nito. Para kasing binibigyan nila lalo ng dahilan ang mag-aaral para hindi mag-aral.

Ang pagkakamali na tulad ng mga ito ay hindi isang simpleng pagkakamali lang na tulad ng pagbasag ng pinggan habang naghuhugas. Kung ang pinggan ay maaari pang buuin muli gamit ang simpleng pandikit, higit na mahirap buuing muli ang pagkakamali sa paghubog sa ugali ng isang taong nasa edad ng pag-aaral. Maaari pa nga na hindi na ito mabuo muli. Bilang pangalawang magulang, napakalaking responsibilidad ito na ipinapatong sa mga guro, saan mang antas. Kaya kung palaging hinahanap ng mga paaralan ang mga magagaling at pinapagaling ang mga ito at pinapahirapan ang mga nahihirapan lalo ay hindi nagiging epektibo ang pagganap ng paaralan sa tungkuling iniatas dito.

Tandaan na hindi kapakanan ng paaralan o ng guro ang iniisip sa edukasyon. Kusang darating ang mga ito kung magagampanan ng paaralan at guro ang kanilang mga tungkulin na siguruhing mahugasan ang pinggan nang hindi nagkakamali. Kung sasabihin naman ng iba na nagkakamali din ang guro at pwede naman silang magkamali, may malaking pagkakamali ang nagsabi nito.

Walang Patutunguhan

2010-08-08T20:51:00.000+08:00

Nakakasawa na. Palagi na lang ganito, palagi na lang ganiyan. Hindi umaakyat, at hindi rin bumababa. Naglalakad lang. Walang Patutunguhan.

Pagtulog ko mamaya matatapos nanaman ang araw na walang nagbago. Pagmulat ko sa umaga, nakahiga pa rin ako sa kama ko, pagkatapos babangon, maliligo at mag-aalmusal. Bakit kako? Dahil nakasanayan na. Hindi naman ako magiging katanggap-tanggap sa paningin ng iba kung hindi ako maliligo at mag-aalmusal bago pumasok sa paaralan. Papasok ako sa paaralan para matuto, dahil kailangan kong malaman ang mga bagay na alam kong hindi ako tatanggapin ng mundo kapag hindi ko natutunan. Paano kung hindi ako pumasok dahil inaantok pa ako? Malamang ay pagagalitan ko lang ang sarili ko.

Alam mo, kailangan ko kasing maglakad at maglakad eh. Ayaw ko ng pumipirmi sa isang pwesto. Ayaw ko rin ng naglalakad papunta sa isang lugar at pabalik araw-araw. Kaya siguro wala akong nararating. May makikita akong magandang tanawin sa dakong malayo, titingnan ko siya, iisipin ang sarili ko na nasa lugar na iyon. Pero dahil ayaw ko mahiwalay sa nakakasuka kong nakasanayang buhay, uuwi na lang ako paglubog ng araw at tatahak ng bagong landas bukas, habang kinakalimutan ang nakitang kagandahan para hindi magsisi.

Patuloy na lang nga bang magiging ganito? Isang walang katapusang siklo na walang simula at walang wakas?

Isa pa iyon. Walang simula at walang wakas. Alam ko na ang biyahe ko ay walang simula at walang wakas. Nagtataka pa tuloy ako kung bakit pa ako lumalakad kung alam kong wala namang dulo ang kalsadang ito. Siguro mas mabuti pa na hindi ko na lang alam at patuloy na lang akong naglakad at naglakad. Nakakatamad na ang buhay ko.

Palagi na lang akong wala sa larawan ng mga taong mahalaga sa buhay ko. Magugulat na lang ako nakabalik na pala sila mula sa napakasayang lakad. Sabi ko sa sarili ko, "Kung hindi nila ako niyaya man lang para sumama, siguro wala akong halaga sa kanila; at dahil wala akong halaga sa kanila ay wala akong halaga sa mundo."

Sasabihin ng isang dalubhasa sa sikolohiya na isa lamang itong normal na problema na pinagdadaanan ng isang taong nasa edad na ito. Masyado kasi silang marunong na naniniwala na ang lahat ng bagay sa tao ay maaaring mapag-aralan sa isang obhektibong pananaw. Ang mga damdamin, pangarap, pag-asa ay mga bagay na nasusukat. At ngayong nalaman ko na tama sila, lalo lang akong nalulungkot. Kung ang buhay ay nakalatag na at alam mo na ang patutunguhan, bakit ka pa magiging masaya sa pagharap dito?

Malungkot ako. Malungkot na malungkot. Iniisip ko kung gaano karami ang nawala sa kin at kung gaano karami ang hindi ko makukuha. Masakit kasi ang pakiramdam ng nangangarap ng hindi natatamo. Nagiging ilusyon. Ilusyong napakaganda pero hindi magiging totoo kailanman.

Bukas nakalimutan ko nanaman ito. Kahinaan ko kasi yun, kasama ng napakarami pang ibang kahinaan. Sasama nanaman ako sa daloy ng mga kaluluwang paikot-ikot lang sa siklong pinapagalaw ng mga taong nakatakas na dito. Hindi ko na maaalala ang kawalan ko. Pero babalik ang araw na mumultuhin nanaman ako nito dahil ganoon nga ang buhay ko, walang patutunguhan.

Nanghihingi ako ng tulong, kaso hindi ko natatanggap. Isa akong literal na kulang sa pansin. Sabi nila walang tao na isla, na tayong lahat ay may pananagutan sa isa't isa. Bakit hindi ko maramdaman iyon? Wala na bang sumasagot sa mga katanungan ko? Kaya hindi na lang ako nagtatanong. Sayang yung laway na lalabas sa bibig ko. At baka makagambala lang ako ng taong walang pakialam sa pagmumukmok ng taong wala namang kahalagahan sa mundo.

Sawa na akong napapansin dahil sa mga ginagawa kong maganda. Sana may makapansin naman sa totoong hinaing ko na magkaroon ng kasama sa pagtahak ng direksyong gugustuhin ko, kung ano man yun. Isang tao o sitwasyong pipilit sa kin na mamili, dahil hindi ako gagalaw kung hindi pipilitiin. Kawawa naman ako. Kawawa.

Tinatamad na akong mabuhay. Tinatamad rin naman akong mamatay. Kaya ito ako, walang patutunguhan.

A Need for Disapproval

2010-07-06T21:40:00.000+08:00

In this blog post, we will ~~attempt to provide a counterexample for the reflexive axiom of equality.~~ see that bad can be good, in a certain way.

A thought to take note of is one of the significant facts about development: that change, aside from being facilitated through guidance and introduced in different manners, can only take place if the individual has an intrinsic motivation to change. Simply put, a person must want to change in order for him to change.

So what are the things that could cause a person to change? I can't enumerate much so I'll give one, and focus on that: the tendency of a person to change increases when his actions are often met with social disapproval. Say for example, a person who throws garbage just anywhere without consideration. If the people in the neighborhood notices this and constantly reprimand the person who threw the garbage about the wrongness of his actions, then there is a tendency for that person to change his act, such that his actions will be met with social approval. It's all about impressing others, sadly. But it is the very definition of ethics: good values and actions that are in line with social norms, although I find this definition debatable (But for the purpose of clarity, I will no longer continue on that point.)

Lesson of the story? No matter how good you are at something, if others find it bad, then it must be somewhat wrong; since technically what is good is what is socially accepted. Such as if a teacher fails all of his or her students in his course. Usually the normal curve would mean that there should be more or less 68.2% of the total distribution close to the mean value. But I guess someone who teaches without undergoing education courses wouldn't know the application of statistics in the field of education. Or some might not just care.

So why is disapproval a need? It's degrading, non-beneficial and definitely not taken in lightly by some people. Well, we can use another term for disapproval in the context of learning: punishment. Yes, punishment. In learning, punishment is a reinforcement added to the conditioning process in order to reduce the bond between stimulus and response, meaning it leads to a reduced performance of an undesirable trait. Without punishment, there would be significantly fewer means to reduce bad habits in people. Without punishment, we would not have a concept of reward.

It's therefore not really a good thing to tell someone that if he/she can't say anything good, then he/she shouldn't say anything at all. If we are not going to say bad things against others, then these others would only receive good, or if they ever receive bad criticism, it would only come from themselves (which sadly can be changed by preference and is very subjective in nature.)

Disapproval is not really a bad thing. Some people just can't see that.

Investments in Life

2010-07-01T20:46:00.000+08:00

Tolman suggests in his sign learning theory that learning is always goal-oriented. For learning to take place, there must be a goal to be fulfilled and, in some cases, an intervening variable. Life is goal-oriented. We learn in life through making decisions that lead to our goal. So what we spend and utilize must be often, if not always, be aimed towards reaching a goal. Ergo, life can be said as an investment.

As a businessman would invest his life's money into a business that he thinks will succeed, we invest our time, effort and resources towards what we think will succeed and bring our lives happiness. But also, as a businessman's business can always fail with the change of generations, our investments may also fail in the future when placed in the wrong direction.

Several factors can be enumerated to determine why there are investments in life that fail. One of which, I think, is the rate at which preferences change. We might like mixing ketchup with gravy now, but tomorrow we might just prefer to have gravy. Therefore investing a lot in something temporary, for example 6 units of our academic degree into a trend that is just famous today (say studying the language and culture of a foreign country primarily because their boy bands are dominating the world with their songs that cannot be understood by a normal international traveler), will only yield greater failure in the future than the happiness it gives now.

Yesterday I was told by someone to whom I gave a suggestion in photoshopping an image to "shut up if I have nothing good to say". As I have already explained, to which others agreed in my Facebook account, this statement is wrong in the sense that we learn through our mistakes and practicing something bad without feedback would not allow learning to take place. So to let someone invest in something that would put him into sheer poverty (disappointment) in the future, especially a partner (or friend) whose investment will make a corporation (or friendship) collapse, is like murdering one's goals in life. You let a part of your goal fall. Since each part of a goal is as important as others, your goal will also fall. It's like those "block stacking" games where the tower will fall if one of the blocks is not placed carefully.

Moral of the story is that decisions are not given spontaneously or playfully. Hell it's not even given rationally. It must given with intelligent rationalism (being able to explain using established facts that everyone will agree on). Investing a lot of life to worshiping idols that will eventually fade is like building a tower without architectural knowledge: always at risk of collapsing on top of you.

Appreciating Appreciation

2010-06-02T18:38:00.003+08:00

Every little achievement deserves at least an equal amount of appreciation from an audience, if not greater. But before we go around praising and appreciating and worshiping(?), we should ask the question first, "What is there to be appreciated?"

Is it an extraordinary talent? A song that was performed almost perfectly? A poem that clearly brings its readers into a deep sense of emotion? Or is it a blog that expresses the ever changing moods of a pessimistic teenager? Whatever is the case, there is a fact that is considered here: that in order for appreciation to be there, there must be something to be appreciated; much like how in order for drinking to happen, there must be a drink to be drunk.

Appreciation is not aimed at something directly, it is aimed at the characteristic that makes that something or someone stand out, or be deserving of appreciation. Take for example an international singing sensation, of course we are not saying that the singer is a good singer because he or she dresses well for album covers, but rather we are saying that the singer is good because he or she either has great diction, can sing the right notes, has a wide vocal range or delivers dynamics with precision. However, since these particular noteworthy characteristics belong to the singer, our appreciation or amazement is then directed towards the singer. In diagram:

Us => Finding something great in what the person does => Positive appreciation of the person

Note that this is a process, and therefore cannot move to another step without finishing the step before it. What am I trying to say? We can't say something is good if there is nothing directly good in what he is showing. You can't say that Justin Bieber is a good singer just because he looks "handsome" (although this is highly debatable). What if he uses Auto-Tune? Then could he still be counted as a good singer? Then no. That's why I'm still dumbfounded at the number of people who think 4 year olds singing "Somewhere Out There" with the baby accent in a talent show is a great talent worthy of winning a competition. Yeah, cute, but it's for Pete's sake a talent show and not a cuteness contest.

We tend to like things by things related to the thing but not by what the thing is trying to get appreciated. Like in the example above, we love child singers because they are cute, when in fact we should like a singer because of his singing quality. ~~I was going to say something about KPop, but numerous hints tell me I might attract an internet rampage on my blog if I do that, so I just used child singers as a reference.~~

If we like a teacher, we like how he teaches. But if we like a teacher because he tells the greatest jokes or he's fun to hang around with or because he looks like our favorite artist, we are not liking the teacher, but rather the person who teaches. We should straighten our facts out.

A small ambiguity, some might say, but this is the kind of mentality that puts wrong people in the wrong powers (read: lawmaker who slept 12 years at congress without passing a single law being elected as president because his parents are national heroes). He was liked for who his parents are, rather than by what he can do.

We like things straight to the point, but we use all sorts of detours so we can arrive at the conclusion we want. Before you "Like" something, think critically on what is it you like about that thing. That like might just be the last like you will do.

Status Updates

2010-05-27T22:28:00.000+08:00

Yeah, literally. While I haven't been touching this blog much I realized that a lot of my thoughts went into shorter (although they're still long enough so as not to fit on a tweet) status updates on my Facebook wall. Well at least they're commenting there and I can actually see reactions. Here are some of them:

"I am weak physically, socially and emotionally. Thank God there are people around to catch me. But I wonder how long must I continue to rely my safety upon these people who are different from me in many ways." (May 19, 12:26AM)

"A dream that has to be fulfilled, huh. I wonder what that is for me." (May 19, 8:52PM)

"What is ideal is not necessarily real. We just convince ourselves that we have to do everything for the best, even if the best is not really who we are." (May 20, 11:47AM)

"Everyone can't agree on anything. They can't even agree on nothing. The only things that agree today are subjects and verbs." (May 20, 6:57PM)

"Something sadder than being rejected is being rejected without your knowledge." (May 20, 10:41PM)

"Hindi nakukuha sa pamimigay ng pera sa walang
pera ang kasiguruhan ng buhay ng taong nawawalan. Pinapaasa mo lang
siya na may sasalo palagi sa kaniya kapag may kailangan siya. Sabi nga
ni pareng Lao Tzu, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." (May 21, 1:01AM)

"What's harder to do than doing or not doing? It's a little thing called "Not knowing what to do"." (May 21, 11:37PM)

"I wonder how long it will be 'til I stop caring about the useless things in life." (May 24, 12:35PM)

"Society would have probably been living in the space age by now had it not rejected so many reasonable and scientific advancements because of his lack of understanding. Everybody says change is constant, but in reality we also hate change." (May 24, 12:43PM)

""Timeless Classics" is an excuse for not being able to create/arrange music and still having to sell something. Basically it's making money out of nostalgia than of talent and novelty. It's just the same album repackaged with gold ribbons and eyecatching backgrounds, but nevertheless the same old crap people heard year...s ago, except with a higher price tag." (May 24, 2:06PM)

"Yeah, you're standing on the foundation of your significant others. But what if your significant others fall?" (May 24, 10:14PM)

"Life should be more promoting good than eradicating evil. Why? Because it's a fact that evil cannot be eradicated." (May 25, 2:56PM)

"Something I don't understand about research papers and textbooks is the rule that in order for a material to be valid, it must have secondary sources. Therefore original research is not allowed. Where did their secondary sources source their data? And where did these data source their facts? There's bound to be somethi...ng that didn't cite any sources but provided solid information." (May 25, 4:28PM)

"We like to think of the possibilities... But that's all they are, possibilities that will neither become possible nor impossible unless we choose a path." (May 25, 6:39PM)

"I like to think that I think. But that's just me thinking that I could think. I think that I could be thinking wrong or thinking right. But the more I think about it, the more I think that I could not think of anything more than I can think of. Therefore I think, because I can think that there are things I could not think of." (May 26, 9:42PM)

"Personally ayaw kong nakakakita ng bata na sumasali sa talent show na lahat pwedeng sumali. Kasi kahit bali-baliktarin mo ang mundo, walang talent na kakaiba ang bata. Cute lang. Kawawa naman 'yung ibang pagkatagal-tagal nagpractice ang naghirap para lang matalo dahil 'cute' ang bata. Tinawag pang 'talent show'." (2 hours ago lolz)

"Too serious with things... desperately needs a paradigm shift." (2 hours ago)

Useless post, I know.

Because I'm Not Afraid To

2010-05-18T01:10:00.000+08:00

Well, this is my blog and I have every single right to post my thoughts here, including ones that are rather offensive to others.

I won't settle for self-censorship just to keep some other person's good image intact or just because they are saying good things about me. They keep on saying in my face that they speak good of me to their friends and family while keeping secret of my bad attitudes ("bad" in their mostly baseless interpretation, that is) while all I pay them with is being bad to them (even though I was just defending myself from their non-factual accusations) even in front of their friends and family.

Well, I think everyone knows that there is a good side and a bad side to everyone. Nobody is completely good. So my stand would be to let others see what they would think is bad, but as long as I know within myself that I am doing what is right, I would keep on doing what I know isn't wrong.

I stopped believing that I could change them a long time ago, but the fact that I have to constantly defend myself from machine gun mouths throwing words with no bases sort of makes me look bad. But since I also have this innate characteristic that thinks that everyone is good one way or another, I tend to blame myself for their biased accusations. The moments get crazier when they begin telling me that I am already crossing the line when all I did was sit down and browse the internet for a few minutes.

I learned how to smile when I went away for three days with friends to see how happy life can be. I had hope. I found reason in laughing, joy in disappointment, and the will to continue living even after losing something important. When I got back to reality, I realized that the people I live closest with are the ones who wouldn't just live with me, as me. Maybe I can find what I've been looking for if I wasn't seeking for something so ideal to the point where it is no longer myself who decides just so I can fulfill their hunger for a "perfect" person.

The ideal self would probably meet their requirements of an obedient child, but the real self has a burning passion to express himself, even at the expense of an aching heart and a guilty conscience.

I am not a crybaby who goes to his friends when his family does something disappointing to him so his other family members will talk to the family and make them look bad. Sorry guys, but I am not like that traditional politician you are judging me to be. I do not make my opponents look bad so I can win, but I make myself look good.

Maybe the peace of mind I've been seeking will arrive when I stop judging myself to make the biased ones look good. If I will live as who I should live, then maybe I can be proud of my achievements and in the end use these achievements to inspire others to live by their own decisions and not decisions based on what others expect.

The personality test I just took a while ago had a very interesting instruction, to which I think everyone should know: "The accuracy of this test will be based on the honesty of your choices. Choosing the ideal ones without honesty to yourself will most likely kill the purpose of this test." It just goes to show that you have to be honest with yourself first before others can be honest about how they think about you.

Think of me as a whiner, but all I can say is that I was just standing by what I know is right, and what most people would agree upon as right while you were throwing empty nutshells at me. Sticks and stones will break my bones, and names WILL hurt me. But I'm willing to endure the pain.

So Much To Pray For

2010-05-09T23:10:00.000+08:00

Let's face it. There are times when we feel that our prayers are not being heard, that the things we do are not enough to help us achieve what we want to achieve. We have disappointments. Too bad I can't say anything about it because as of now, I'm pretty much depressed myself.

I've heard all of that before, that disappointments are a vital part of life, that problems always have solutions, that there is a rational explanation for everything, et cetera. But lately I've been opening this blog and closed it before writing anything for the reason that I don't want to write what I am thinking. The greatest advice probably for a person like me who thinks that he's the bane of society is "just be yourself, and live." Unfortunately I am a persistently annoying sad person who thinks that who he is is not right.

Let's the cut the long story short. I think I've wasted 16 years of my life looking for something that others do not bother looking for anymore. "Be happy" is a request that's very hard to fulfill, for me that is. That's why people probably say that I act old for my age. But that was just to impress, because deep down inside is a childish person who does things technically to elude from the attention of others his wrongdoings.

Now why did I say that there are so many things to pray for? There are indeed, so many things that should've made me happy. Actually I should be happy, but I'm depressed like shit because I'm a workaholic faggot who runs away from the opportunity to run away from the formal things, to enjoy life. When they told to me that my life was my choice, I only ended up regretting all those choices I made.

I don't want to be seen as a good person who's good at things others are not. I just want to be seen as a good person AS a good person who is willing to escape from responsibilities occasionally to hang out with friends and enjoy. Basically that's one thing I've lost in this 16 years of meaningless searching: to enjoy and be happy. I wish my mother was here so I can ask her if I should live by the restrictions I gave myself, or run free and live as an average, but happy person.

When I said I wasn't good with rules, I was lying. I like rules but I don't want to read them. I just don't want to. Maybe I should give up on chasing dreams that aren't for me.

Think and Listen

2010-04-20T00:32:00.000+08:00

Because sometimes thinking is not enough. It's a common fault among educated people to assume that all people think in an educated manner. Thus giving birth to the "duh" mentality. The word itself, "duh", is used in context of a person being surprised at the inability of another person to understand what he is saying. Well, this bewilderment isn't really at all surprising. It became surprising because the original person was expecting something of the person he is talking to, with the thought that all people he would talk to would know what he thinks is obvious.

It's a hard truth that stupid people exist. Stupid not because they chose to be stupid, but because of the deprivation of valuable knowledge and the encouragement of ignorance by people who want to take advantage of other people. Imagine a world where everyone actually gives a damn on important things. I mean everyone. Manipulative people probably won't be able to take advantage, because there would be no ignorant person to take advantage. Then these manipulators are the ones who would then be ignorant and stupid.

As they all have said, ignorance is not an excuse. But ignorance of the fact that they're ignorant gives a very different point of view. You can't tell a person who does not know what ignorance is that he is deprived of information. Euphemism may work, but that is only a half-truth used to cover the real truth. So how can one who is ignorant about being ignorant seek education? He doesn't. Anyone who claims to be a smart-ass and yet expects the ignorant to look for him isn't that smart. A person who doesn't know what he's lacking won't get it unless someone gives it to him without a request. In other words, a child won't know that he has to go to school unless a parent tells him that he needs to go there. And of course if he doesn't know that he needs education, then he won't seek it by himself.

We expect too much of others while hating the fact that they expect too much of us. However, what is lacking in this situation is the openness to listen. You can be a deity of English and teach while holding a Ph. D. in applied linguistics, but you cannot even hope to impart what you know if what you do is just expect your students to know what you know, and you just fail them is they do not meet your expectations. But if you actually listen as a teacher, you realize that they are expecting much more than what you expect of them.

If we listen, we can provide a basis for an assessment of what this person we are talking to knows without making too much expectation and reducing the tendency of the "duh" mentality. What we know, others may not know. Also because man is curious by nature, he will ask about things he does not know. The answer he receives may be received critically or completely without thought. That's why there are people who think that if a political aspirant is not corrupt, then he already has the characteristics of a good president. This is the product of abused ignorance.

When a child asks a question to his parents and the parents only answer him, "basta ganun", his curiosity would tell him that he needs to ask another, even a random stranger. And if the stranger gives him a seemingly decent answer, then he believes it. The educator expected the student to know things like how the educator knows them already. This is both a deprivation of knowledge and a neglect of the past. He has already forgotten that he too was once ignorant. This is education without morals. As our dean once told us in her lecture, "to have a mastery of the subject matter is not enough, but the ability to deliver the lecture and facilitate learning should also be given importance."

In an ordinary situation, expectations are even greater. Because there is this thought in some people that says, "If I am ordinary and I know this, then the other ordinary people should also know it." But of course this is neglecting the situational differences between the "ordinary" people. The word "ordinary" is not a standard of thinking. A person holding a doctorate degree and a person who grew up swimming in a sea of garbage (pardon the political reference) can both be ordinary, and yet there are things that one knows which the other doesn't, no matter how obvious it seems to that person.

It's frustrating to know that it is those who know who don't know. They know the dynamics of this world, and yet they don't know how much their knowledge is still needed by others. Normally, education is a right and not a privilege. But in a situation where the inverse of this happens, expecting from one another is definitely not going to help anyone progress.

Who I am Not

2010-04-14T15:05:00.000+08:00

I've always thought that if you can't be the best at anything, then you must at least be a little good with everything. I've ventured into worlds most people haven't heard of, anarchy, accusations, debates, etc. but I could never find something that would give me content. Probably it's because I'm never content. How I wish I could be happy with something I love. In this case those K-Pop fanboys and fangirls whom I've despised so much for their obsession are luckier than me, and in a sense, better at playing the game of life.

I've been trying to be someone I'm not. Even if people see greatness in the things I do, I only acted like most traditional politicians would do today: take advantage of ignorance. Someone who doesn't know how something should work would appreciate any attempt of others to do that thing he cannot do. And that someone, practically amazed at what that thing can do, is amazed like a child who has seen a firetruck for the first time. But deep inside it's a painful experience to know that your instinct was made to impress others, despite of the gigantic amount of fallacies you have to show them. I have been, to others, someone who I am not.

Music? Technology? Academics? Logic? Literature? What are these things I have involved myself in? Am I doing them right?

I can sing, play a little bit of instrument but seeing as I want to achieve more I venture into writing songs that I could not understand myself. I'm deprived of the basic requirements to accomplish songwriting, and yet I manage to make them: heartless melodies with no soul to inspire.

I know how to find a software from an illegal website and I know how to jfgi (just fucking google it) and stfu, but these are things a noob who is full of fail does. However to the one who has been lacking the basic knowledge, this is already an ingenious life-saving idea.

What is it to know if there is no understanding? Or worse, what is it to understand
without being able to apply? What is to be able to explain how x becomes 8 on the problem x + 4 = 12 if you live in a society where algebra is not really the preferred method of solving for unknown quantities.

I discuss my own understanding of concepts and situations, but nobody who reads these discussions has probably discerned that I am just making myself look intelligent through intellectual words and repetitive topics presented in different views. Sometimes I would rather be biased than to pretend that I can be transparent when presenting things.

I write? Of course. But very rarely. I read? Of course. But very rarely. But I'm frequently found discussing the latest trends on literature with friends, pretending I had read when all my answers were merely hearsay from people I've met who actually did the reading.

Throw it all at me. I am a hypocrite. I don't do what I teach. And I'm sick and tired of being one. Unfortunately it's a lot easier to describe who I am not than who I am, for who I am to me is still in the gray zone. I've been relying on other people to define my identity, but I realized my instincts are always telling me to put on a fake smile to show to others. And thus removing all validity from their descriptions.

But the way I think right now, the last person I would ever depend on would be myself. Because I'm stupid. Yes. The trololo man would probably be more serious than my interpretation of my life. I'm inspired by the quotes "achieve greater heights" or "you are the pilot of your own life", but then I realized that life doesn't work in the way that everything is good and being good works.

I'm a conservative, overacting, emotionally unstable and selfish person; and it pains me to be able to know this. I thought before that it was a good thing to know what is good and what is bad, until I found out that doing bad with full knowledge was worse. I've always seen this, that I am wrong, and have been striving to correct my mistakes. But as I have already said, the corrected me is not me.

Back in our psychology class the professor said something that hit me like a thorn that suddenly appeared out of the tv screen to stab me directly to the heart. He said, "there are two kinds of selves, the real self and the ideal self." I want to be my ideal self: ~~cute, charming, funny, smart, talented and~~ a normal person who has social skills. But who am I lying to.

Social skills? Yeah I lack them. I didn't go around looking for friends, my friends found me. And I thank God there are still people who seek people in the darkness. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them. I'm the type who would rather waddle around in the darkness than explore and take the risk. I want to help people, but my character dictates to me that people in need are people who are too lazy to find work. Can you see now? I condemn my own self through the faces of others. I've been pointing out so many unideal things in this world, but I just realized that I wasn't pointing at the world, I was merely looking into a mirror.

Manipulators and Manipulated

2010-04-10T12:19:00.000+08:00

One thing I stumbled upon while studying general psychology is that motives, or drives, are classified into three areas: social, personal and psychological. And one of the ego-integrative or personal needs is the power drive. We have an innate desire to dominate. Why? Well, being above another gives us a sense of achievement, a feeling of superiority. For example, in the case of job promotions, the general manager is higher than the PR manager and both are higher than the employees. Generally, being in the managerial seat gives controls over employees, and in that sense, a demand for respect over the employees.

Since the need to have power is inevitable, some would work very hard for it; and others would rather have it easy. This is what happens if you mix the power drive with laziness: there is a tendency to use manipulation to win the prized position. Instead of working yourself up, you would rather work others down either by destroying their morale, giving them a bad image, spreading gossips and anything that could destroy the name of the ones you are contending with. And this is probably one of the bases of traditional politics, that's why it looks so dirty.

Politics aside, there are other reasons to manipulate others more than the power drive. Some would fall as components of the power drive, such as gaining control over others or the need for achievement without work; but there are also those that gives us a feeling of confidence in ourselves. When we "adjust" things to suit our wants, we get what we want, regardless if the adjustment will result in a balanced situation or not. This involves manipulating ourselves, sometimes a bit more than how we manipulate others.

I have said somewhere in this blog before that we always want to be right. So we tell ourselves that wrong is right. This is a sort of manipulation where we change our own understanding of things just to satisfy the current need. Psychology states that our needs are endless. When one need is fulfilled, there will be another need to replace that need. So if our needs are endless, so will the manipulation cease to cease.

Objectivity, that is relying on undisputed facts would probably resolve the ceaseless self-manipulation we do to ourselves just to make us happy, to make others happy or just to do something different. But to be restricted to rules and facts is against our radical nature, so its either we become serious or we change things to our own liking.

If you understood this whole post carefully, you might have noticed that there really is nothing completely ideal. For to be completely ideal is to be inhuman, as humans make mistakes. But still, there is the science called ethics that are rules but do not act as laws. We are given free will on which ones help us become human and at the same time, live harmoniously with others.

Happiness of Lent

2010-03-28T01:10:00.000+08:00

Why is being happy a need for anyone? Why should we keep ourselves happy, even at the expense of the sadness of others? If the world is full of people who live in misery as a whole, then how come all individuals could think about is their personal happiness?

Perhaps it is a misnomer to call the ultimate goal of every person as "eternal happiness." To someone who does not know that eternal happiness actually refers to heaven, in union with God, this is a goal-set that seeks only happiness, happiness that happens beyond all regrets.

I recall a PLDT commercial back then, which became popular in the mainstream community because of its provincial tone. It goes like this, "Anak: Dad, nagshift ako sa Fine Arts. Dad: Kung sa'n ka masaya eh suportahan ta ka." Kung sa'n ka masaya... To where you would be happy... Why should we seek our own pleasure?

People seek happiness in one way or another, but as Maslow dictates, the need for self-actualization is at the far end of the hierarchy, after we have achieved physiological satisfaction, security, love and belongingness. The problem is that people seek for self-actualization immediately, without thinking that the ultimate goal is a lifelong process.

And still, there are those who are lucky enough to be able to find happiness in the happiness of others, even at their own loss. Christ suffered and died for the happiness of humanity. We want to achieve our ultimate goal through our selfishness. This would've caused the ultimate fall of man. But who decided to come and tell the world that, "Gusto ko happy ka"?

This week of solemnity, let us think on what really matters. Happiness? Yes, but not now. To serve others? Always.

Pardon if I could not organize my thoughts today. It's already 1AM and I haven't got much sleep yet.

In Denial

2010-03-24T20:33:00.000+08:00

We all have some sort of need to be satisfied. There is a need for questions to be answered, the need for hunger to be filled, or an examination to be passed. And as those who are faithful to reading long posts should know by now, there is a problem with this. Now what is the problem? Contentment? Open-mindedness? Social Status? All of this could be the problem, but there's another one, faults.

Now I'm not talking about geographical faults. I'm done with Earth Science. Faults as in errors or mistakes done in fulfilling the need. For example, when someone steals money to pay for the tuition of his son or daughter who is studying in college. There is a need to be satisfied, which is payment of the tuition; and there is also a fault, the theft. But man by nature is proud. He wouldn't admit guilt until he has no other choice. But psychology tells us that emotional suppression is not an option to this. What most people do is re-channeling the problem to others, as if others committed the problem. Or in common terms, blaming it on someone else.

When you fail to pass requirements on time, and the teacher gives you a failing grade, you don't complain. Most likely because the teacher is in authority and complaining would be a "wrong move" that will damage your pride because the one in authority has a more valid point. But when a group leader gives you a 0 because he was instructed to give it when the member does not make it on time, you whine like a spoiled child who didn't get his daily dose of starbucks. You are in denial of your fault, and you act as if this person was the one who committed the unforgivable fault. And yet ironically, you can't accept this fault being done to you, even though in truth you are the one that did that to others.

As long as we put pride in high regard, we remain in denial. We deny our faults and blame it on others. And all this because we have this monstrous need to be satisfied, so much do we need it that we are willing to step on others just to satisfy it.

Grades should not be a need, even though I know of a certain someone who thinks grades are gods, and is a perfect example of someone in denial of his faults. He is in denial that his faults are, in fact, faults. He thinks of others as the one doing faults. And yet by posting this insult, I am making a fault. Haha, it is truly worth laughing at how we humans are so selfish and commit so much immoralities because of this selfishness. Haha. Haha.

Water Fearing Water

2010-03-22T21:57:00.000+08:00

Ok, so I'm not going to make a long post this time around, but instead I'll be plugging my second blog, called Hydrophobic Tsunamis. It's a blog about my more or less ordinary life, beyond extraordinary stupidities. And since it's about my ordinary life, I guess I would be updating it more often than this one. Although this will still be my primary and most beloved blog that nobody cares about. I'll still be feeding my thoughts here from time to time, and update you guys via facebook, or even easier, just follow this blog.

I also posted commenting instructions for both this blog and that one here. Note that my other blog is in Filipino, to somehow represent the contrast of this blog from that one, in which here I speak in either straight English or Filipino, while on that one I speak Taglish. And while posts here are serious in tone, the other one has a more personal and lighter tone.

So if you have spare time to read more nonsense like what you do here and can understand colloquial Filipino, then please do read my other blog :D

Fullness of Life: A Limitation

2010-03-20T00:00:00.000+08:00

What is ideal? Or rather, what makes it ideal? Take for example the concept of utopia, a society with no errors, and complete happiness. This is ideal. It is ideal because it represents our visions of ultimate happiness, yes; but there is another thing that makes it ideal: that it is a vision based on the opinion that life is free and unlimited. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

Limits do exist. When somebody pats you on the back and says "break the limit", you know that he is just kidding, or otherwise making a figurative exaggeration. Limits exist to remind us of our imperfections, and how we cannot be everything we want to be. It is safe to say that we think farther than we can actually reach. Optimism breaks limits in thought, but it never really breaks that limit. Idealism attempts to break that limit in both senses, but it can never really fulfill its goal.

Since we know that limits exist and we cannot physically break these limits, should it mean that we should stop dreaming? Of course not. Dream on, and live. We might not be able to break the limits, but through envisioning our goals beyond limitations, we strive our hardest to at least touch the limit without realizing we're already near it. The fact that we believe in things we can't do gives us the feeling of having done something great at the end of every challenge. It is not putting ourselves in a delusion, but it is giving us motivation to live.

Let us examine this phrase: "live life to the fullest." From this statement we can derive two things. One, that there is such a thing as the fullness of life, meaning that it cannot go beyond that fullness because it will spill. And second, that this fullness is our goal for living life. We are not breaking limits, we are touching them by our fingertips through the thought of breaking them.

Now there is another thing that limits imply: human weakness. Weakness is not a bad quality. It is a value. A value that comes with humility and patience. Weakness is not being able to reach the limit, even less the ability to break it. Weakness is not a source of despair, it is the reason to work harder on things we do. Paradoxically, weakness makes us strong. In weakness, we cultivate the patience to finish the task, reach the limit and become strong.

Weakness is natural to anyone. Nobody is born without weakness. Even Superman had his kryptonite. Christ himself was weak as a human. And yet through patience and love, he still chose to carry that cross to the top of Calvary, only to face the limit of human life: death. Lent is the church's time of reflection on human weakness.

Again, it is not breaking the limit that counts, it's how closer we are to the fullness of life.

Fault of Being Considerate

2010-03-15T12:41:00.002+08:00

False hopes. Sometimes they're for a good purpose, sometimes they're not. But regardless of purpose, it's something that will forever be on the negative side, in the ranks of murder and theft for hungry families. Remember when I ranted a lot before about the lies that advertising gives us for profit? It's the same as giving someone a supposedly lasting joy or freedom. It is giving them a hope on something that would never arrive.

I can still remember the smile on one of my professors' face when the class gave a positive reaction to her proposal of starting a "reader's guild" organization, or at least a "reader's group" in our college. She had described the organization so vividly, with a concrete plan of activities in mind, and all she needed were students to put this dream in action. We all know that with the deterioration of the student body these days, this dream would require a miracle to be fulfilled. But still the class gave their big yes, clad in a well-designed mask that covers effectively the monstrous lust for high grades. If I were in her shoes and realized what was happening I wouldn't know what to do. How can students do the exact opposite of what the teacher has been working so hard to instill in them?

Back in high school, I used to tell my friend things that I never finish because I realize I would be considered a rumor spreader. Then he made the best representation of false hopes that I could ever think of, "Ayan ka nanaman eh, ginagawa mo kong parang aso na papakitaan mo ng buto hanggang maglaway pero hindi mo rin naman ibibigay." It's like showing a tender piece of bone to a dog until it salivates, but never really giving the bone in the end. Psychology tells us that conditioning plays a vital role in how we see things, such as the bone in the example.

All I've said here sounded negative, so where's the "being considerate" part I mentioned in the title? Let's go back to the example of my professor. Not everyone in the class was monstrously grade conscious. But why is it still a unanimous yes to the impossible request? There are those who are afraid of breaking the professor's heart by expressing their true views. In this situation, we can determine two faults. First, they are willing to lie to themselves so they can lie to others; and second, they are giving the professor a false realization of her vision. She thinks the dream has come true, but in fact none of those who agreed to it would do it.

Seeing things like this, it would have been better to have just said no than to say yes only to make the person live in a delusion given by people who don't give a damn about the value of dreams and hope, and can only think of being socially pretty or handsome, even at the cost of making an idealistic person look like an idiot who thinks utopia exists.

On Saint Thomas Aquinas

2010-03-04T19:24:00.007+08:00

Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican priest, philosopher, theologian, teacher and saint. He was born in 1225 to the Aquino family, a powerful clan at that time, to Landulf, the count, and Theodora, the countess of Aquino. He is the third son of the family, and the only ecclesiastic, with his other brothers engaged in being warriors. He is best known, along with Albertus Magnus, for the propagation of the understanding of faith through human reason.

Faith, and reason. Two things that would almost never coincide together in the world of consumerism and materialism. Science today is not as primitive as it was back in the 13th century, and it can say things it discovers without any philosophical thought. This is what gave us abortion. Nowadays a man who can prove the amount of energy required for light to pass on an object would be considered much more intelligent than a man who says that the world has engulfed itself in its own flames, who would as an addition be called one who is out of his mind.

"Ideals do not exist anymore." What could have produced such a narrow-minded correlation? Can't laboratory experiments explain everything? Apparently, the placeholder answer to that would be a yes. I said placeholder. It follows the theorem in Mathematics that states any statement can only be considered false if there is at least one counterexample to disprove it. But take a look at it this way. The way we are dealing with things now is no longer "innocent until prove guilty," but "guilty until proven innocent." Why is man delighting in the wrong and the good has to fight a good fight before being taken in reluctantly? Why is prejudice taken first before truth?

Thomas worked with the most controversial of controversial during his time. His reason and faith received condemnations from both secular and regular (religious) authorities. He was instructing the faith through a way nobody could believe existed because of reason's intangibility and its deviation from the standard which everyone has already believed to be true. The psalmist quotes, "If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts." And yet the truth, when heard, hurts. Therefore people would harden indeed their hearts and minds. Both faith and reason only exist in the impractical, delusional and psychopathic man. We would not believe someone unless he is in a high position. An ordinary person cannot make environmental movements, and people would see him as a lunatic who, even if his ideals are good, would never be able to make it through. Thomas taught us another thing: he believed that it is not about who is the person that said it; what matters is what that person says. This was also the way he was discovered. Ironically called by his classmates as the 'dumb ox', Thomas' way of thinking got the attention of the famed teacher Albertus Magnus. Thomas was practically a nobody to anyone at that time, but his works put him on top.

The rector once said in a homily, "We are taking the word 'miracle' out of context. When we see someone who does what is we are usually not used to seeing, we exclaim, "Himala ah." In that sense, he explains that we are putting the definition of miracle very close to the definition of the impossible. We stopped believing in things that would do us good. When asked what the best way to live a good life was, our Saint only said, "To die a good death." But we are now corrupted in our own thoughts, surrendering to selfishness, thinking as if we are not going to die anymore. Therefore if we don't think that we are going to die, then we would not need to experience a good death, and not live a good life.

"Eat, drink and be merry, anyway tomorrow you will die," is a common belief I usually hear in the sermon of the resident 'corny' parish priest in our parish. This is in contrast to not believing death. It is believing in a wrong death. Death is not the end, it is the beginning. With this in mind, we can compare death to the way a mother develops an infant in her womb. The more she spoils it, the more deformed the baby will become. The more we live the baddest before death, the weaker we are in the Second Life. An atheist would comment, "but there is no second life!" But, you know, we can interpret this second life either religiously or through plain reason. Even if you say that God does not exist, a life well lived is given another life beyond death. Say when a teacher dies, all of his students give him another life in their minds and souls. What he has said, he will still be able to say again, through the voices of his disciples.

Teacher. Thomas Aquinas is the patron saint of Catholic schools all over the world. Who would be better to be a guide of education, than a teacher himself? Thomas Aquinas died teaching, literally. Thomas was explaining a clause in the Old Testament. As he was explaining the verse that said, "Come with me into the fields", he was stricken with a weakness that left him unable to continue. He lived a good life, he must have thought. And he was just waiting for his death. He died on midnight of March 7, 1274. Those who were still hardened condemned his teachings, for they knew he could no longer rise from death to explain his theses. But as the teachings of a teacher would be immortalized in his students, Thomas' Dominican brothers believed in what he taught, and Thomas was canonized in July 18, 1323.

That was 700 years ago. Philosophy is dying. The character of Thomas Collins (coincidentally a namesake?) from the musical Rent is also a teacher of philosophy (!) who said, "Yeah I teach. Computer age philosophy. But my students would rather watch TV." It is sad. Life would not give us another Thomas Aquinas to teach the world how reason should be used. But rather, we must stick to the principle that good is better than evil. The Church's stand? Sin is evil in detail. And reason says clearly that evil is wrong. And guess what? Nobody cares.

The Self: Achievements vs. Regrets

2010-02-24T22:43:00.003+08:00

I can't let go of the feeling that I've changed for the worse; like my attitude has changed to that of the person I am still not talking to for two months now because of his attitude; like I give myself too much pats on the back for small achievements, like I feel that I am the center of the world. And I regret that.

They say the only thing that does not change is change. But when change degrades the morality of a person and turns him into a self-loving manipulative monster with a bad superiority complex, it really breaks the heart of anyone who witnesses the change. And when the witness is yourself, how great the damage could be. My life is now rolling on a film of too much self-esteem, a sudden outburst from the restraint I have been placing on myself to preserve humility and simplicity. But now, it's like I cannot feel my metaphysical self and I'm a walking talking cloud of knowledge, a personification of the lowest level of thinking.

Pharisaical. That word, perhaps, can describe my present attitude. Like those of the Pharisees of the biblical times, I feel like I judge and condemn others without caring and thought, and yet escape myself from the tortures I should have received a long time ago. Oh how much I've been living in debt of the countless mercies I have received. And I am still in debt, continuing to borrow amounts I could not pay from the life bank.

Just like how the cold water undergoes upwelling to balance the temperature of the hot surface zone, achievements from doing good acts bring about the rising of the other self of bad acts in order to maintain the balance in personality. Because there are no real ideals in this world, which I have finally learned (not sure if I could accept it though), the only thing to keep the ego and the id in balance is the superego, or the conscience. If this conscience fails to function, I would be forever in the dark side, as bad as those people I hate with a passion.

Maybe it's just loneliness, or some other untold need? Or maybe introspection is not enough. Introspection just hurts even more when no action is done. I must return to the basics, to begin again, or fix the wounds even if they hurt, to show the pain I have inflicted on myself and to those that love me whom I have been giving false attention to all this time.

How Do You Measure a Year in the Life?

2010-02-11T23:20:00.002+08:00

... measure in love.

To successfully create an acceptable assessment of life, certain things must be observed. First, the basis of the assessment must occur every single moment in the life. Second, the basis must also have a lasting effect on the life of the person. And third, the basis must be seen in and out of the person living the life. Love matches these characteristics. It is a choice, occurs every single moment when we love and when we are loved, it gives a lasting effect of contentment and it's not only seen when we are "loving" others.

The classical definition of love by St. Paul gives us the traits that characterize love: it must be patient, kind, does not rejoice in the wrong but in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things. In the end of his definition, Paul reminds us of the reward of possessing these traits: that love is the greatest of all the virtues. Love is the center of all.

In context, what is love? Is it limited to the love expressed by a boy to a girl? Of course not. Sometimes the boy-girl relationship isn't even love. Love can happen to anyone; to friends, family, foe and fag alike. To show someone that you love him or her is to desire only what is good for him or her, but not, I repeat, NOT to control it. To love is also to allow him or her to pick a choice. In the same way, to show someone that you love him or her is to acknowledge his desire by either doing what is right or at least considering the odds. If you rely on what you think is right and you completely block off anything that attempts to change you, then you are not in love, or can you claim to be in love.

Is love a heart? Is love red? Is love sweet, or bitter, or bittersweet? God is love. And all who dwell in love dwell in God. If only we can see beyond the commercialization and urban legends, we can clearly see the love around us, share love, measure our lives in love.

Love heals. I love this part. It heals all wounds. It heals the wounds of selfishness by receiving comfort from another. It heals the wounds of depression by giving another opportunity for happiness. But it is also the cause of wars. Misunderstood love creates wounds. As the saying goes, "... for the love of money is the root of all evil". When we love the things who cannot love us back, then we are no less evil than those who strive to steal things for their personal gain (see: corruption).

It's hard to love unconditionally. But every moment, every day, if we continue to love, then we would make our lives meaningful. Whether there is an afterlife or none, the amount of love we made determines our success in the game called life.

Now who am I to talk about love? Nobody. I just want to help others feel it, while at the same time trying to derive a formula to accurately measure it. I do not understand it completely, for it is a mystery. But why should I reject anything good, right? A prayer in our recollection, in its entirety, goes like this: "Lord, love me, and let me know that it is You."

This is a popular song (yes, it is popular) about the simplicity and complexity of love:

A Borrowed Thought

2010-02-03T20:59:00.003+08:00

So much emphasis was given to putting references and citations on sourced ideas this week that I decided to write something about it, and probably create another argument started by an angry person (who never listens)that he won't most likely agree with. And here it is:

Everything we see, hear, smell, feel and taste are not ours. The food that we eat did not get to our plates from the pores of our skin. The house we live in is not built on our flesh and bone. The air we breathe is not produced by our own lungs, but merely converted into carbon dioxide to exhale. Everything is a borrowed object from a source. This is the basis of one of St. Thomas Aquinas's proofs of the existence of God. One thing came from another. There must be an ultimate source that provided the basis for everything else. And that is God.

Anyway, if we are thinking logically, it would be normal to be of gratitude to those that provide these things. One way of expressing this gratitude is by acknowledging the source of the object. For example, telling a child eating his vegetables that what he eats came from the plants of the earth. Another deeper example can be found by looking at the materials that make up the earth's crust. We walk on it, but wouldn't be better if we knew how it provides us with a terrain to live on?

Now to go on to thoughts. What we're thinking right now did not spontaneously appear in our head and we know it already. It is created from relating what we have previously known to what we are currently learning. And what we previously know, we previously did not know, but we borrowed from the existing thoughts of people who have walked this life. The general thought would be this: what we have, we previously didn't have, but we had through borrowing from others and forming our own ideas.

Even this very thought is a borrowed one from the people I've seen and talked to. And in gratitude, I express my acknowledgment to the many people that have been part of me and made me into this person behind the keyboard. Whether they liked what I've become or not, I still thank them. Because my identity is greatly influenced by them. Without you guys, this blog would be nothing and there isn't going to be an annoying, know-it-all sounding, and emotional writer like me. Special credits to those who answered my questions and problems from what they themselves have borrowed. "You know who you are" is a rude comment, but if I were to list down every single person who has been part of my life, the whole internet would not be able to carry them all. And to the Ultimate Provider, from whom all good things come.

On Narrow Perspectives

2010-01-29T22:12:00.002+08:00

Truth be told, I'm writing this blog post even if I have an almost impossible homework I have to do to be passed on Monday. Which is made of awesome win.

It takes a lot of thinking, rethinking and headaches to see something good in someone who did something bad to you. For example, if someone gave you a failing grade and you still manage to love that someone, people around you would label your appreciation for that someone as an insult in disguise. Why can't people accept that not everyone is like them? Why do those who have opinions against the flow of not thinking at all get the bashing and the clobbering from the people who think what they think is always right.

Perspective is a subjective matter defined as the way a person interprets a stimulus brought about by sensation. Therefore, there are a lot of dimensions to perceive a single object. It is a given that there are at least two sides to anything, whether it's a chess game where there are black and white chess pieces, a murder that could have positive intentions, or a robbery done for the sake of feeding a family. But there can be more, and our perception on that thing is only a fraction of the whole thing. It is not the whole things.

There is no such thing as a correct opinion. If there were one, then everyone should also accept that there is a wrong opinion, which I am sure majority of the community disagrees with. Such is the ironic nature of the individual that he can be so narrow minded to think that what he sees is the final and unquestionable truth. Just like recalling an "offense" done over a week ago, which didn't really seem a big deal to the person who committed it to you, but since you are overly-emotional and you want to make scandals, you force your idea to that person. This idea never works, trust me.

In the same way that there are rules to govern this world to the right path it should take, there is still the freedom of others to violate the rules. It just goes to show that what one says isn't always true. The danger to recognizing this failure though, is the fact that in the end the accuser will no longer be able to defend his claim with his made up opinions that are mostly non-objective, and resort to attacking the suspect personally, or directly and savagely.

Now, one fact holds true in this case. If there is a problem, then there is a solution. And the solution to this problem is this: learn to let go of pride, and respect the opinion of another. It may not be good to your ears, or to the ears of the majority, but if to the person doing it it is completely fine and doesn't harm anyone, then what position are you in to question an action? And PS, even though she failed more than half of the class, we really do love her.

PPS: Someone help me find an article regarding the education of varsity team members in a chronological order style.

As Himself

2010-01-21T21:42:00.002+08:00

Day in and day out we meet different kinds of people. Some of them we don't know, and others we know. Some do not really exist, and some exist partially. In our everyday interaction, one question can be asked: how do we judge them?

Man, by nature, is more than just selfish. He is also prejudicial and judgmental. Judgmental in the sense that he thinks that a person is like this or like that based from his understanding of other people. He is quick to think that all people are the same. He is one wrong creature that doesn't recognize the uniqueness of people. But, this nature is easily changed by opening one's mind. If he doesn't, then he's doomed to stay on this status.

So why am I saying this? Well, recently I've been thinking that I can't understand others anymore. Quite ironic compared to all the compliments I receive about being an understanding person. Understanding, maybe, but what I understand of them is what I understand about the human being in general. The Homo sapiens. I never thought of who I'm talking to, what factors made him or her into who he or she is right now. I just thought of him as any other person, with problems any other person can have. I never understood him as a Justin, or a Joy. He was, to me, like any other person. As one pursuing the teaching career, this is in fact a violation of the rules. How can a person develop the individual if he focuses too much on being holistic, to the point where he forgets the concept of uniqueness?

So, once again I'm making another disastrously-difficult wish to myself. I hope to see things as they are, not as I am. Because who I am is not always correct.

Syllabus of Errors and Goals

2010-01-14T18:35:00.005+08:00

I can't help but smile at the small things in life that are innocent and yet fun, simple yet means everything, and honest. Why should one prevent himself to enjoy the things that make him who he is? If he likes mamon, then why should he be afraid to say so? Or if he appreciates the activities a small public high school offers for their leisure?

Being "different" does not give birth to nerds, anti-socials and geeks. As a matter of fact "different" can sometimes be a positive adjective, if we would see it as the opposite of "stereotyped". Sometimes I just want to do what I want, without considering the consequences, even if I might fail in the end. Sure I might have this single mental defect (I'm not telling it though, haha) in me, but it's not like I'm living on that defect or whatever. Still, I'd like to think that I'm not different, because I am the same with everyone in thinking they are all different.

I made a status update once concerning sin, "The greatest sin one can do (except sin to God) would be to sin against himself." I'm already tired, so why am I forcing myself to do things I know are not meaningful to me? You see, I still need to pressure myself, for who I am right now is wrong, and I must continue to move towards self-development. Every single thing I probably have blamed others doing also reflects on me, so now I just laugh at how many accusations I've said already. And yet, people are there to love me. I just need to feel the love.

With all hope, I want to be a better person, through the help of others. I've had enough selfishness and self-pity. I'm sick of thinking I know more than everyone else, and I'm tired of attempting to learn why wrong things are sometimes right. I'd just have to learn to live with the fact that things move the way they do, because they just do. Whatever the motives behind the other person thinking, I should stop judging. As our class adviser said, "The last thing you want to do to your students when you become teachers is to impose. You can suggest and encourage, but never impose."

We all think differently. I should learn to respect that.
This post from a student at the EHS inspired me today, along with a bunch of mamons, including the one I wasn't able to eat because it fell out of the plastic bag on my way home: http://black-nimbus06.blog.friendster.com/

I guess it would be safe to say I am weak right now. :)

To be Understood, as to Understand

2010-01-12T15:15:00.002+08:00

It's not a surprise (for me that is) to see this blog getting some dust once in a while. I come on from time to time, look at comments (if any) and attempt to post. While attempting to post, I must say I horribly fail. Some say I should just quit it and stop being so idealistic often, but this is where my thoughts go. Sad to say again that my thoughts have been flying off to other places recently, and this is driving me nuts.

What we express, or what we want to say, is affected by how we understand certain things. For example, when we understand that red is an angry color, then we *can* say that the red in the Philippine flag stands for war. But when we see red differently, another view can be given. But since, it is clearly stated what it means, then we will change what we believe about it for the unchangeable truth. This is called the schema theory, or as I'd like to call it, "understanding by what is understood". We grasp the meaning of a text by relating it to what we already know and understand.

Outside literature though, everything we think is caused by how we understand things. Such is the case when we think we are slowly beginning to stop understanding things. We believe that we can understand it, and yet we are having difficulty understanding it. The conclusion is that we are now thinking that we can't understand at all, because what we see is not within the "everything" we understand.

It's good to be understanding and all, but let's accept it that we can't understand everything... even ourselves. So to tell yourself that you understand yourself leads to a problem I already previously stated: self-pity.

So how do we improve our own understanding? Being understood, of course. And understanding what others understand. It's a hard thing to do, but to be understood is actually to acknowledge the concern of another that uses what he or she knows about you. Again, we cannot understand everything. However, we can understand what we can understand. :)

The Commercialization and Materialization of Christmas

2009-12-20T09:44:00.003+08:00

It's been a while. Haven't been posting because of all the crap I was forced to do (papers D:) this past weeks. Anyway I'm back and I'd like to say Merry Christmas :)

...

...

That's it? We just greet each other Merry Christmas and that's Christmas?

Sad to say Christmas is more commercial now than spiritual. Look at it this way. Christmas provides marketers with opportunities to sell Christmas-themed versions of their products, such as food or drinks wrapped in pretty Christmas designs. Christmas allows TV stations to create catchy station IDs. And worst case scenario is that politicians literally sell Christmas in exchange for votes. Is this Christmas?

Is spending hours at the mall to look for a gift that would match your partner's wish list of something cute and red, or looking for that special movie to watch with your boyfriend or girlfriend, or serving a well planned noche buena Christmas? Christmas is also now more material than spiritual.

So what is this spiritual meaning in Christmas? As the homilist once said, "Christ. Period." or as the text message years ago went, "Do not change the Christ in Christmas to X." Why Christ? First, we wouldn't have Christmases as stupid as the ones we have now if we didn't have Christmases that were truly enjoyable. Christmas should be something that even those without homes could enjoy, Christmas should be something that money cannot buy and Christmas should be a Christmas for the poor.

So if Christmas is for the poor, can't the rich (stupid) people celebrate Christmas? Of course they can. That is, if they would stop giving alms for the fame and fortune and publicity. That is, if gift giving happens after December 25. That is, if they have the guts to lose profit.

Sorry for being a party pooper, but Christmas is more than a party anyway. It's Christ, in the flesh, God with us. With this in mind, what could be better?

Christmas cannot be Christmas without Christ. And Xmas is not read as Christmas.

Shoot!

2009-11-23T20:26:00.003+08:00

Most of the time we are preoccupied in our own thoughts about ourselves and the world we live in. That having been said, much of our daily lives are given to listening to our own voices that speak. And that also having been said, we spend less time listening to others.

A little self-evaluation never hurt anyone. Actually it has healed a lot of people. However, the risk to focusing on such a matter is that we are left to carry our own burdens, which whether we admit or not, heavier than we can carry. You find yourself alone in a room where there are no distractions and nothing to stop you from asking yourself questions. And nothing to stop you from thinking badly of yourself.

Some would agree when I say that speaking is much, much easier than listening. It's easy to say that "I don't care if this happens to me", but it is hard to listen to "We cannot bear to see you sad". Visualizing the situation would give us the idea that a possible cause for self-pity and listening problems is reflecting too much on ourselves, usually on our wrongdoings. We are caught up with the idea that even if something is wrong, if it will hurt only ourselves, then we can do it. We fail to feel the love around us. And what do you call something you have but you won't give because it's yours alone? Selfishness.

Again. "So what if I am selfish? Let them call me names I don't care, I just want to end this!" So you just end it like that? When I asked someone why he does that, he said something like he can't bear to see the problems of others so he takes the problems for himself to carry. What's wrong is that by carrying the load of others, you give them a heartbreaking problem by telling them that they are weak and that they have to see someone hurt just so they can survive their problem. Did anybody win? No. You both lost. So what's the point?

We spend a large chunk of our lifetime talking, and only minute traces can be allotted to listening. If you are truly concerned, then you must first feel what it is like to have people concerned about your welfare. If someone's going to ask what I mean by the post title, "Shoot!" is the word often said when a person gets an opportunity, but fails to get it.

Personality. Questions.

2009-11-17T22:02:00.006+08:00

I was ransacking my brain for something to post today since I feel that I really want to make a post today. Many things came to mind, like moral issues, morality in general, education, political views, etc... but finally I woke up and thought of something I didn't expect I would think up. I said, "I want to be more personal."

I belong to the vast majority of people, despite depictions of Dale as a unique individual that is too deep to be understood, the vast majority of people who want to be correct according to the principles of morality and ethics. Yeah, sure, thou shall not steal, thou shall not murder and all that. But, in focusing my life into these rules, I am losing my personality. Because truth is, a true human being would be aware that he is also wrong, probably as much as he is right, and that he can't do anything about it. He might try to be right, but one way or another he will be wrong.

We can say I am confused. Like a bunch of scratches drawn in a piece of paper, with no definite shape, size, or even idea. That's why I easily fall to the rules of being right, without experiencing the joy of doing what I want, and just doing it. No holds barred. I want to be a real person, and not just a person. Not vague, but definite.

I wonder if it holds true that you can't have what you can't give. If it is true that not everyone can understand me because I can't understand everyone. I'm confused why some people distance themselves from me. Is it because I have done something to them? There we go again, falling for the moral laws than following my personality.

Can't I be carefree, like everyone else? To speak out without thinking if it will embarrass me? Or to not think that I will be embarrassed at all? Can't I just think properly for once and stop reaching out in an attempt to see the omniscient point of view? Can't I stop imposing morality when I myself does not accept it? So many things are wrong. Right now, I feel the bad effect of being different, of not being in a stereotype. It makes me want to think that it's better to have lived not knowing good and evil, and instead writing good and evil from the beginning. How beautiful would my life be if I had not known that failing is wrong.

And the thing is, I made this blog to see what people would think of this monster behind the keyboard. But what it's turning out to be is a stupid monologue which nobody cares about. I want to be loved. And to feel that I am loved.

The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility

2009-11-08T01:26:00.004+08:00

Wow we're talking economics :)

So, what Does Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility Mean?
A law of economics stating that as a person increases consumption of a product - while keeping consumption of other products constant - there is a decline in the marginal utility that person derives from consuming each additional unit of that product. [1]

In a simple example found in our economics textbook when we were in fourth year, the definition is made simpler by use of... hamburgers. Yes, hamburgers. It states that if you eat one hamburger, then the next hamburger would be less satisfying than the first and the next would be even less than the first two. This is because of the satisfaction we get from the first use of a product reduces our craving for such a product by a margin. So the craving decreases as the satisfaction increases. However, the satisfaction increase is not constant. It's high at first, but near the end the satisfaction increase may be slow, or even zero. (Think of eating 25 hamburgers straight. You think the 26th burger would still give satisfaction?)

So what's this law got to do with life? It's very existence is vital for the survival of a product/commercial/profit, and thus, material life. It would also seem that we, as humans, think contrary to what this law limits us. While this law states that we can't just feed the same thing over and over again as the consumer's satisfaction increasingly decreases, (What a paradigm, "increasingly decreases", haha) most people believe in a more powerful superstition than this law: that once the masses have enjoyed a product, the product should be constantly shoved into their throats so they'll keep buying. Take Manny Pacquiao, for example. He appears in one, and only one commercial at first. But since the commercial had a great impact into making the consumers buy the product, other advertisers hire him to do commercials for them, not knowing that seeing 7 Manny Pacquiaos every time there's a commercial break will cause the people to quickly lose interest in Pacquiao, and the product that he endorses.

This law, is the exact opposite of the belief that "once it's good, you have to keep doing it", which causes the failure of some marketers. Just because one time you made a success, it doesn't mean that doing it again will give you the same success. As a matter of fact, it will reduce the success that you already possess. It's not increasing, but decreasing the more it is repeated. So breaks the taboo that habitual actions help increase proficiency in the action. It's hard to make a statement while two "Law"s contradict each other. But if you're going to ask me, I'd go with the one that's really a Law, and merely a de facto superstition.

And no, I'm not an economist, nor am I one of those people on TV who makes comments about the way the government runs the country like they're professional economists, when in fact they're just like the kids who buy a lollipop from the store whenever they crave for it.

Fallacy of Reason, Truth of Heart

2009-10-30T13:57:00.002+08:00

Fallacy, simply put, is the error in an argument proposed by one's reasoning. It ranges from misinterpretation, to prejudice, even to things such as attacking the person directly rather than the opinion. That is, errors of thinking because of, well, thinking.

I believe I'm a victim of several fallacies. But, putting that aside, I still post. Why? Because there is an error in everything. It depends on the person looking at the error if he will see it as an error, or an unobjectionable truth. So what can be true, if everything is false?

The earth revolves around the sun. And yet it is also reasonably possible to say that the sun revolves around the earth, as what they had believed in hundreds of years ago. Yet, the heart doesn't lie. It's funny how I learned this while being addicted to a game in the PSP, through the story of the Onion Knight, where reason proved futile to obtaining the goal.

So I figured complaining all the time while using reason to bash things would be, in a sense, a selfish act. It's always about I, so perhaps, that's why I cannot understand myself, because reason is blocking the precepts of the heart.

An Open Mind, Not an Open Mouth

2009-10-27T18:55:00.002+08:00

About every Filipino knows that the government sucks. And it's just about the news everywhere. But yesterday, while watching the news, something came to me that proved that it's the people who are wrong.

COMELEC registration. Because the government sucks, people who usually abstain (mostly rich people) are lining up because they want to contribute to the revival of the country's economy. People are complaining about why there are so many people and how "slow" the system of registration is. But the thing is, registration has already been opened since 2002, and how come everyone's rushing so late when the deadline is only a few days ahead. Too lazy? Too bad. Can't take the long line because you can't get your VIP treatment? Too bad. So stop complaining and begin moving.

One thing I hate is that a lot of artists just registered, almost 10 years already after they were qualified to vote, just because there are cameras everywhere. I doubt they will actually vote, lest cameras follow them up to what they write on their ballots.

Secondly, a group of OFW family members protested in front of the OWWA office supposedly because of the "slow process". But you know, the office also stated that many among the angry mob protesting were not actually members of OWWA, and expect some money to fix the damages to their homes brought by the typhoon. If they're so concerned about the benefits, how come they hadn't done it before. Like they say, "If you don't sow early, then you don't reap early." So why are they complaining?

Because of all prejudice that the government stinks, we forget the fact that we, too, have a lot of errors, probably more than the faults of the government. Tax evasion while asking for remittances, late bills payment and demanding for free reconnection, you name it. And we blame it all on poverty and a sucky government.

There's a reason why values are called values. It's because they're not worth any money we ask/demand for, but are earned within us. If everyone would just stop trying to get in front of the line, if everyone would just stop protesting for things they shouldn't really have. IF, IF, IF.

Sorry for complaining, I know we all suck at some point, but this isn't helping anyone.

Profession of Faith

2009-10-15T20:26:00.002+08:00

"Hey, guess what. It's another one of those rare(often boring) religious posts from a person who isn't a pastor." This is most likely your initial reaction after reading the post title. Well, keep reading.

Humans believe in the concrete, or what they can touch and feel. Sometimes seeing is not enough. I remember our regent's homily during the mass after our recollection, about seeing a wet paint sign, and afterward touching the bench to see if it is really wet. From the very beginning, we are all doubtful of things we can't touch. Moreover about a thing which we can't see/hear/feel/smell/taste. And yet we believe in one thing: that we are born in this world through our mother's womb. We can't go back to the past and actually see if we really came out of a woman's vagina, not to mention if our parents really are our parents. And still we believe.

We are funny beings. Funny, in the sense that there are so many ironies surrounding our personality. Like going to school and then wanting to go home early, or buying something we want and afterward hate it because we do not want it. But the greatest irony I can think of would be that we believe in God, yet we always doubt Him. I guess we can only feel God's existence when we are happy. From an atheist's point of view, "God is a past time people believe in because they have too much free time and they don't know where to put it." What makes that point of view is what we show them, our own disbelief as believers.

I remember a story of a philosophy student who is arguing about the existence of God. He doubts God's existence, but because everyone else believed, he made his little experiment. He stood on a fence of his building and said "If God exists, I will live." Well you all know what happens next.

It's really hard to believe, and just believe. We need to suffer, and really suffer, then curse God first, then suffer more, then "try" to believe, then believe, then forget. It's really heartbreaking to see people today who pray just for wishes, who pray just because it's required, who pray just because others tell them to. It is hard to complete the profession of faith if we can't even say the first words "I believe in God" with conviction. So much can the Bible teach us if we let our prejudice that it is some boring fictional book take over before we start. The greatest way to look at something actually, is by removing every prejudice, start with holding on to nothing, then slowly grasp the information.

Disappointing really. But what can I do? Nobody cares about a person who rants about a thing which nobody cares about, and is always last in the list of priorities. So human beings believe only as far as their hands can reach. So much for that. A lot of people will most likely skip this post.

Two Faces

2009-10-11T21:20:00.002+08:00

Sagot ni Dagul sa tanong na "May tao bang perpekto?": Oo naman siyempre. Pa'no si Perfecto? Hindi ba tao tawag mo dun?

Well since we now know that nobody's perfect, (no, the "nobody nobody but chu" pun doesn't work here) we can say that there's something wrong in everyone and everything.
Back in 2008 there was a popular essay written by a Korean studying in the Philippines named Jaeyoun Kim. It gathered much publicity in the internet superhighway, whether in forums, websites, blogs and even e-mail. The over-publicity this essay received made tracing it's original source almost impossible, and thus I failed to find it.

If you haven't read it yet, it's a short-but-long essay that can be simply summarized in six words: Filipinos do not love their country. In a sense it's true, but it another sense, it's wrong. This is a response by the same person from whom I sourced the original essay. This very situation presents the good and bad side and how presenting the bad side itself, can be wrong.

Take this situation given in the response: OFWs leave the country, but in heart they want to go home; the athletes' "Ginto para sa Pilipinas" and the half-Pinoy children singing local nursery rhymes. They all serve as counterexamples to prove that Kim's essay is completely wrong, which is incorrect. When the responder criticized the generalization of all Filipinos of hating their country, she also made a wrong generalization, that all Filipinos love their country.

We see that both are wrong and right at the same time. This is the two-faced characteristic of life. What we see is not always true. While the response was favorable of the Filipinos, it still failed to recognize the fact that Kim's essay was partly true. This is another mistake we tend to do: we point out what is wrong without showing what is right. We literally tip the scale by manipulating it to what we want to emphasize on. Very few can weigh the goodness and badness of a thing before making a judgment, and a slightly larger amount adds a hint of being wrong in their opinion, while the majority would favor their personal choices without even thinking.

As a personal response to both essays, I can say that not all Filipinos leave their country because they hate it (some do though), but not all Filipinos love their country. Actually this reminds me of a text message, "In life, we do not realize the value of a thing until it moves away from us," which is true, since more OFWs prove to love their country than those who live here who curse it with a passion.

Untitled Reflections

2009-09-24T20:16:00.003+08:00

I noticed that this month saw a lot of posts (or complaints, rather) from this blog. And I wouldn't have noticed it had I kept on complaining. I've posted about people complaining and doing nothing, and yet, here I am... complaining and doing nothing. I'm complaining about so many things this country is facing, and yet doing nothing. It's like every single post I've made this month was thrown like a boomerang that gains speed the farther it reaches, and such hitting me harder when it came back.

"Reklamo ka ng reklamo... ba't 'di mo kaya muna ayusin sarili mo?" was a question asked by a friend to whom I've been doing all these complaining to. Probably she got pissed off and decided to tell it in my face. I guess I was selfish. I kept on holding to my ideals and what I wanted to say, without considering what others wanted to listen to. I became a victim of my own perspective which in fact was selfishness in disguise.

"Why are you dying for someone who will never please you, when someones already dead trying to please you." was another message, probably aimed at me or not, but I got hit still. Hit pretty good. I forced the thought of seeking something that I don't know into my head without noticing that I have already long found it before, but decided to ignore it.

The two saddest words in English are "If only". I heard this from last months homily from the rector. And now, I'm saying this over and over again while looking back at how I sucked at playing the game of life. A total noob. If only I had looked at what others thought, if only I had been listening completely, if only I had considered even those that I didn't want to hear, if only, if only, if only...

Am I still complaining? Of course. I'm complaining about myself. I should stop complaining about the world around me, when the world inside me is already in armageddon. I should work to fix the HUGE mess I made. Hopefully I can still apologize to the people I've hurt so they can help me bring the peace back to my storming heart. I'm afraid that the word "sorry" has lost its meaning already and it wouldn't be enough to fix things. Man I hate myself.

The worst a man can do is to hurt the ones who are hurt by caring for him.

Advertising... The Worst Thing Existing

2009-09-23T21:49:00.002+08:00

"I'm very disappointed with your services" would be a good and calm thing to say to a customer service representative to whom you are addressing a complaint regarding their product/service. But you know, these guys are trained (and sometimes heavily paid) to give people their blind ear. What could be easier? You don't need a degree and you just hang your phone until the nagger stops yelling. But what exactly brought all of this commotion up in the first place? Advertising, of course. Or should I say lying.

The world of advertising was created to promote goods and services of various companies to people to encourage them to buy their products. It was a great thing back then, since people had to choices, and people would not have to suffer from monopoly. But now advertising just turned into a bunch of money-seeking bitches who would desperately lie just so people can be turned into dumb slaves that will keep on paying them. To be put simply, advertisers are dumb people with no brains and hearts who only live to gain money.

Nowadays advertising is just the neutral word for "scam". What else would you call tricking someone into buying something that does not exist? It's intelligent scamming. It's a disciplined study of learning how to put evil things into good words. I really do not understand why such people exist, those who live for money and will do anything for money. Advertisers are, in this sense, robbers.

But the law is with them. Why? There's not enough laws that will cover these issues, and no laws are made because these advertisers are the gold mines of the country's economy. The wrong notion is this, "Bakit pa natin patitigilin ang isang bagay na nagpapaunlad sa atin, kahit na sa maling paraan?" That's why I said brainless and heartless.

IT IS NOT THE THIEVES OR MURDERERS WHO ARE THE TRUE EVIL PEOPLE. IT'S THE ADVERTISERS.

To those who are taking up marketing, please have a heart and values to know what you should really be promoting: goods and services that are indeed good enough to be advertised. Don't be like this generation's demons, who would wrap a rotten banana in yellow cellophane and call it fresh just so it will be bought.

Popularity Ratings

2009-09-20T21:38:00.002+08:00

Ever wondered why there seems to be nothing good about the world today? Don't. It's not that the world has changed, but it's us who changed. Seriously, popular or famous things today aren't really that creative, or requiring much thought.

You make a rap, put a padlock on a chain and walk the streets like an asshole, add some shit to your rap, and you're famous. You spend months writing a script for a musical, spend more months setting it to music, and spend even more months rehearsing your actors. What do you get? A half empty hall with people who only watch musical plays to look like an elite.

When you play choral music (regardless if it's religious or secular), as long as it's that, people today won't be interested on it and ask you to put Lady Gaga on instead. Again when you spend a year crafting a masterpiece, people would just call it boring and use the entrance fee to your exhibit to buy Starbucks at some mall.

These things make me wonder indeed how appreciation for many great things are being replaced by ugly and often stupid things. And the bad thing is that in the near future, a semi-bald guy who interrupts MTV awards will become more respectable than a class adviser.

I told one friend once that I wanted to have a new Renaissance, where people would again appreciate the classical and the beautiful and completely throw away music that you can't really call music, art that can't really be called art and so on... A new beginning, where the people's minds are once again open to the whispers of the world. But this vision can only be as utopian as it seems. Utopian in the sense that it can never happen while consumerism and idol mentality is alive.

Anyway, I will cut this thing short since I really don't have energy to make a post. I just hate the fact that beauty is dying, and a thousand other facts I hate.

Isang Makapagpigil-hiningang Pagtanaw

2009-09-18T19:20:00.004+08:00

Sa kabila ng madalas akong magsulat sa wikang Ingles ay hindi maaaring sabihin na hindi na ako magsusulat sa salitang kinalakihan ko. Mula sa ganitong napakapormal na pananalita hanggang sa mas kilalang Taglish, may mga bagay lang akong nais ipaliwanag na sa tingin ko eh hindi madaling sabihin kapag nag-English ako.

Hindi sa sinisiraan ko ang bansang ito o ano, pero marami kasing bagay na tumatakbo sa isip ko ngayon na talagang gumugulo. GUMUGULO. Ganito kasi 'yun, kasi kung papalawakin natin ang ating pananaw sa labas ng sarili nating mga kwarto at laptop, hindi na maitatago pa na may maliit na problema ang mga Pilipino. Hindi sa nilalait ko o ano man ang maaaring isipin ng kung sino mang may pakialam pa dito, pero meron kasing mga bagay na kapansin-pansin.

Unahin na natin ang kakulangan ng kaalaman. Sa milyun-milyong pisong nakalaan sa edukasyon, wala pang kalahati ang nagagamit sa paglinang ng edukasyon. Ang iniisip kasi ng mga Pilipino ay kulang ang inilalaan para sa mga ganitong bagay. Hindi naman kulang talaga, marami lang kasing mga malilikot ang kamay na ang gusto lang sa buhay ay yumaman at hindi makatulong.

Magkakarugtong po 'yang mga bagay na 'yan. Kapag hindi natuto ng wasto ang isang tao, magpapaniwala na lang siya sa kung ano ang nakasanayan niyang paniwalaan. Katulad na lang kapag natuto ang isang tao mag-english sa pamamagitan ng panonood niya ng walang kamatayang Pokemon. Sa Pokemon na rin siya natuto na masama humawak ng live wire, na nangangagat ang ibang hayop at lahat ng bata ay may pangarap. Nasaan na ngayon doon ang pagkatuto sa mga bagay na mas mahalaga tulad ng siyensiya, retorika at pananampalataya?

Marahil din naman na dahil ito sa mentalidad na kolonyal na iniwan ng mga Español at Amerikano, lalo na ng mga Amerikano. Nasilaw kasi tayo sa kaginhawahan. Kaya hanggang ngayon puro kaginhawahang pansarili ang iniisip natin kaya walang umaasenso sa buhay. Isipin na lang natin no, kapag hindi na naghahabol ang mga tao na makatapos ng engineering at nursing para kumita ng malaki, mas marami tayong mga mananaliksik, mga manlilikhang-sining, mga guro at kung anu-ano pa. Kung hindi sana puro commerce ang kinukuha ng mga mag-aaral ng kolehiyo dahil madali lang ito at dahil kailangan lang kasi ng isang bachelor's degree para maging factory worker sa middle east at muli, kumita ng malaki.

Hindi kasi tayo tumitingin sa malayong epekto. Puro tayo ngayon. Kung sa bagay tama naman na isipin muna ang ngayon, pero hindi rin dapat kalimutan ang bukas. Dahil ang bukas ay nakabatay sa kung ano ang gagawin natin ngayon. Kaya kung ang iisipin na lang natin ay sayangin ang buhay para 'umahon sa hirap', lagi na lang tayong lulubog sa hirap. Hindi dahil maliit ang sweldo ng isang high school teacher ay mababa na ang trabaho na ito. Bago na nga ang tawag nila sa mababa ngayon eh. Marangal daw. Hindi rin ba marangal ang mga arkitekto at siyentipiko? Malaki lang kasi ang mga sahod nila kaya hindi na kailangan ng pampalubag loob.

Bigyan ko lang kayo ng isang maikling kwentong nakalimutan ko na kung saan ko nabasa. Sinabi ng isang Koreano na noong financial crisis sa Asya ay talagang naghirap ang mga bansa, at ang Pilipinas ang may pinakamataas na ekonomiya dahil sa agrikultura nito ng palay at iba pa. Noon sila pa ang natututo sa atin at tinitingala pa tayo. Pero ang mga Koreano noon, lumilipad kung saan-saan para lang maiahon ang bansa nila sa hirap. Tingnan mo sila ngayon, naambunan lang tayo ng kanilang pag-asenso sa kanilang mga Super Junior at Wonder Girls. Hanga naman tayo ng hanga, habang nabubulok ang mga album ng mga umaasang kabataan sa isang tabi.

Hindi kasi puro gobyerno ang problema, na tuwing may hindi magandang nangyayari eh pwede na lang tayong mag-rally nang mag-rally. Aminin man natin o hindi, may problema din mismo sa mga taong bumubuo sa bayang ito.

Kung ang iisipin na lang natin sa araw-araw ay kung magkakaroon ba ng remake ng mga kinopya at piniratang "koreanovela" at "mexiconovela", wala na talagang pag-asa. Kung papansinin natin ang sarili natin, hindi ang social standing natin sa buhay, kundi ang sarili natin mismo, ang ating pananaw sa kung ano ang tama at kung ano ang mali, sigurado may mangyayari. Kung ang lahat na lang ng mahihirap ay nagiging commercial model ng mga politiko, lalong walang mangyayari. Kung tayong mga mahihirap ay kumikilos para umahon sa kahirapan at hindi na lang lalong nagpapamukhang mahirap para bigyan ng limos, aahon tayo.

O sabihin na nating sa mga nakakapag-aral at nakapag-aral natin ibase ang mga pananaw na ito. Kung ang bawat mag-aaral ay mag-dodota na lang imbes na gumawa ng takdang-aralin, at ang bawat taong masipag na nag-aaral ay tinatawag na nerd, at puro pogi at magaganda na lang ang hinahanap sa Ateneo, UP, La Salle at UST, at wala tayong pakialam kung bumagsak man ang kasamahan natin basta pumasa tayo, wala. Kung isasantabi ng mga malalaking kumpanya ang hangaring magkaroon ng malaking (hindi lang sapat, malaki) tubo sa lahat ng "serbisyo para sa tao", ay madali silang makakahanap ng mas malaki pang pagkakakitaan.

Sa nakikita ko, iyan ang problema. Masyado nating iniisip ang sarili natin. Kaya wala tayong nakukuhang tulong mula sa iba. Aminin man o hindi, masarap ang pakiramdam kapag nakikita mong umaasenso ka sa sarili mong mga paa. Pero kung ang paa mo naman ay tadtad ng saksak at bala ng baril, ano pa ang kasiyahan doon?

Bago magtapos ang napakahaba at nakakabagot na blog na ito, nais ko lang sirain kaunti ang sinabi ni Jose Rizal, na ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan. Hindi lang po ang kabataan, kundi pati ang mga gumagabay sa kabataan ay pag-asa rin ng bayan. Bawat isa ay may mahalagang tungkulin. Kung kaya't hindi dahil kuntento ka na sa buhay mo ay dapat na ring makuntento ang iba pang tao sa paligid mo.

Seeking Your Deepest Desires

2009-09-10T22:06:00.002+08:00

I can't think of a good title, sorry. :p

THE SEARCH ENGINE. It's there, built in with most web browsers. It's your road map through the internet, of all you can possibly imagine.

GOOGLE. Originally a noun, and now a verb. Means to use a search engine to find something. Came from the holy mother of all search engines, Google.

So what's up with search engines? Well, for all the technophilic people out there, it serves as a bridge between the original point and the point of destination. It's like a public taxi on a busy highway that charges nothing... or does it?

Let's face it, we're in the 21st century and technology has improved drastically in a short period of time. Well, there are some reasons we could cite for this. First, technology was like a savior to mankind when it was first introduced. Therefore it is only necessary that man desires to develop it further.

Again, what's so wrong about it? Well at first nothing. But if you would look at how vacant libraries are these days (and no I'm not talking about the Benavides library), whose primary use have been demoted to boring replacements to information the internet cannot provide. Of course it's easier to type a word and hit enter than go through gigantic shelves with books not everyone can reach in height of placement.

I'm not an avid fan of reading myself, and I read only when I'm forced to. But, every time I read, I never stop to wonder at how amazingly gifted writers are. The creativity, the art, the deep vocabulary, the sensation of being immersed into not just an information superhighway, but a whole new dimension of learning. Again these things are not so popular today in the time where everything can just be wikipedia'd or googled. Well, there are rare instances where there are pages in the internet that does reflect the stunning sensation, but these are very unpopular and set hundreds of millions of places below wiki encyclopedias and porn sites.

You see, we're all stuck with the thought that everything about the internet is good. At the same way we criticize the negative values promoted by TV, we can also say that the internet is a bad place. People who use the internet for social networking or downloading probably won't notice but the anonymity of people accessing the internet every second transforms these people into overly confident individuals who think they can just flame anyone and call them stupid, which is contrary to what happens in reality.

What's worse is not just books being thrown into becoming obsolete is that the information googled are not just educational material. It's easy to search for Katrina Halili-Hayden Kho videos with one click. So who wouldn't want to, right?

Morale is, not because it's easy to do it doesn't mean you have to pick it all the time. While the internet is a great invention, it should always remain tertiary to written knowledge of centuries and to the never ending purpose-seeking mind of man. Time to search online what "unique" is in Filipino.

Retrograde Development

2009-09-08T20:17:00.002+08:00

Was it raining before anyone saw this post? Or were they busy with other things before sitting in front of the PC to spend their spare time? Whatever the case may be, these are things that all happened sometime in the past and affects the reader's state of mind presently. In this very example, we can infer that the past moves the present, like a building standing on a solid foundation.

Using this analogy as well, we can say that a sorrowful past brings about a shaky structure of the present. When a child is born of a family in debt through gambling, then this child grows up to gamble and earn debt for himself. When a wife is battered by her husband, the wife learns to curse life and wish for death. The past is a factor of the present.

But how does the relation of the past turn our development into a reverse state that turns our thoughts into the revolutionary desires of our forefathers under Spanish colonization? Well, first is the lack of a motivation for the future. We, as people, tend to live our lives the way we are taught. For a child who was taught that using drugs is a good thing, then using drugs is a good thing, despite its wrongness. In the same way, a person taught that pre-marital sex is immoral thinks that it is immoral. The past builds perspective of the future. Therefore, we rely on our past to decide for our future.

Can't we decide for ourselves? Of course we can. From our past we have created rules to govern the way we live now, but it should not end there. Our past is a motley of the spices of society, such as herd mentality and common teachings. In this case, it is possible that ethics, itself, is herd mentality and lacks the individualistic thought. But still, despite the seed that society has implanted on our past, a new tree must bear fruit from the weak plant that has grown. A fruit unique in color, size, taste and structure. This fruit is our personal response to development.

The past is both an obstacle and a mean of development. It gives us an idea of the world, and how the world thinks, but it also slows down our personal perspective of things around us. If we rely on what is taught, or what we are used to doing, then our development, in fact, is in retrograde. But if we look at the errors from a neutral point of view, we clearly see that there are things that we are required to answer by ourselves as individuals.

All in all, we live by how we grew up. But the past does not become the past unless it was first the future, and then the present. So we should strive to grow up and develop, like how we have grown up and developed over the years. Not just in the physical sense, but also in the emotional and spiritual sense. Rationalism. Philosophy. Life. We are building our futures not our past, but on our present, which will in turn, become a better past worth retelling to the next generations.

Abstract Avarice

2009-08-29T23:54:00.002+08:00

Avarice, or Greed as we know it, is one of the deadly sins. It means wanting too much, and doing all means to get what one wants. But sometimes this term is limited to those who are always seeking material wealth. Well no. There are people who are greedy for more than material wealth, such as fame, knowledge or power. These are things that we cannot touch; ergo, are abstract.

But what is so surprising is the excessive desire for more than fame, knowledge and power. It's the desire to be perfect. We want to be inerrant, we want to get to perfection by all means, and we want to get rid of human weaknesses so badly. That is what's so alarming by greed of abstract things.

Let's face it, man was made with weaknesses. It is through these weaknesses that we learn what is true and what can put us to harm. It is through these weaknesses that we can ironically be 'perfect'. And yet we want to get rid of them so badly. Will they kill us? No. They can hurt us pretty badly, but weakness can never totally pull us down. Because one way or another, weaknesses teach us to stand up. How can we be so narrow minded to desire to get rid of weaknesses?

Strive for perfection, they say. Perhaps it could be an angel speaking, or a devil's voice saying this. It's a negative plot disguised as a hope to be perfect. According to Thomas Aquinas's argument on gradation, there must be some sort of being higher than man, because man is imperfect. And that perfect being is God alone.

While researching about St. Thomas's five ways, I discovered a blog that adds modern science to disprove the existence of God. I, as a philosophical rather than scientific being, believe that in the same way as how science, over time, can disprove the concept of religion, religion can also disprove the concept of science over time. Unless of course people would defend science like how the people of the past defended religion. Then atheist scientists would be disproving their own theory.

Anyway, in relation to the topic, the above mentioned example shows that man wants to be perfect. Or maybe unethical science, perhaps. Even the whole concept of ethics came from religion. Now how can ethics be human? These are questions that are miserably answered from narrow perspectives of those who just want to get rid of anything that can cause them weakness.

Setting aside the argument between faith and science, we can also see avarice in modern day society. This does not necessarily pertain to merely politics. Take laws, for example. We keep on making more laws to answer problems. But then again laws create more problems. That's the problem with trying to solve all problems using human reasoning. And that's also the problem of the way we think. We don't need more laws when there's a problem. What we need is an understanding of these laws, and a more serious implementation and awareness, especially among those who enforce them.

To this point, we can mention one last saying: nobody's perfect. We can be the best of what we can, but never the best at everything. It doesn't mean that if a guy gets a grade of 98.59 in Math and a 98 in Theology, he is already the best at those subjects (Read: College Uneducation by Jorge Bacobo). No. He just knows that perfection is not reached, and that we all have a weakness, no matter how big our heads become and how narrowly we think.

Tired of the Uncertain

2009-08-26T19:06:00.002+08:00

Now because of my horrible connection I was forced to write into a piece of paper my thought on a single day, August 24 at 10:15PM. Here's what it says:

I really do not know. I am certain that there is something I must do, and yet I do not know how to do it. I want to do something, I want to change something. SOMETHING, SOMETHING, SOMETHING. The way I have been living is ridiculously indefinite. There's never a slight hint of certainty. And that's probably why I let people judge me. Friends say that "you are who you are," and yet expect me to be a person who can meet their standards. Should I fail, I will still be the bad guy.

I hate a lot of things, but that's about it... hate. I rarely appreciate things, in the same way I'm rarely appreciated for being myself, and no I don't mean academics. That's why after 15 years I still haven't decided for myself an identity. I've been constantly changing to meet the demands of those around me, fearing that I might lose them.

As the song goes, "It's not easy to be me." I believe in God, and I also believe in myself. But as life would put it, these things are not so popular anymore among modern ideals, where people would be contented fitting into stereotypes to seek "a sense of belonging." If I cannot satisfy what the world expects of me, then I am labeled weak.

It's hard to look at the big picture. The colors are inconsistent, and some parts cannot be seen very clearly. And yet only by seeing the whole thing can one find out what's going on. People claimed to have seen this picture, but still neglecting the fact that their big picture is not big enough to come to conclusions.

People say that these are also just perceptions. But it's really different to not be biased if one doesn't consider all factors, including the ones he doesn't know or understand. That's why it's so hard to be good, even if we all want to. It's just that being bad feels easy. But even the whole idea of good and bad is getting confusing.

Though things remain uncertain, there is still one thing I am sure of: that there is something we can hope for. In this continuous search for meaning, there is always a hope that meaning will be found. And that's why even if our wishes are not granted, we pray to God that we still hope to find meaning and purpose. Prayers are not just wishes. They are eternal desires to commune with a higher being, that is, if we consider that we are not perfect.

AMIDST CONFUSION, ONE CAN ONLY HOPE TO HAVE AN ANSWER TO ALL QUESTIONS.
HOPE IN GOD, AND HOPE IN HIMSELF.
=)

Then and Now: The Deterioration of Values

2009-08-23T12:22:00.004+08:00

No, I did not go back to the past and actually saw how the people were then. So you can say that all I'm saying is based off stories of people who lived then and history lessons. However, I know enough of the now to say what I am about to say.

I sound like a conservative grandparent, and think like it sometimes. But I do not recall conservative being a negative word. Is promoting ethical values over material needs and excessive liberalism negative? People today, especially youth, have this fear of being called old, and always want to be what the dumb bitch called society dictates them to be, more than what they know of right and wrong.

Let me cite examples: which would be more 'cool' or famous, a sexy actress or a nature conservationist? A rich person or a relatively small-earning teacher? A person who owns 25 pairs of slippers that cost thousands or a volunteer janitor who works without pay for the protection of people?

Asides from such personalities, we also consider the changing of ideals and the continuous twisting of the definition of the words "right" and "wrong" to match our need to be always good even when we do bad. From the past concept of small lies to the point of using otherwise service-oriented money for some lame dinner that doesn't help the country at all, people like to twist things to manipulate their consciences.

Back then, women would prefer wearing pants or long skirts to avoid malicious intentions from nearby people, and only prostitutes would be caught wearing mini skirts and short-short pants. Now, it's called freedom of dressing. Understand the point already?

Another example would be the drive brought about by profit. For the mere interest of gaining profit, large scale companies would spend less and sell high for services made of crap and yet heavily advertised. "It's just business," they say. Back then people only needed profit to improve their services. Now people want profit to be filthy rich, with no real thing to spend their corrupted money on.

Several factors can be used to prove that people are indeed tumatandang paurong, and yet only one is needed to convince the greatest enemy of this problem: one's own self.

People seek pleasure. People seek entertainment. People don't care how they get them. People fight for bad things done to them. And most importantly, people don't care about bad things they do to others.

The Sound of Bitter Surrender and Hopeless Repentance

2009-08-14T22:42:00.003+08:00

I'm sick of so many things. Not that I hate them, but because I can't do anything about them. My life these days comprises of a never ending cycle of falling for temptation and then repentance, then fall again, etc... I'm tired and I want to quit it. I've always asked help to end it, but when I see it, it simply pollutes my mind once again and I'll only realize it once I have fallen for it.

It's hard to wake up from a nightmare disguised as a dream. But I think it's possible. But nightmares can sometimes occur anytime, anywhere, in any shape and size. I seek help once again to be guided and to be prepared for it. I'm really really sick of it, and yet I can't help myself but go back to it whenever I see even the slightest connection to it. This thing that's been misleading me is anywhere and everywhere, and it never fails to get its work done.

Sometimes I just convince myself among these difficulties that "at least I know it's wrong and I want to change it" but that makes it even worse. Take a look at it this way: what do you think would be a worse action, to do something without knowing that it's not good, or to be completely aware and repentant of that thing, yet keep on repeating it? Now I'm stuck on misery on gravely reflecting upon my actions, but maybe on another time, I would fall again.

How many times must I fall before the pain would stop healing so I can finally stop it for my own personal growth and development? How much should I continue to wash my soul and yet keep on staining it before I realize that it gets harder to clean the more it is stained?

I guess a cup of coffee or a new serial number for my illegal Photoshop CS4 wouldn't cheer me up at this rate. It's like being trapped in an experimental wheel with someone laughing at you because you can't do anything about it. Well, hear this, I want to do something about it so badly. If you manage to read this, this is my conscience speaking: someone please guide me to getting out of here before I fall once again, only to realize that I have failed my Master. :(

To Whom do I Belong?

2009-07-31T23:03:00.002+08:00

The month ends in one hour :)

On my way home I reflected upon a text message I received from a friend I met during my college days. It said "friend, we noticed that you're rather lonely and you're always sad." I replied it with a rather long message expressing my thought about what they saw about me, but unfortunately it failed to reach her message whole. So what was this thing I told them?

Well, first of, I realized that if you are stuck on your circle of friends, everything you do that does not include your circle of friends is called 'being lonely' or 'loner'. Already guessed what's wrong with the situation? It's called loyalty. Now I'm not saying loyalty is bad and treachery is good, but rather that your loyalty should belong to everyone you trust on, not to this exclusive group of friends you hang out with. In the end, your friends will not decide for you, it is always you who will decide for yourself.

But in those case where you do think of things yourself, or even go outside of the noise of the classroom for some fresh air, they'd already think that you want to leave them. This is where it gets worse: you turn out to be the bad guy. Do you really have to spend every time you have with them, WITH THEM? Can you not chill with other people when they are around? Sure we have this mentality called 'you have all your free time, at least give this time to them', but no. We have a freedom of choice on what we do and what we are planning to do, especially to ourselves.

I never thought that not hanging out with my friends for once would already label me a loner or a sad person. I'm a happy person, I'm just not happy in the sense of how stereotypes define happy. I'm happy that the people I love are safe, I'm happy that I was able to stay for two months in Manila without getting stabbed for my wallet, and I'm happy I can finally spend time to know myself better. If happiness meant being happy with your friends and not by yourself, then someone might as well remove that word from the dictionary.

I also apologize for being an individualistic person, that is, I prefer doing a lot of things on my own rather than being open and sharing everything to the point where I would share my insides if they ever spill out. I like how I am, I have friends, I have family, and I have myself. But I would like to spend more time on how I want it, and I'm not going to be pressured into doing what my friends like to do often. So if they go to McDonalds and I say I want to go home to Olongapo, please don't tell me that I'm exchanging my friends for my hometown. No. I want to do what I must/want to do. I'd never sacrifice my own choices for the choices of others. Life's a choice, and the final decision on managing our lives is always on us, not on our friends. God does not turn us into puppets. He lets us decide whether we want to do what's right or wrong. In that sense, God is a true friend.

And finally, I think I would like my thoughts to stay as my thoughts. This whole blog is a living evidence of my thoughts that I want to share. Though I admit that I never liked anyone completely. There are times when I hate certain things about people. Just like this one friend who can't shut his loud mouth and put it in the right place (i.e. "making fun" of a teacher so much that it's already an insult to their dignity). I would like things to be serious when they are serious, and fun when they are fun. Unfortunately, to elaborate on that would mean another gigantic post.

Cool and Light, Sweet and Slow

2009-07-18T10:30:00.002+08:00

Everyone's always getting worried if they will be late for work, if they will get a failing mark in school, or if their boyfriends and girlfriends are cheating on them. People are so busy and worrying a lot about negative consequences. Nobody wants to hear the phrase "Do things slowly but surely." What a way for a "pessimist" to talk, eh?

Well even if the world feels heavy, no one can't disagree that further worrying will make the world even heavier. Relax, take it easy, but don't let go of your guard. This reminds me of something my mother taught me when I was about to go to my first day high school. "You don't need to exert yourself too much, just do the best you can and I will be happy with what you get." Relaxed. No pressure. And guess what, I was able to do better than those who would read books non-stop just for a stupid thing as competition.

Now I'm in college. Supposedly, competition doesn't exist anymore, and everyone's the same as each other, all wanting to pass. It's a blessing to get high marks, and of course, a reflection of your future. But do you really have to sacrifice friends, freedom and unwinding for something as unreal as grades? Sure, it's an advantage, but people are never contented. They always want the best of the best, and the worst of the worst. What does this mean? If the thing promises benefits, then they'll want to get it, even if they have to go beyond their limitations as people. And if they THINK an object isn't worth it, they would usually want the least of it, to make room for their obsessive goals that are sometimes too high for them to reach.

I'm not saying that one should forget the trials he must go through. But seriously, people should know what they can do, what their best is, and be contented with what their best has to offer. Nobody can be gifted at everything. But everybody wants to be everything. It's ironic, and yet so true. We rush to places we want to, without sitting and finding out that our bodies are tired. Funny how I was able to recall this thought seeing my present state of being as a pessimist. I don't think that's true though. Maybe another one of society's stereotyping schemes?

Contradiction

2009-07-05T09:26:00.002+08:00

Contradiction refers to the disagreement of two otherwise true statements. One example of such case is the disagreement between the quotations "Eat or be eaten" and "Live and let live". While both can be politically correct, the usage greatly depends on the situation on which it is used. Strictly speaking they are both true, but they cannot be true at the same time.

People like to think they know everything. When in fact what they know is everything about what they can know. They stop when they can no longer reach the depth of knowledge that they are digging for. What's so bad about it is that they think that the world is as little as their limits. There's a reason why some things are unreachable to others, and yet so easy to get for another. So what does this have to do with contradiction? Contradiction arises from the fact that everything, to everyone, is true. Because of the need to answer our questions, we settle with what we can know and call it absolute. Therefore, contradiction is formed.

Another thing that can be inserted into this argument is the principle of moral dilemma, wherein a situation comprises of two evils. In this case, there are three contradicting factors, not just two: the two evils, and the good. The good will dictate that both choices are wrong, but through the principle, good asks us to do the obvious, pick the lesser evil if there's really no choice. WE CANNOT SIT AND NOT DO ANYTHING. Sacrifices are part of the fruits of contradiction. When there are two truths, we pick one of them and call that our truth. Still others will choose the other one.

As they say, life's a choice. So why don't we think about the consequences when we arrive at contradicting factors, and practice choosing properly? But, then again, we can never be perfect, so why practice? :)

The Power of Thought

2009-06-22T18:33:00.002+08:00

Regarding the post title, I've been thinking a lot lately, and I never thought I would be accessing the internet again after a while, and accessing it because of the most uncommon possible reason: to be sent home for a week because of flu, which is about the big news today. There are a lot of things in my head, and sad to say I'm finding them very difficult to bear anymore, so I turn again to my blog to hopefully lighten the load.

Man by nature is rational. He has the ability to think, think and think. From his thoughts he will give facts and opinions. But sometimes he forgets that thinking too much takes a lot of energy. Proof of this is that I'm still sweating from thinking restlessly for almost half a day. What's so great about this thing I'm thinking that it actually proves L Lawliet's statement that thinking consumes a lot of energy?

Well, it's about two situations, rest and unrest. You see last Wednesday I began developing a fever which went away by the night of that day. Unfortunately, the next day the fever returned while I was in class and the professor noticed that I looked sick, which I was, so I got sent to the health service, which took my temperature and advised me to rest for seven days.

So to not annoy our guardian, my aunt took me from Manila back here from where I'm publishing this blog before I go back to school next Thursday. Now here's the unrest I can't get rid of. When I come back there, I would certainly have missed A LOT of lessons and activities. I just don't want to go back there when everyone's busy preparing requirements and homework when I don't know anything about what they are doing. I can't contact them yet, since we've only met for two days prior to my sickness which is only seasonal flu, and thus I don't have their contact details.

I think that I am forced to panic because of this, but I also think that I should calm down and rest. I simply can't take the confusion of contradicting thoughts. It's tormenting me and my head hurts again. They say only I can resolve this, but what can I do? All I can do is tell everything here in this page called a blog and then panic some more. Thinking is a very tiring act. It can be compared to a pretty strenuous workout, depending on how much thought is done.

And then there are other thoughts, like homesickness. I'm already back here, but only for less than day. I can't bear to leave again and talk to no one except to the ceiling, and again make myself look like a better idiot every passing day.

Section devoted to keyboard hammering:
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More than the Right to Speak

2009-06-11T19:57:00.002+08:00

June 10, 2009 - A national rally to counter the Congress's Con-Ass was held in Makati and in various parts of the country. The event was a success and there were no injuries... Wait, something's wrong.

They held the protest and were able to express themselves without getting hurt. Sounds great, right? Now add the fact that high profile senators and influential people are on that rally. What do you get? Police afraid of high people. If say this was a small scale protest of ordinary people voicing out their opinions, can we still think that the police won't go brutal? Of course not. Philippine police does everything 'properly' when there's media coverage, when there are bigger people involved. Otherwise, they're a bunch of abusers. So much for justice.

Another factor, and possibly an important one, we can include is that this protest was completely ignored by its target: the president. All she can do is let the voices in through one ear and release them on the other, and call that 'hearing their cries'. Why are they crying? To be heard, of course. Filipinos were allowed to make protests because of their right to express themselves. But there's another right ignored in this case, and in many other, even ordinary life cases: the right to be heard and understood.

People today only listen to what they want to listen to, believe only what they want to believe in, do only the things they want to do. Centuries ago, society was nevertheless the same. But still there were people who were investigating everything they can get their hands on, and their discoveries were well rewarded with innovations to life. Nowadays people are contented knowing that sand is made up of silica and being done with it.

In the words of William Blake, "To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour." Sounds impossible, since if you ask the dry people of today what they see in a grain of sand, they would use simple logic and say that they see a grain of sand, and as an added bonus calls you stupid for asking the obvious.

In the same way that people can no longer understand the depth of the meaning of the world, people today are no longer understood by what they are on the inside, and people would rather judge them based on what's outside. If you were given two guys, one's rather nerdy, fat, wears glasses and cries a lot, and another wearing an open jacket, revealing a sexy body with a face to match, which guy would you call handsome? I'm not going to elaborate what I mean with this comparison.

If I speak in your language, but use your language in such a way that it can define the undefinable, would you claim superiority over me? Questions are being asked, and all people can reply is "Fuck You" and think they're done with it. That's why people stopped asking, because nobody today listens to them anymore, and people are too busy judging books based on what their covers look like. The dream is but a dream, an unfathomable wish.

Personal Bias

2009-06-04T22:51:00.003+08:00

Bias is a term used to described a tendency or preference towards a particular perspective, ideology or result, especially when the tendency interferes with the ability to be impartial, unprejudiced, or objective.

So uh I've been on a hate war with several people on a game I'm currently playing for pointing out the obvious, or telling them that their untrained (quit school sometime before for the same game and returned by convincing of parents) minds are getting more and more dull if they can't focus on their studies. In return I get hate and profanity. I guess this is personal bias for me.

I like to use the term 'Personal Bias' for things that others can't understand, usually a person's disagreeable preferences. Like those mentioned above, nobody can understand why they'd prefer to play a game that only gives them nothing but virtual riches that will most likely disappear after a wipe, in less than a second. But I've seen such things happen, and all they did was complain and hate more people.

It's not addiction. They're not dying for the game, they just prefer it over other more important things. So it's personal bias. For some reason, we base our preferences off our own experiences, and thus creating our personal biases. Often these things cause us to contradict with the environment around us, and therefore results in misunderstandings and hate wars.

However, there's a very good reason why the word 'personal' is placed before 'bias'. Bias itself is something that can happen to anyone. Personal bias is unique to every person, because we have different preferences. But the real reason why it's personal, is because it is our own, and for our own alone. Sometimes there are personal things that we don't want others we don't trust to know, like our address or phone number. Bias is something personal, and we have to live with it.

This sprung from the idea that 'everyone has his own version of the truth, and thus we can never know the ultimate truth'.

Ten Things I've Learned

2009-05-29T12:20:00.003+08:00

Okay, so here are the things I've found out from my own experiences. Sometimes, they apply to everyone, every time. Sometimes, they don't. So don't complain, okay?

1. No matter how much reasoning you put into something, all reasons are invalid if the person you are reasoning to is convinced on what he or she thinks is right.

2. If you talk to someone in a loud voice, expect that someone to talk back in a louder voice.

3. You can't burn a fire. You need to water it.

4. The very last thing a self-respecting person would want to happen is that he or she is caught doing her bad habits and being awesomely bad in front of people who think that he or she is good.

5. People who say that they are not plastics are plastics. Normal people would use a different wording or reasoning.

6. People tend to be happy over coincidences to the point that they think the coincidence will determine their future.

7. Everyone wants to win the lottery. If they'd just put away those money they waste on gambling, they'd probably be richer than they are right now.

8. Each person has a reason that reason itself could not understand.

9. Some things are better unnoticed. A fire is very bad if unnoticed.

10. We try to understand, but we are convinced ourselves that we can't know everything. This includes the thoughts and philosophies of other people. So we resort to enforcing our own reasoning to people who have their own understanding of life.

Behind the Roads

2009-05-14T23:25:00.004+08:00

"Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
Matthew 11:28

We're tired of running from our pasts, from our troubles, from ourselves. But it always looks like the path never ends, and continues to split. Well, guess what. The image you see is what you want to see. Our minds are born naturally open to what we should do, but it also naturally closes because of our despair and sadness. So we refuse to see what we should be seeing.

God said that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He will carry us, on our journey into the sea of hate and troubles, as long as we have the willingness to come to Him. Who would want to help a person who doesn't want to be helped? Sometimes, God does things. But we do more to our lives ourselves. Why? Free will. This free will that causes us to think bad thoughts, of loneliness, of how heavy our loads are. But it is only through free will as well that we can find rest through Him.

A great example of our misery is none other than our past. We keep on looking back, then we take what we saw behind in front of us. It then becomes a seemingly endless road, an illusion that may deceive us, and send us deeper into the dark forests of endless wandering. However, it takes SRS BUSINESS, or a serious desire to see behind the wall to find the beautiful road God has laid for us.

We're still facing that wall of long roads, and who knows when we can find what's behind. Maybe it's because we see people around us going through the same roads? I think it's time to break the illusion and free these lost children as well. But how? Free will. Friendship. Fortitude. Love.

"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Matthew 11:29-30

Mind Breaking Drama

2009-05-12T21:41:00.002+08:00

Maybe it truly isn't the world that's the problem, but me myself. I've hurt people with my actions that I have never given much thought before doing. I've been a selfish piece of junk who can't think of how others feel, and insisted on 'being myself', more than 'being who I am'.

The world defines who we are. If our community's known as 'the asshole of the world', then it will be what they will know us to be. I've been thinking of unimportant things, things such as atheists and agnostics can think of. Yeah, sure they think the same as us in all things but religion, but what I've done is far beyond what my religion can limit. So I've acted like a total sucker with no life.

People chose to remain quiet, because they know it can hurt to see the real truth, and they just endure that pain, so as to not pain others. I lived on a twisted philosophy that 'why go through this madness when there are better things in life'. I thought that would be the hope I needed. Then I realized that hope is a near impossible thing to reach in my case.

I have hated the world by thinking that I love it. I have disappeared from the sight of all that is good, and decided to stick to the piece of crap that I called my 'internet life'. Living with noobz, fags and racists have turned me into a noob, fag and racist in real life. I've decided to make an unplanned action, and is still suffering the consequences.

How much must you hurt more, so that you can realize the error of your ways? How much must you continue to lie to yourself, for you to reject that big lie you've been telling yourself and others? I can't promise to answer these questions I'm asking myself, because I AM TOO WEAK TO HAVE A FIRM RESOLVE TO WORK FOR THE BETTER. I'll just continue doing sins that I know are wrong, and yet keep on doing them.

To this end, I seek help. I've received help before, but the liar inside me just tells me to 'pretend to listen, then live again like nothing happened'. I need someone to wake me up. Sure, I'm true now, but on another case, I will be the false facade you guys have always seen. Help.

Going Nuts Over Lack of Expression-Syndrome

2009-05-05T19:27:00.002+08:00

I wonder if there is such a thing. I want to express myself, so I made this blog. But all I've ever said here is the dark side of myself. The other other me. I wonder how many "me"s have there been already? Kidding aside, I've always wanted to write, write anything. From songs to literature, to chat and forum flames, anything. I don't know why I've liked them. It seems though as if they don't like me. Simply put, this short post is about me ranting about doing something that I already did before, yet somehow I can't do now: composing music. Someone inspire me and teach me foundations, PLEASE. :)

The Age of Reason: Buried under Modern Dictatorship

2009-05-03T22:29:00.003+08:00

Back in the eighteenth century, man decided that he would no longer blindly follow as he is taught, but he would be the pilot of his life and what his philosophy about the reason of his existence. And more importantly, man learned to reason out and to think, to seek discoveries, to enlighten the dark unknown that surrounds him, and to break free from absolute rule and gain his own rights. But the 21st century is far from the ideas and principles man had 300 years ago.

People have learned to be slaves to the likes of trends and famous personalities. They have learned to call actors and actresses "idols", even to the point of human worship. This is exactly what it was before the Age of Reason. Now, the ability to reason out is only given to the exiles of society, turning them into outcasts, and making it a very endangered practice. People would rather just do what Kris Aquino or Boy Abunda suggest on TV rather than think on what they really should do.

It's said that no one can decide for his own but himself. He is a disciple of his principles, and what he chooses to believe in. This is the idea that inspired the Age of Reasoning, a very rare occurrence in today's world. Why? People are being lazy and would rather live a monotonous life of eat, sleep and chill. People would rather be in bars than in books, in virtual worlds rather than reality. So how would anyone expect a skill of reasoning to these people? How in the world can these guys live under their philosophy, when they're already being lazy about forming one?

To live under one's own philosophy, is the individualistic challenge to each and everyone, to be able to use our rationalism, and to have a goal to guide us. Sure, we have this equally important thing called religion, but love of God is equal to love of neighbor, and of self. How can we think and move on if all we're interested in is Manny Pacquiao's next match, while secretly waiting for him to suffer a loss and get his head in the right place?

How ironic can it be if the peace in the country is promoted by a famous athlete, and not trained peacekeepers and maintainers of order? When policemen and soldiers are on duty, crime never stops, and so does abuses of authority. But when this particular guy is on TV, everyone stops everything and tunes on to see what will happen, never getting used to seeing the same old story.

So what is this "modern dictatorship" mentioned in the title? We don't live in the world of Caesar, Hitler and Mussolini anymore, and absolute power is no longer given to anyone. We are free to live by ourselves, to do what we tell ourselves to do. But there's a dictator hiding in the shadows and is being successful at his mission of brainwashing citizens for his personal gain. He's none other than the trend of society. It's quite tiring to mention the same thing over and over again, but as time passes, one can't help but notice how blind people are turning in to.

Then there are those who would put others above them. Yeah, sure, being a hero to someone isn't bad. But when taken literally, a person exalts another person to be higher than him, like the poor under the rich. How unbalanced society is dictating the world to turn in to. And the only way to reverse the process is to think for oneself, be rational and be open-minded. Open your eyes, and see.

Something I've Neglected

2009-04-27T23:44:00.003+08:00

Even if you choose to close your lonely heart on Me,
Even if joy leaves your heart of stone,
Even if your fearful heart shivers in fear,
Even if you are covered in sadness,
I am with You, I who is always waiting for your call.
This love I have, a love burning in my heart,
For your return to My loving embrace,
Be silent, listen and be Mine again.

You don't know that I, too, long for your voice,
Your joy and sorrow, is my happiness and pain.
If you still cannot feel My presence in you,
Discover who you really are.
I am with You, I who is always waiting for your call.
This love I have, a love burning in my heart,
For your return to My loving embrace,
Be silent, listen and be Mine again.

Well, that's my translation and understanding of Fr. Arnel Aquino's "Maging Akin Muli". It's the theme song of my weary world, in my failure to listen to God's call, and closing the doors of my heart to what I should follow. And in the end, I am confused. But more than the things I've forgotten, there are those that I neglect. Those things that I refused to know, those things that I refuse to accept, and most especially the things that I fail to see.

The brighter side of things has been very dark for me. Among each step on this journey, I am too afraid to be hurt, and I wanted to prepare myself for anything that may come my way, so I'll be happy in the end. Thus I always look at the negative consequences of all my actions and thoughts. This led me to somewhere I don't want to be, doing what is untrue despite of the fact that I know it's wrong. Still, I find this sorrow unforgettable, because again, I don't know the meaning of smiling over one's problems enough yet. I only think of being safe, and being cautious, totally neglecting the things I see. No, not ignore, but neglect. More like an "Oh look something good. So what?" attitude towards life.

Really I'm confused. Who's the real culprit? Who are the witnesses? Who are the defendants? Who's the prosecutor? I only understand one thing. I, and nobody else, am the judge. But days have passed on thinking about arguments I've done with my family, of all the pathetic posts I've made already. Can they really understand me? Then why do they insist on what they want to do every time? And how come they can't wait? Why is everyone so excited?

Questions are coming to my mind endlessly. Things I've wanted to answer for so long. But the answers are there, on that part of myself that I haven't touched, and fear to touch. The optimistic character in me. I feel like I may forget the realities I've seen through these years if I go that road. So I'm in pain, yet in comfort on this dark side I walk on. At least I won't see if there are dangers ahead. So all I can do is plan my steps carefully, and not let anything distract me. But this is wrong!

I'm sounding like a weirdo talking to my other personality. But that's what I am. I have another persona I can't show to family. Sorry for hiding such things, but I really don't think you would appreciate what the other me is, simply because the other me is a normal teen who wants to learn how to live alone, how to rely on friends, how to stand for one's self. And I know if that other me shows up, I would be condemned from this place and be thrown away. Then I might go the wrong path. So here I am, the martyr, talking through this web log. I will just survive the pain you have caused me, for the sake of walking steadily and safely. I will just hide the adventurous person in me who wants to discover the world when I am with you, because that's what you want.

I don't think I can hide myself any longer. I might go nuts. I want to face the world outside. Yeah, sure, we're all born in our little parts of the world, but I want to go outside of the world I live in, a world which cannot satisfy my thirst to discover truths unwritten in books, philosophies that the world forces to hide. Sorry if I've been hiding, but it's for my safety. Yeah, I'm an adventurous person who can't walk his adventure without having to put up a fight with the people who don't agree, because they can't understand me.

I've been forgetting too many things. I've been also neglecting things. Or maybe it's just me that's being neglected? Man, know what? I'm convincing myself that I'm always the wrong one and you are the right one, because that's what you want. So my brain's going haywire because it's lacking the things it needs. Not material things, but discoveries and realizations. Why? Because you would only hate me if I said that I don't understand you. It's always you who doesn't understand me, for that's the way you want it to be.

Stereotyping

2009-04-26T14:15:00.002+08:00

So this was the word I was looking for. Stereotyping. It's the act of labeling one individual based on the class he or she belongs to. It's often related with Prejudice, and sometimes even equated. It's also completely pointless and very biased. But everyone does have personal biases. What's wrong though is that people tend to judge the same way, often thinking that what is common among them is what is right. Hell no.

And according to wikipedia, stereotyping is unarguably a form of discrimination. Though there are some who refuse this term, because discrimination sounds negative all through out. So, stereotypes are stupid people who can't accept that everyone can't be like them, and that the uniqueness in every individual will always be better than them. To be short, it's one way of saying "I don't understand you, so you are lower than me." Ironic, since if a person can't understand another person, doesn't it mean that the latter is a more complex thinker and the former bearing a shallow mind?

Sociologist Charles E. Hurst of the College of Wooster states that, “One reason for stereotypes is the lack of personal, concrete familiarity that individuals have with persons in other racial or ethnic groups. Lack of familiarity encourages the lumping together of unknown individuals.” Sounds like insecurity, no?.

And often, stereotyping is what puts the wrong people in the right places and the right people in the wrong places. Why again? Because wrong people are those that aren't discriminated, because they are one with the majority of stereotypes. And of course the right people, regardless of talent, knowledge or principle are looked down. See how retarded people are turning in to? And usually the end result of this discrimination is further discrimination.

Whenever you think that someone is dumb or retarded or stupid because of what you think he is based on your prejudicial biases, try to look in the mirror and say all the stupidity to the guy you see there.

God, as the People See Him

2009-04-23T17:50:00.002+08:00

True, not everyone believes that there is a God, or that God is well... God. After surviving several anarchy forums full of atheists and catholic-bashers, it actually looked pretty funny to me as how God can be defined by the people so easily. Why? Because God is someone that most people today forget who He really is, again because the people have "stamped" God with their own labels and brands.

People argue that their God is the one true God, or people will say that this particular group(s) is serving God the wrong way. God can be good or evil, depending on what we want Him to be. And in the same way, people can be following or disobeying God, again as how we have defined God. So, if we have different views about God, then does it mean that we have our own gods? If this was the case, then there can be over 6,706,993,152 gods. But, for some strange reason, we all claim that there is only one true living God. And yet we say that "He is our God and our God alone". It's really ironic.

Take for example the Roman Catholic Church, the first Christian church. Several sects were formed out of this church, the first one being the Lutherans, or the first "protestants", labeled such because they literally protested. Then there came thousands more sects from the Catholic church, all claiming that their view about God is correct and, most of the time, the Catholic church is wrong.

A funny way to describe how the people are "owning" God is this. Imagine that God is a naked mannequin. Person A comes in first and sees that the mannequin has no clothes, and in his opinion as a conservative person, dresses it up in a coat, slacks and a neck tie, then leaves. Person B will enter the room and notice that the mannequin is wearing too formal, and again, according to his opinion, changes the clothing of the mannequin to a semi-formal one, with a long sleeve polo tucked in the black slacks. Then he leaves. Person C goes in to the room and shouts "OMG why is a woman dressed like a man!", because he thinks that the mannequin is really female. So he puts on a dress on the mannequin and leaves. Persons A and B return to the mannequin with Person C and Persons A and B argue with Person C that the mannequin is a male. Then Person C fights back. Then B will remember that the mannequin was too formal and states that things should be loosened up. Person A claims that it is gentlemanly to put a man in a coat and tie. And all three argue, and consequently invite other people to look at the mannequin and join their opinion.

While each group expands, more groups begin to form, because, as we all know, each has a different opinion on something. So, what happens in this argument? The real identity of the mannequin is forgotten because everyone says that their view of the mannequin is "real". And because the argument is getting dangerous, there are those people who will prefer just to sit in one place and not get involved, or stop believing that the mannequin has a purpose.

And, again as we all know, when an argument gets heated, people suddenly turn stupid and say off-topic things just so they could prove that they are right. This is what is happening to the existence of God in this world. And then they'd ask how He's not responding. :x

But changes happen, and some people will either worsen or change for the better. However, like a stained piece of paper, no matter how much it is cleaned, the emotions of the people will look at the stain still, no matter how faint it is. So some people really can't accept that their enemies have changed for the better, and insist on repeating themselves blankly using the past to prove their points, and if the accused answers, they'd cut it in the middle of its conversation. So what happens, the accused simply shuts the fuck up, and lives on what it believes in, ignoring the desperate people who keep on trying to bring it down. Yes I'm a biased fag on this paragraph.

And that wraps it up, because if I were to present all the views each person holds about God, then not even 6,706,993,152 examples would make people understand it.

I Want to be Free

2009-04-22T12:36:00.002+08:00

It's not like I'm imprisoned for murder or anything, but I feel like I'm inside this cell that won't allow me to escape. Yes, it came into my mind before about using college to train myself to independence, or as a bridge to get my identity, something everyone needs. The only problem is that, there are people who won't let go and insist on spoiling this guy here and treating him like a five year old, on the sole basis that they think that he can't survive college alone. Talk about prejudice.

I mean come on, we all grow up. Not that I want to be away from you, it's just that I want to learn something for myself, and the only thing that's blocking it is your reluctance to help me step higher. You want me to achieve greatness, but not through the way I went, so you are pulling me back, then you will push me towards some place I don't intend to walk on. So now you are pushing me so I will move, and you will continue to push me because I won't budge on my own.

So this sounds like your usual teen drama, but I'm being true here. There are some things we can never understand, and there are things that aren't learned through books. If there was a step by step guide to "Living", then I would laugh my heart off. So, I want to be alone for a while, at least until I discover what I need to learn. Please, I know this is what you would call "Security", but man, this is stricter than a high security prison. Can't you realize that you're confining me?

Please, even if it means being in danger, even if it puts me in a world full of strangers, let me. Don't you think it would be fun to live your own life, meet new friends and discover new things? But you would rather put me in a group of people I already know, people who I know I won't be able to relate to, people like you.

What if in the future I fall in love without someone I don't know? Would you still reject it because she's a stranger, and set me up with a classmate from grade one? No, right? It's everyone's duty to help one another, but not control each other because you want to help them. There are tons of ways we can help one another without having to put them in cages for forced vaccination, or on a leash so they would stay safe when they walk outside.

I seriously thought that I can roam the world and finally see things clearly when this phase arrives. But as long as my neck is tied to your collar with GPS, then I'd rather go back home and quit my dreams, and do WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO.

Afraid... Just Maybe...

2009-04-20T11:53:00.001+08:00

Hm... Why am I sorrowful for the things in my life, and pretend that the brighter side of me is just a fake mask I use outside to show to other people so they won't worry. I don't want anyone to worry, as a matter of fact. But it is ironic that I make blogs like these so people who read them will be worried. But without a mean of self-expression, I feel like I'm a dead soul not knowing where to go to.

Yeah let's face it, life hasn't been smooth for any one of us. But how come I'm the only one who fails to smile truthfully behind the trials that life faces. Instead I'm left with this reasonless guilt and loneliness that only my own mind could create in me. I'm beginning to feel that maybe, just maybe, that I am afraid to face life as life. It's everyone's dream to live a smooth life, and yet I am not everyone. But I'm also not some dumb guy who wishes that his life be miserable.

I don't really know. I pray that I gain an identity, this identity I've been seeking my whole life. The man named Dale that I haven't known personally enough to identify myself with him. Who is he? I don't want to be known as the attention-seeking person that I really am, but as someone who's simply Dale. I don't want to force myself into locked doors just so I can go in and search for something inside. No, because if that happens, even without my conscious mind working properly, the people inside would just kick me out.

I'm tired and sick of running. My weary heart needs a place to rest on, needs to know who he is really, and what he intends to do with this thing called life of his. Sometimes, I wish I could just smile about things and no longer worry about stupid trivial matters. I would be pleased if that happens so, for once, I can stop thinking about myself for a while and think about what others think, understand what they understand, and leave the pain of my prison cell. I really want to let go, and live as I should. Really.

And because of this fear of myself that I end up arguing with my friends and those whom I consider very dear, in all honesty. And of course, nobody else can tell Dale who Dale is but Dale himself. I wish it was that easy :(

I'm Still Here

2009-04-18T16:18:00.001+08:00

Well, yeah. In a manner of speaking, I am still here, though sometimes I don't feel like that. We were making the yearbook one day and then a song came on my mind. Usually, you know the song but don't know its title. Well mine worked the other way around. I know the title but I don't know the song, or I forgot what it sounds like. But still, I'm convinced it's a good song so I kept bothering everyone in the computer room about how the song goes. And Cessna found it out. Next thing you know, I went searching for it in youtube, and found the lyrics, then pasted it on my Friendster about me page. It really does reflect a typical teenagers life, and that I'm not the only one who lives like that. Since, hey, a person can't write a song like that without experience, right. Just look closely at the words, and try to relate. It's not that new, or popular for that matter. But the hell I care if it's not popular.

I am a question to the world
Not an answer to be heard
Or a moment that's held in your arms

And what do you think you'd ever say
I won't listen anyway
You don't know me
And I'll never be what you want; Made of Pain.

And what do you think you'd understand
I'm a boy – No, I'm a man
You can't take me and throw me away
And how can you learn what's never shown
Yeah you stand here on your own
They don't know me
'Cause I'm not here

And I want a moment to be real
Wanna touch things I don't feel
Wanna hold on and feel I belong
And how can the world want me to change
They're the ones that stay the same
They don't know me
'Cause I'm not here

And you see the things they never see
All you wanted I could be
Now you know me and I'm not afraid
And I want to tell you who I am
Can you help me be a man
They can't break me
As long as I know who I am

And I want a moment to be real
Wanna touch things I don't feel
Wanna hold on and feel I belong
How can the world want me to change
They're the ones that stay the same
They can't see me
But I'm still here

They can't tell me who to be
'Cause I'm not what they see
Yeah the world is still sleepin’
While I keep on dreamin’ for me
And their words are just whispers and lies
That I'll never believe

And I want a moment to be real
Wanna touch things I don't feel
Wanna hold on and feel I belong
And how can they say I’ll never change
They're the ones that stay the same
I'm the one now
'Cause I'm still here
I'm the one
'Cause I'm still here
I'm still here
I'm still here
I'm still here

We exist, even if we feel like we don't, even if the world tells us we don't, even if our own world curses the day we were born, we exist. And we're here. Why? To find out why we're here, and live up to that reason.

Society's Dictations

2009-04-12T22:43:00.001+08:00

A Filipino is born to grow up for 20-25 years, take up Nursing or some other in demand course abroad and go to the States. Sounds ironic, but it is in fact true. Low salary jobs are being looked down upon, and in demand jobs, no matter how hard and uninteresting, are treated like gods. Welcome to society.

There are things that society dictates and everyone just blindly follows. This is what we call herd mentality. Because everyone thinks the same way, what will they pass to their descendants is a common truth. And those who think differently from society are outcast. What about the individual? Does he still exist?

The individual's definition in society is 'someone who is made to be taught the ways of society, to blindly follow it, and to lose his own philosophy in life'. A statement like 'The Philippines is a nation of servants' is true, because society says it's true, those in the upper hand said it, so therefore those in the lower state of life will speechlessly agree to it, because that's how they were taught.

This is the big problem. The reason why we can never attain equality is because a higher form of dictatorship, or society, creates the rules of the world. And breaking these rules will give you an enemy that's the size of a battle army. In a perfect society, no money, no life. Everyone who cannot buy their wants does not exist, and is wiped away silently from the society. And the "individuals" in this society agree to it, without reading the facts.

It's like this: "Kung ano ang uso, kung ano ang ginagawa ng marami, kung ano ang dikta ng nakararami, iyon ang dapat mo ring gawin, dahil iyon ang totoo". Am I right? So now why should you look down on a person who simply wants to be a person? Does a person have to do what other people have done? No.

The Internet is for... What?

2009-04-05T19:56:00.000+08:00

I know it sounds very different from the usual Dale Pradel to post something like this, but I'll be showing you a very, very disgusting video. The song's entitled "The Internet is for Porn", written by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx for the Broadway musical "Avenue Q".

A short background from Wikipedia:

Kate receives a phone call from her boss, the unpleasant, humorless Mrs. Thistletwat, telling her that she has heart replacement surgery the next day and needs Kate to teach the morning class, allowing her to teach on whatever subject she likes. Kate, excited at the opportunity, plans to teach about the Internet, but Trekkie Monster cuts in claiming that the Internet is only good for pornography. Kate claims that the Internet can be used for other things besides porn, but Trekkie Monster calls upon the other men of Avenue Q who all agree that the Internet is, in fact, for porn.

It's funny at first glance, and it is intended to be humorous. But the play actually has a deeper storyline. Basically, there's a guy named Princeton who is searching for a "purpose in life" and encounters several teen adolescent issues of the modern world, like porn, homosexuality and racism. According to the last line of the wikipedia article, Princeton worries that he may never find his purpose, but the others encourage him to cheer up. Life may be bad at the moment, but everything in life is only "For Now."

It has been parodied several times in YouTube with various characters portraying the roles, including Harry Potter, Sesame Street and even Hellsing. Probably because, like perspective says, those people only see the outer part of things, that is, humor, but can't really accept the fact that they are, indeed, being part of the issues discussed. Or porn.

So here's the video:

About Me

2009-04-03T16:42:00.000+08:00

This is my friendster About information. I'm planning on removing it and placing links to this blog instead.

I am someone who you'll think as loud, rash and meaningless. Spend some time and know that I'm just someone who's lost, looking for something I already have, yet I miss it when it touches me. I look up into the sky, hoping to see birds fly, thinking I'd actually find something, then I just see... nothing. So I open my ears to hear if I'd find that special something in the winds, yet I'm deafened by the loudness of the storms surrounding me, and how easily I'll get blown away by the tough winds. I'd walk miles and miles, in search of the thing that has been following me, though when I feel it, I let my hidden cowardice take me over and run as far from it. I cried, slipped, fell and even bleeded, but I continue to run, bumping others and not giving even a sorry, though they're only on the same path with me, looking for that special something in their own lives. On lonely nights I'd hum a tune of hope, and hope that everyone hears it, though it's only but a wish. On bright mornings I'd walk bare foot to see what it feels like to those who have no legs to go on their own journey. The storm came, the winds blew and buffeted the crazy man running in the rain, yet he runs, as if he was looking for a lot of people. He's wearing barely nothing, in tattered poor man's clothes, without shelter, while I just sit on the comfort of my tent, staring at him. When he comes near, I close my doors in fear. Days passed and the man's taking different paths, unlike what me and the others have been taking, sweating it out with no shelter, to look for the homeless, to care for the sick, to provide for the needs of the needy, and though I see this, I do nothing but walk on, to search for this thing I still haven't known. Days, months, years, lives have passed before me, and I haven't found it. One day, I fell ill. The rest moved on, and I was left in the scorching heat, losing my breath, then he came to me, carrying a tiny cup of water and washed my face with it. I woke up, and asked him, "is that all the water you have?", and to my surprise he answered, "yes." "but you'll die", "I've died before. I won't die again." Then I followed him and sang songs of love with him. And eventually we caught up with the groups of travelers, then he asked me, "aren't you going to join them?" then, giving one last look at his tattered clothes, his limited supplies, his scorned body, I left him. I left him! After giving up a lot for me, I left him! Then I went into a town and found my friends surrounding me, asking if I found it yet, I gave them the same answer I said before I set out, "no." Then I slowly realized, "why am I walking long roads, searching every road, when I haven't searched the closest thing to me, my heart. I cried, then he came to me, even more scathed than before, searching for the others. We had a little conversation and shortly, he left. But the way he lived, he told me all, what he was doing, and I was greatly moved by this. I told myself "if a man who had nothing can give up everything, why can't I do the same?". I'm too angry at myself, so maybe that's why I can't. But, walking this journey, I saw what is more important, and it was His call all along, His voice was with me, and I was looking for Him. The next day, I set out again, but not to search, but to aid those who have been searching as well, sing songs of joy and faith with them, and give what I have while I still can. Then I felt contented, and He smiled at me. Everything turned white suddenly, and I woke up again, I was sleeping on my classroom desk. It was indeed the journey of a life time, but perhaps, just perhaps, there may be more than that, it's a calling to find myself, now that I knew what He'd look like, I'll continue to know Him more, if I find His heart and His mission in others.

Expressions: Masterpieces

2009-04-03T16:26:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, silence is the key to conveying our innermost thoughts. Silence doesn't mean idleness, but rather, silence that works to communicate. Each wordless movement of the body through various instruments convey a message that words cannot express.

Basically, the goal of a person who wishes to express his thoughts wordlessly, may he be an artist, musician or writer, is to make his audience relate to his own thoughts prior and during his masterpiece. That's why the end products are called masterpieces, for they bear the thought and hard work of the person using his medium, and are pieces of the creator's life and mind.

More often than not, a person can express himself involuntarily, or without consent. When he suddenly feels that he needs to make something, it's actually his self unconsciously wanting to express itself and show the world something it wants the world to see.

It's not the amount of materials or quality of instrument used, but the dedication and sincerity of the writer, or artist, or composer to what he's doing that makes a masterpiece of great value. Of course, now that that's mentioned, it is therefore an important idea that the person expressing should be sincere to himself, in order for him to express himself truthfully, and thus make the masterpiece effective and beautiful.

If a person is crying and he wishes to tell someone his feelings but cannot due to various circumstances, his best friend is there: either his canvas, sheet notebook or plain paper. As he begins his work, the emotions he's experiencing is unconsciously being reflected into the masterpiece, and in the end a beautiful creation that's a shard of its creator's life. That's why it seems that artworks, songs and compositions always have some distinct character reflected in each.

Religiously speaking, we are artworks of God, made from clay with His hands and the thought of being a second caretaker for this universe. Therefore, we bear a unique characteristic, based on our Creator's thoughts, and developed through our own understanding and interpretation of this artwork called human life. And technically, the human flesh and soul is a shard of God's life. That's how important we are.

And of course, an artist would not just leave his obra maestra to rot and be damaged by changing climates, wild animals and destructive objects. A composer would not let his songs be plagiarized by anyone and be treated like nothing. And a writer would forever treasure his brainchild. In the same way, our masterpieces should not be left to rot and live only as memories. We should keep them, for as mentioned, they are part of our lives. Just as God never abandons His artwork, the more we should never forget the lessons expressed through our creations and compositions.

It is a truth again that not everything we make can be considered beautiful. Ugly thoughts will be seen as ugly. But just because they're ugly doesn't mean we have to throw them away. As a writer will keep on revising his work per proofread, the more we should strive to make our ugly, or imperfect works, beautiful. Yes, perfection is possible, not aesthetically, but the thought and fullness of the shard of life we breathed into our creations.

Blog Moved

2009-04-01T14:25:00.000+08:00

Well, I've decided to move my blog from Friendster (Wordpress) to Blogger and Multiply. Existing posts from my friendster blog can still be found here, though they're laid out pretty badly. Here are the links:

If you're reading this from blogger, my multiply is
eowpo.multiply.com
If you're reading this from multiply, my blogger is azwc.blogspot.com

Sad to say that I won't be updating my friendster blog anymore. To all those who have watched it cry and laugh loyally, it won't be gone, it'll just be moving into a new home. This'll probably be my last post in friendster. See you around. -Dale

More on Perspective

2009-03-29T11:59:00.000+08:00

Let me begin with a native American proverb, which was actually a golden nugget in our Tinig 3."We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."There's never a true reality in this world. Because in this materialistic and idealistic world, everyone has grown up with different perspectives in life. And thus, no one can claim that he has discerned the ultimate reality, for in this world, that does not exist, as long as we argue over our point of views. Nor is there a greater truth among truths, for that will also never be true as long as each person holds to what he sees as right.When my grandfather came to me to ask why I chose BSE among all courses to take, he said "Bakit ganun (lang)?". I only told him, "Kasi ganun.", and smiled. I can really never understand why this thing called society chooses what it wants to raise and what it wants to sink. The society of herd-minded individuals decide what is right and what is wrong in their part of the world. Sad to say, we all live in that part of the world, right?In this place controlled by monetary status and lack of principle, only high-paying jobs are accepted. Only in-demand abroad jobs are strived. There's more to college courses than what is "practical". Sometimes we have to look at it another way to find the true sense on it. If it was so stupid and worthless as they say, then can they explain why in the world did that "thing" ever become a full college course?A person like me, who like any other person has his own perspective and philosophy, cannot really say "what this world needs..." because the world will need what it wants to need, and not what the people dictate. Take global warming for example, a branch of society thinks that air conditioners and refrigerators are needed because of the heating weather, when in fact, it is these things themselves (or what they emit) that cause global warming.So there, we walk on our own shoes, we live by our own principles, we live like how we want life to be. But can it really be possible to live according to the will of the One we cannot see, when all the thrills and spills of the world are dominating over the individual self-searching soul in us?

Let it Be

2009-03-19T20:58:00.000+08:00

Today a very new and surprisingly painful realization came to me: that things are not always according to what we want them to be, or what we visualize them. The plans of the One above can never be truly deciphered. Sometimes all we need is just to do our part, and let Him do what he plans to do. If we don't get what we want, of course it's hard for us. But if we know, that God will always have a plan for us, even the greatest mistake can become the greatest miracle.The story of Job is a popular story found in the Bible. It tells of a good and righteous man named Job, whom God has blessed so much all of his life. One day, Satan dared God that if He removes all His blessings for Job, then the man would lose his faith. And so it happened, everything he has, that is, except his life, was taken away from him, and yet he never lost hope and faith that God would save him. The story concludes with God giving Job everything he had a lot more than what he had before, and Job continued to live a happy life.We are modern Jobs, right? We don't necessarily lose our basic needs and loved ones, but we do, however, experience failures and problems. But did you know that failures and problems are nothing but mere perceptions? If we see a thing as a problem, then it is a problem. If we see it as part of God's plan, then it becomes a bridge for optimism and trust in what the Lord has planned.So I'm surprised when people feel sorrowful over simple losses, which are not actually losses if they looked at them as different objects, because if we are sad for a misfortune, then perhaps we are also being sad about God's plan. So if we do believe in a God of love and strength, why should we doubt? Why should we question? All we need is to do our part, and what happens next is the will of God, which we can survive if we trust that something better will happen.Or even in human philosophy, religion aside, a positive view about misfortunes always seem to end in success and greater achievement. I guess this is what's supposed to happen to those who 'never give up'.Never give up, just do what you must do, and let it be. :)

And now... the end is near... ?

2009-03-16T21:32:00.000+08:00

I still believe that Filipinos have the greatest meaning of friendship among any nation. It produces tears during graduations, laughter and a sense of belonging. Friends that will always be together even after 25, or even 50 years, it is only here that you can see them. I asked an american I chatted with once about how she feels about graduation. All she said was 'nothing special, since I've had it four times already'. But here, a graduation is a step that breaks the boundaries of poverty in society, soaring higher than the skies of our dreams.

For when we graduate, it means that 'another chapter of life has ended, and another begins. Thank God.' Thank God indeed, that we have made it without failing and that we are one step closer to the real life. So when we cry during graduation, it's not because we are homosexuals who act so girlish, it's not losing our manhood, but it's our souls' ways of expressing the love and caring it has received for these years, that it will be hard for it to part with its friends.

Earlier this morning I also had a not-so-intimate conversation with a friend and her issues in life. I don't know if anyone else agrees, but I mentioned that the world we live in is only a part of another world, the world around us and that world, a part of a greater world, the world which we cannot see. The unseen world doesn't necessarily mean heaven or religious nirvanas, but rather, it is comprised of the parts of the big picture we cannot see, or simply, the other side of things.

Impartiality begins with carefully studying the other side's point of view over a certain thing. There's a reason for everything. If we know it, then that's the shallow look at it. If we do not know what it is, however, this is where we like to think that it is there in the world we cannot see. The Johari Window's hidden side wasn't put there to fill the gap and make the thing look like a window, but it is there to tell us that there will forever be things hidden from what we see.

So, I apologize for well, failing to view the other perspective. Well, the other other perspective. There can be more than two point of view in a thing. And those perspectives don't necessarily mean one good and one bad. Those reasons may either be good or bad depending on the person looking at it.

This reminds me of something someone showed me before. It involved a piece of plain white paper and a black marker. One student was asked, being shown the white paper, "What can you see?". The student replied "A white paper." Then the person drew a rather large black dot in the middle of the paper using the marker, then showed it again to the student. The person asked again, "What do you see?" The student replied, "A black dot."

Now what does it imply? When something clean is shown to a person, the person will see that thing. But when you stain that thing, the person will only notice the stain and totally forget about the clean part. So, what can we do? It would be either to clean the stain, even if it damages the thing, or cut a hole on the part with the stain, but then the viewer will see the hole.

Now, if you were being chased by a thousand raging bulls towards the edge of a cliff and you don't know what's below it, would you jump, or be slaughtered by the bulls? Of course you'll jump. If it's smooth down the cliff, then good for you. If it's rough down there, it will hurt, but the only thing we can do is wait patiently until rescuers come to help us. If nobody comes, then let the will of the wind follow. Why should we stop moving? Because it will only hurt more. Just wait. Patience, people, and wait.

And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, Ill say it clear,
Ill state my case, of which Im certain.

Ive lived a life thats full.
Ive traveled each and evry highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yeah, my way. Your way, their way. Together, we build the way of the world.

The Connection between Idolatry and Consumerism

2009-03-10T22:39:00.001+08:00

OMGz double post. Anyway, I'd like to point out that respecting someone too much to the point that you completely throw away your real life and literally worship that someone is worse than idolatry. It's exchanging your real friends for people who don't even give a damn on who you are. All those things you 'learn' from them are nothing more than invitation to consumerism, in the sense that if you see one of their shows, you will view another, and another, and another... Making their managers/station companies richer. It's simply spending indirectly on something that isn't really important.

If all you can say is "I love this guy who doesn't even know me! I'm her boyfriend/girlfriend!", then you are mentally out of your mind. A news clipping I took from JasperGadow.com regarding a certain obsession proves herd mentality and commercialism of things. Why would you listen to what cute teenagers on TV say, when you can just ask your Physics professor? Why would you prefer taking the advise of never-frowning singers over the advise and concerns of your own friend? It hurts man, it hurts.

Check this out: Interest in the Korean ‘Super Junior’ has rocketed through China of late, and that was readily apparent during an online fan meeting, organized for fans in the country recently. With only Choi Si Won making the cyber appearance, an estimated 210,000 fans logged in to the event in hopes of getting a question into the Korean singer, and quite possibly into the band itself. There were claims of some 50,000 questions being submitted, which is incredible considering only one of the band’s members was in attendance. It looks like a few local concerts might be in order to appease the seemingly unquenchable thirst the Chinese currently have for all things Super Junior...

China is a country that uses death penalty even on a simple case of homosexuality. Then the republic suddenly changes when some 'idol god' appears on the internet? You've got to keep your eyes on reality, man. If you think that nobody should just care about these things your doing, then you're wrong. It pains me to think that you don't see how you are affecting other people. They hate to admit their opinions, because they fear that you will fight them, or hate them in general for disagreeing with what your 'internet idols' say. Please, learn to differentiate between reality and TV.

Um, if you guys don't mind, I'd like to insert a personal message to someone I know in this post.

"Yeah, you know who you are. I thought you were someone I could lean on. I kept telling my friends how great you were because you were always there to answer my shits, and became a friend to me when I needed you most. Yet now, all you're concerned about is your fantasies, your stupid dance steps and your songs that only you can understand in this country. I can't go near you now, it's like I will be talking to a singing wall when I come and try to talk near you.

When I need your advice, you would reply to me, "OMG this guy is so cute!" or "Just watch them, and you will be happy." I don't remember the old you being like that. If you don't notice how greatly you've changed, then you haven't noticed as well how much this change has hurt me inside. If I can't get rid of this obsession, then the friend that I knew can be declared dead and replaced with this monster I'm facing. I liked, no, I loved the way you were before.

When you asked me which obsession was better, you answered it yourself and told me that the new you is better, without giving me a chance to answer. I would have answered "the first one", even though it hurt you a lot. Because that person is real, that person is someone whom you can talk to. He's not a idol, he's a classmate, he's a person. You can feel his skin and hear his voice, and make him do what you want him to do. This is what makes him way better than this shit you call "idol gods".

But in all seriousness, I miss you, your friends and the others you changed. I want to be your friend again, but believe me, making me join or ignore you won't help. Because that way, I would be repeatedly stabbing the old you that I loved so much. This is the last weapon I could draw with my weak body. If I still haven't changed you, then I give up on ever trying to bring back someone your obsession ruthlessly murdered. There was still a chance, but if you don't change, then it's dead. You can stitch an incision, you can transplant a failing organ, you can remove a spreading cancer cell, but you can never bring a dead thing back to life. Sincerely, your ex-friend."

So back to what I was saying, Idolatry and Consumerism in modern times is just as worse as putting a coin in an altar and worshipping it. The problem with most of us is we choose what we want to be right, and refuse to think that what is right to us may just be wrong. There are things that are right and wrong, there's an original database that contains them all. So please stop meddling with this database of right and wrong things by cheating the folder and editing the things you want, 'coz you are just lying to yourself.

"Pananagutan"

2009-03-10T22:18:00.000+08:00

There's this song that I know of. It's an old Church song composed by the late Fr. Eduardo P. Hontiveros, SJ about social action and responsibility over one another. Some may know it, but never actually come into grasping it's true meaning. Here are the lyrics to refresh your memories.

Pananagutan
Words and Music by: Eduardo P. Hontiveros, SJ

Walang sinuman ang nabubuhay para sa sarili lamang.
Walang sinuman ang namamatay para sa sarili lamang.

Tayong lahat ay may pananagutan sa isa't isa.
Tayong lahat ay tinipon ng Diyos na kapiling Niya.

Sa ating pagmamahalan at paglilingkod sa kaninuman,
Tayo ay nagdadala ng balita ng kaligtasan.

Sabay-sabay ngang mag-aawitan ang mga bansa.
Tayo'y tinuring ng Panginoon bilang mga anak.

The message is there: that we have a responsibility towards one another, that we were not sent to this world to live, or die alone. That we shouldn't spend our time alone and about what WE think to ourselves, but rather with what we think about OTHERS. Through serving others, we can indirectly tell of the words of Christ without having to memorize Bible verses, and we can even proclaim it without speaking. This is what we are called to do, both spiritually and ethically.Since the world is not always turning the way we want it to, it at least spins in the same direction as another person whose time of hoping has ended, and his desire fulfilled. It's what I've always been saying, that what we see can never be the whole totallity of an object. Since we are not omnipotent, and thus we cannot know everything, like how your friend thinks of your obsessions. So, before thinking of declaring a war with your friends, think very carefully about what you are defending, about what you are fighting for, and be afraid of losing your love to your friends, because we are all made to help one another, not to fight one another over things trivial as your favorite superstar(s).

Piano and Melodies

2009-03-07T22:52:00.000+08:00

God made man in His own image and likeness, but in turn man made God into what man wants God to be. We have this free will and intellect to use and abuse. Often, the latter part is what happens. Those who have learned abuse the weakness of the weak, and confuse them, and ultimately following blindly. This isn't just manipulation, it's also the case in obsession. So, how can one determine if he or she is being manipulated by his or her surroundings? A simple song to express one's self is enough.For example, if a person who is a true blue Filipino sings a Korean song over the million songs he or she knows, then it is obvious that the Filipino is being controlled by the Korean who originally propagated that song, even if the song was not meant to be directed at a foreign audience. You see, secretly evil things come in beautiful (or in this case, handsome) packages, and only the weak are easily attracted to it. Only the analytical will study the package and smell the bomb powder deep within before making a decision.If you ask someone to sing, or play an instrument without giving specific instructions, what do you think he or she would sing/play? It's complete up to the state of that person's mind to choose which music among the large collection of music in the person's mind will that person sing or play. If someone is preoccupied with dancing, then he or she might sing a dance song over a love song. When the person is 'emo', he would sing a song of emo, or simple loneliness. So the song is the expression of one's thoughts and current state of being.To this end, I will post a download link to a song I wrote that I previously posted somewhere below this blog entry, entitled "Tale of a Runaway Child", which narrates the story of man's separation from the True light from the point of view of an inspired writer.Download it here.

Failed Intellectualism et al

2009-02-18T20:53:00.000+08:00

As defined by wikipedia, intellectualism refers to any philosophy that make use of the intellect during it's flow. It's actually normal to be intellectual, since humans are made that way. However, when you use intellectualism for something that you know in yourself is wrong (example putting a simple yes or no question into hard words to confuse the one you are asking), then intellectualism becomes a failure.One tries to use his intellect to take advantage of others, by complicating simple things, by twisting another's perspective more than 360 degrees, by pretending you know things when others do not, though in truth you know nothing about them, but rather you would use your intellect in doing so. It doesn't really tell anyone that you are intelligent, but on the contrary, it shows the aware how dumb you are.Of course, no one can get away with it forever. Eventually, someone with responsible intellectualism will correct another's mistakes, and put that other in shame. There are still those who smile after being "pooned" so that the others won't realize that his intellectualism got surpassed. No one can know everything, but it's easy to fool someone to believe that. Who's the real person being fooled, the victim or the person taking advantage?The world does not revolve around one person. The ultimate truth is not just given simply to an individual. It is sought and worked hard upon on, though the idea that we are unique can confuse things. Trying to make yourself look smart is the stupidest thing you can do. I hope we all realize that.

They Say...

2009-02-08T21:03:00.000+08:00

I laugh at the fact that a lot of people doesn't have confidence in themselves anymore. It's always agreeing on what others say. One person stands up and speaks for himself, then the weak ones will follow and the rest will be pressured by the group to agree as well. It's like Dracula building a zombie army, and rather easily at that. Not that I'm talking about being individualistic about nearly everything about life, as we need each other to survive. Sure, there are no tyrants that dictate orders real time nowadays, but the modern dictators are more than one person: the world. The world can make us do things we don't want to do, it can make us hurt ourselves for the sake of "a sense of belonging". The fact that we exist already makes sense, that we are important to this place and we don't need to always say what others say.Each has his own music to write, a dance to perform, because we simply cannot follow the rhythm of others. Our rhythm will always be different from the rhythm of this world. Each beat we make will either make our music better or worse. But if all our beats were to be mixed up into one long rhythm, we no longer produce music, but rather a very intolerable noise.Sure, we all want to be "in", but don't we also want to be "inside"? I heard of a story of a naval alarm called "The Still". It supposedly means something to all passengers of a ship when it is sounded. Everyone stops everything they do, and evaluate the situation and think of consequences before doing any action, rather than panicking to death. This can be related to the flow of this place, wherein we simply do not enter a bus because half of the class is sitting on the bus. We have to stop and reach inside to see what should really be done.Sure things done in herds are common, but we shouldn't do it because the herd does it, but because we want to be a part of it. It's the individual person's mind actually functioning and thinking, rather than being dictated indirectly by his surroundings. The concept of "Modern Tyranny" cannot be explained thoroughly through words, but as unexpressed thoughts that only each one himself can decipher and describe. Cheers to influence. It's what has been making me so miserable.

Tale of a Runaway Child

2009-01-26T20:46:00.000+08:00

The first song I wrote on my new PSR-E413. And yes, I have the melody and the score planned out. I just don't have the software to write and print it. Anyway, just wanted to share the lyrics. Took me no less than 5 hours in 2 days to write this. Though I don't have a score/midi/mp3 yet, here are the lyrics I just finished tonight. None of these is final.

Tale of a Runaway Child
Words and Music: Dale Aldrinn Pradel

I. On that day of your birth I smiled as brightly as the sun,
Held you in My arms of love, danced in joy.
Life from breath, created With light as those from the stars,
Forever, My child in My arms.

A. Fruit of Your love, Filled with greatness and wisdom,
I am Yours, whole heartedly.
Yet I fell from You, From Your hands, through my own.
Far from You, never said goodbye.

II. Grew in strength and power Yet you reminisce none of Me.
I had tried to touch you; you left Me behind.
I have watched, though far from you Each step you took as you have grown;
Come to Me, and be Mine again.

B. You whom I can't see, Who are You to call me?
Are You part of this wounded me?
Lonely as I am, Come to me for a while.
Answer me, the cold heart that sighs.

III. Hold tight, I shall protect with My life; stand by Me still.

C. Why do this for the one You know not? Yet I am Yours.

IVD. I know one day that we'll love again. Into light, life with no end.

V. And now that I am here again, I'll never let you fall to harm.
I will live, I will die just for you.
You need not repay Me, Yet all I ask is this alone:
Touch My hand, share with Me your love.

E. I have realized: With no questions to ask,
I will do what You tell me to.
I will take Your arms And reach to be Your own.
Touch my hand, share with me Your love.

(Repeat V and E together)

Touch my hand, share with me Your love.