Thank You

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people behind the Philippine Blog Awards for the recognition as a national finalist for Best Personal Blog! Being a finalist is more than reason enough why blogging should be part of my lifestyle.

I have been blogging before "blogging" was really even called as such. It was in 2000 (hmm, 4th year high school makes me a bit old). Then officially a Blogspot writer in 2003. Blogging, however, was an on and off activity. Then, in early 2009, came Brief Stories because of a friend's encouragement (I say thanks to you). I'm enjoying it now, and I promise to squeeze blogging in between work (I know) and my affairs with the outside world.

Also, to my readers and to those who voted on Flippish for the Viewer's Choice Award, I have to manage thank-you letters sent to you.

So, this is definitely a good start!

Educate Yourself

When we were still on all fours, the basics for survival were already imprinted in our instincts. Instinctively, we would thirst for food (our mother's milk would keep us nourished), then creep to the nearest side of the crib, clutch our hands to its frame, try to stand up, knees shaking, falter many a time, but, at last,  a lucky strike would come, reduced to on all twos (if there's such an idiom) -- an early memory of a want for knowledge.

The simple life in rural Philippines had me preoccupied with games I was so absorbed with (warp me back to the time before computers and PSP took over). I was always out on the streets playing all sorts of traditional Filipino games and often got some nice scoldings for staying out past 6 PM or after lunch -- on weekends, we had to take a siesta for us to grow (I'd grown accustomed to this reason) but headstrong as we were managed to escape out to elsewhere. Sure I had done lots of running around all my childhood and even had spiders in a matchbox or two groomed for fighting. But this doesn't mean I didn't have time to study. Well, I did -- for the morning homeworks, that is.

Then came the city life, an absolute contrast of the life I left behind. Smart kids would really be smart, they often get ahead, and high school would never be so elementary anymore, very different, a challenging one. When I told you I only studied because of some homework hanging, I shifted gears just to speed up, to catch up. I was up all night for a hard nut to crack in major subjects. High school really changed my attitude towards school and this went on in college.

Dedication and hard work pay dividends. I guess my efforts paid off. Graduation day was overly sweet that I mindlessly drowned myself in total stoppage from too much thinking of academic stuff. I thought I deserved some rest, zero pressure please. I literally stopped educating myself. I just missed my spiders.

But that was short-lived. Having just gained freedom, something dawned on me. I realized people are always on the go, time doesn't stop. Working as a young professional, I knew, would be tough -- so better quit complacency. There's still much to learn, and leafing my old notes does help a lot.

I got to keep on moving. "Learn, learn, learn," were the last words I heard from our manager when I packed my bags up for good.

Image: Cebu City, Philippines

Little Thoughts on Love

The good remains good so long as nothing butchers it, claiming only second best or worse, the worst. Love is a good thing that it deserves a place on the pedestal. But someone can always attest that it is never easy. Love on a journey is one hell of a ride! (speaking on behalf of the millions that chose to love or bumped into someone's heart -- this is beyond cheesiness!).

In relationships, the propensity to be idealistic is but normal. This perhaps started when we were kids when the neighbor of reality was a fairy tale of kings and queens, and of princes and princesses. It was a quest that ended a happy ending -- now, a wishful thinking. If the stars don't align in our favor, we land on the twisted side of the story we hoped and prayed for. Setting a high standard for ourselves only breeds disappointments and desperation, and we would become jaded souls searching for the true meaning of love. Should you be hard and impose a standard on yourself, then make it as conservative as it should be, because you would never learn to love yourself, always trying to prove anything or to meet any standard (bah! as if an expert! ha ha!).

When we love, with it are the capacity to share love and the willingness to be vulnerable. It only gets complicated when it is one-sided -- no reciprocation. Sure it sucks, stinks, that it hurts. The relationship turns sour, better separate ways before the drama explodes into climax. It wouldn't make sense trying to work it out when one already gave up. It takes two to tango.

Well, I can't think of any thing anymore. I feel dried up, squeezing my mind. To be honest, more questions are swirling around my head than just mere thoughts. But these questions are better off unanswered, I guess. Knowing the answers might stink and burn, and that would hurt.

The Golden Years

For some, it is very difficult having reached the age past one’s so-called youthful stage, although it doesn’t necessarily restrict the fact that old age is also a period of completion and fulfillment. Everyone is headed towards the same direction, where growing out a gray hair is just part of the process, the receding memory becomes more understandable much less amusing, and the circle closes in as we become children back again. The signs of aging are never unalarming as the children of their parents supposedly welcome a more considerate, thoughtful approach towards them, and, more often, have to yield to their own wishes.

I find it funny that I to have to write something about old age as an introduction. My mother just celebrated her 50th birthday a week ago, and my father his 51st last July. Ironically, I don’t want to tag them as an old, aged pair that has brought me to life. You can call me in denial all you want, because they are still young as I wish them as they are. I just love forgetting their age perhaps, and both of them still remain active in their endeavors, and still they can sing their favorite karaoke tunes. My mother loves The Carpenters, and my father just can sing anything including the contemporary, which makes us all children laugh out loud, not to our surprise, as he belts out the songs of our generation. He always tries hard to be on a par with us children, in a good way, especially now that he does email.

I just love the sight of them grow together. Their love story inspires their children even more. How many high school sweethearts ended up as husband and wife?

I am blessed to have not once seen them get into a real fight or throw a piece out of an argument, or a disagreement. They still manage to wave the white flag after talking it through.

True, they are imperfect beings, but their child is here thankful for everything. He will tell their story forever until his memory fails him.

Image: Cebu City, Philippines

A Taste of Temptation

One can only think of foolish, absurd things if he subconsciously or readily blanks himself out with the people who truly are concerned about him. Emptying the mind with flashes of family and friends, and filling it up with the conscious desire to jump to the unknown, but with a surefire fleeting little evil, dissolves his moral fiber (sounds familiar from the movie, The Girl Next Door?) into a figment of irreparable damage. If he could only hold on to the rope, then he would have already awarded himself with more than just a passing rate and saved himself from unpleasant repercussions.

Life is often like that -- a never-ending trial to endure and a hurdle of temptations. But time and again, on an obvious note, life is a choice you make.

Picture source credit: www.cornell.edu