In a Relationship…

….sometimes I wonder, what it takes to start a serious committed romantic relationship. How will you decipher whether a person is intrested to be in a relationship with you? Does he like you as a friend, just a friend, or a potential significant other? Should there be a certain span of time for feelings to develop when one can say that he likes you more than a friend? Should he immediately express, or at least send signals, the initial attraction and connection he felt for you? What are the signs? What if he gives you mixed signals? Confusing right?

What if you like him but you are not sure if he likes you as well? How would you act and react? Should you give hints that you’re into him? What if you took the lead and got rejected? Will it hurt a lot? How will it affect your self-esteem? What if you don’t want to get hurt? Should you just enjoy his company and let things take its course, go with the flow, expect nothing? Should you entertain other possibilities from other persons despite your feelings for a certain guy? What if someone from your past reappears professing his feelings for you? What if there are other guys you have met who constantly shows interest in you? Even more confusing isn’t it?

Are you ready for relationship’s whirlwind hurly burly? Are you really the relationship type this time around? Can you handle being in a relationship? Will you wait for the right person also known as "the one" for you?

The only answer I can think of is….Nothing’s for sure when you take in consideration other people’s feelings toward you…The only thing I believe and continue to strive for is TO BE THE RIGHT PERSON…whoever comes… You are the One, I AM the ONE… If you like someone who doesn’t like you back then it doesn’t matter…he may not be the right guy for you… but as it is, you are the right person…YOU are the ONE…

How will a right person meet his right guy, his OTHER ONE? A One meeting another One…hmmm…

Perhaps when they reach a point when they recognize, accept and celebrate (in such an order) each other’s Oneness — the unique, self cultivated Oneness you and the other person possess. Instead of being two separate individuals they become a "coupled Ones"…when and where  there’s an interdependence of two RIGHT PERSONS…TWO ONES…

So are you really ready to be in a relationship or are you thinking of initiating such a possibility? Hmmm…then…become the ONE, the right person you can be…and I guess the other right person will just come along…It’s easy to recognize the right person, the one for you when you yourself have become a RIGHT ONE.

Choosing a Life of Joy

          There are a lot of questions that people can objectively answer or give a specific and outright response. What did you have for breakfast? How are your studies? Have you learned something? How did you do that? These are questions that we tend to encounter in everyday living and it seems that people can somehow, more often than not, readily answer them. Nevertheless, there are simple questions that entail  not-so-simple answers. I think these kind of questions are the ones that draw its answers from within, deep in a person’s heart. One of such kind is the question Are you happy, an inquiry that makes the inquiree assess one’s self and feelings. Most of the times, there is a follow-up to such an inquiry, the how and why. I believe it is significant then, for  happiness or joy to genuinely exist, to know or at least feel the reason and purpose of one’s joy and the matters that bring about or hinder such human condition. Perhaps an intimate conversation with a friend whom I consider to embody joy will give light and warmth to the topic.

  Having a circle of gay friends is already a source of joy for me. In my own experience, it is true that gays are fun to be with because they are indeed joyful people. It does not mean that all gays are joyful but most of them naturally do. Cholo is one of my friends that for me seems to be particularly joyful. He is very talkative, gregarious and humurous especially when he starts “making chika”. No wonder that he is a public relation officer in his school, PSID, at Makati. He also knows how to cheer people up especially when they are down. During our conversation several days ago, I found out that he is a joyful person because it brings positive energy to him. He said that being happy makes him more inclined to be sociable and attract new friends. It is also therepautic in a sense that being joyful allows him not to think of negative things about himself and other people l. As I see it, joy blocks sorrow by occupying a space in him that can either be filled with  joy itself or sadness. He also mentioned that  being joyful  allows him to express his feelings freely and be mindful on the things that are closest to his heart: his family and friends. Life is complicated and hard but when you are joyful it becomes easy, pleasurable and worthwhile. Another significant point that he raised is that one must come to terms with one’s failures and weaknesses in order to be happy. One must learn to love one’s self and embrace whole-heartedly  what one has and what one is.  He narrated the time when he and his family grieved for the loss of their father to cancer two years ago . It was that time when he realized that life can be really difficult and unpredictable.  We sould enjoy each moment we have with our beloved and be thankful for every day that has been given to us. Being joyful is celebrating life for Cholo. When I asked him how he remain joyful, he shared  that believing there’s another day of new possibilities in life as well as a chance for becoming better are powerful reasons to be joyful. Life is full of uncertainties but Cholo chooses to be happy.

In exploring what allows people to be joyful, I strongly believe that knowing the purpose of one’s life, aspiring for growth,  and embracing what one has and could have are already great reasons to be joyful. Along with these realizations are the people whom we care and love for as they love us: our family, friends and other people in our lives. Joy also demands a recognition of its nemesis, sorrow. In order people to experience joy, they must allow themselves to experience sadness in certain moments of their lives. The problem comes into play when some people are trapped in this world of grief and sorrow. Some people also deny their sorrows and problems while struggling to escape from them. There are others who believe that their problems are reflective of who they are: dysfunctional, uncapable and passive as if they live to be doomed. We should all realize that we have the power to choose and create out lives. This can be done by accepting who we really are which includes our strengths and weaknesses as well as our capabilities and imperfections. In doing such, we begin to celebrate ourselves as persons full of potentials and opportunities to become the best we could ever be. We then believe that we are what we make out of our lives. Ultimately, we believe that we have the will and power over our lives. Choose a joyful life. Live to be joyful.      

Enlightening the Ambiguity

Losing a beloved is distressing but what’s even worse is when your loss lacks clarity and certainty.  In this case, the bereaved does not only try to cope with the loss but also attempts to know and realize who and what has been lost. This type of loss is known as ambiguous loss, a loss that cannot be fully grasped because the nature and the cause of the loss may not be fully known or comprehended. How can one resolve or move-on with something that is not understood? To shed light into such kind of ambiguity as well as share a story of hope, I interviewed my friend’s mother who I consider an epitome of hope. According to her, hope is what fuels life and inspires one’s self to get on with it  despite experiencing great tribulations and tremendous sufferings in life. Hope is more than a dream or  an aspiration, it is a conviction that when the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit rejoices for what it has found. It is a transformative force that allows you to believe that failures are pathways to perfection, there is a divine order in the world  and there is life after death. Death befalls when hope vanishes as the heart would break if it were not for hope.

Tita Mina is the mother of a close friend in high school. Tita Mina is the eldest and the only girl in her family. They are six in the family including her parents and her three younger brothers. Her parents got separated when she was just 20 years old. They were the second family of his father. As she approached her adolescence, Tita Mina realized that she had a lot of half-brothers and half-sisters from her father’s first wife. “My father have 16 children including us; 9 from his first family and 3 came from his third family that  I discovered 2 years after he left mama”, she honestly disclosed. Her mother and father never got married because her father is still seeing and supporting his first family. There are times when her father would only stay a couple of days in their home and eventually go back to his first family.  Tita Mina mentioned that her mother and father would often quarrel with each other. Mostly, it was because of money and there are times when her father would suspect her mother of having an affair with other men. She told me that her father was very “seloso”, strict and domineering. She was never close to her father. There was a time when her father became less and less visible in their home until that moment came when she never saw him again. She mentioned “My brother and I were very much confused that time, we never really knew what was happening. After a year or two we finally learned that my father “got tired” of us and his first family and had his third family in the province.” Tita Mina’s father never supported them since he left her mother when she was 20. Her three brothers were all teenagers back then. When her father left them, Tita Mina’s family became more disorganized. Her mother became physically weak due to old age as well as the torment of the separation while her brothers became emotionally unstable. Her mother and her brothers had a very silent grief about the loss of their father. This can be attributed to the disenfranchised grief they experienced being the second or illegitimate family they were. His youngest brother even left home because of the family’s unfortunate condition. She added, “When Jon left, my mom gave up all her efforts trying to put our family back together. She was old then, there were times when I would see her waiting by the window dumbfounded until she nearly lost hope for Jon’s return”.   

In the case of Tita Mina, she never gave up because of what has happened to her family. She never lost hope and trust to God. “It was a painful experience but if I let that pain devour the last piece of hope I have in my heart, then I guess all of us would have died of hunger back then. Instead, I believed that there was a purpose why those misfortunes took place. I saw it as a challenge that I must face early in life. I worked harder, took a part-time job at  National Bookstore until I graduated. I became the breadwinner of the family, the last “stronghold of a broken home”. When I graduated, I was promoted and became a manager. I sent my 2 brothers to school until they finished college. Things started to come to us. Jon went back to us after finishing his studies, Harold worked as an OCW while Mike finished Nursing”, she proudly recalled. She said that when you get into a place where everything goes against you as if your world is falling apart, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn on your side. At present, I believe that Tita Mina has partially moved on with her life. Nevertheless, she admits that the pain of such loss would never go away. There are still times when she is trying to figure out what really happened to her family back then. She tries to look for reasons that are left unexplained to her and never stops hoping to find the answers. Hopefully, hope shall enlighten the ambiguity.  On the lighter note, she tries to enjoy her life with her own  family. She told me that problems in life are essential to make us stronger and better persons. Without such painful experience, she could have not been who she is today: a loving, faithful and wise mother. Her last words to me are her favorite words from the bible that she cross-stitched, framed and hanged on her wall to remind her the rewards of hope, the “miracles” in her life. She solemnly uttered, “ For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened”.

Hope is the breath of life- in hoping we live, in living we hope. We can be more hopeful by believing, having that personal conviction that  a new life begins each day after the darkness of night. Hope comes in recognizing that even when things goes bad for us, we shall still find our life good and worth living. People who dwell in their misfortunes and spreads hatred to the world are blinded and would never see hope in their lives. These people experiences eternal damnation in their death while those who hope rise from their deepest graves. One should start celebrating for what one has and live his or her dreams rather than mourning for what has already been lost. As William Lynch expressed, one “must be able to mark off the areas of hopelessness and to acknowledge them, to face them directly, not with despair but with creative intent of keeping them from polluting all the areas of possibility”. In hoping we obtain a chance, may it be the 2^nd or 20^th,  a risk worth taking in life for us to continuously live and find our dreams and fulfill our countless possibilities in life. There is no harm in hoping, because by it  we shed light to life’s ambiguities and move on to life’s noblest truths.

Where The Inner Strength Resides and Perpetuates

I would like to begin this reflection paper by quoting Helen Keller, “I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do”. This quotation is very memorable because it was sent to me by my cousin through text several days ago. I received this message minutes after I texted him about the problem I was having back then. Vincent, my cousin, is an only child of my aunt who single-handedly raised him without the help of his father or our grandparents, the parents of my mom as well as my tita. Actually, Vincent is a love-child. My aunt was 19 back then when she was  impregnated by her boyfriend. Her boyfriend, who was an aspiring lawyer and the only son of a wealthy haciendero, loved my aunt and really intended to accept his responsibilities for my aunt as well as to Vincent. Unfortunately, his parents could not accept what had happened and eventually sent him to the States to finish his studies and permanently reside there with his older sister. On the side of my aunt, my lolo and lola got very angry about the situation especially when they were informed that the father left the country for good. They could not accept the disgrace that my aunt brought to the family name. It took 20 years, two years after my grandfather died, before my grandma and my aunt fully reconciled. During the early stages of my aunt’s pregnancy, my other titos and titas were suggesting for an abortion. My mom was one of the few who insisted that she should continue her pregnancy and raise the child on her own. My mom and my aunt were like twins. Since childhood, they were the closest siblings among the 12 children of my grandparents. To make the story short, Tita Ofelia went on with the pregnancy and raised Vincent  in the best way she could as a single parent. Months after her childbirth, she went back to school and became a working student to support herself and Vincent. In the morning Vincent would stay with us at home. Tita Ofie would pick him up at night after her part-time work as a saleslady in COD at Cubao. This kind of set-up went on until she graduated and got promoted as the assistant manager of the said department store. This life account of Tita Ofie was narrated by Vincent himself to me last week when I interviewed him for this reflection paper about courage and resiliency. He said that his courage and resiliency has its roots. Now, I understand where such strength of character came from.   

Vincent is like my second brother. Although he is just a year older than me, I can truly say that he is more mature, independent and prudent than the rest of the 21 year-old  friends that I have. He initially shared the story of his mother when I asked him how he remains to be what he is; strong, courageous and resilient especially in times of struggles and hardships. He even mentioned that courage is not false arrogance, it is not about grandstanding or being recognized that you are strong or full of courage. For him, “true courage comes within, with the desire to stand up for what you believe in and fight for it despite the great possibility of failure or defeat. Life is hard,  all we need is courage, love and being true to one’s self”. He even narrated a familiar story. When he was 8 or 9, he had this little friend who went home crying because he was bullied by a group of kids at the streets. The bullies borrowed the water gun of his little friend and refused to return it to him. Upon knowing this, he went up to the streets and faced the bullies. He demanded an explanation from those kids which later on ended in a fist fight. Afterwards he went home with  the water gun and some bruises on his face and arms. After the story, he revealed that the little friend who cried for his water gun was me. He added ”being courageous, Czar, is fighting for the right even though a lot of times being rightful is painful. Courage is facing one’s fear. The greater the fear, the more courage you need. Courage is something worth fighting and even dying for. It is what true heroes are made of”.  When I asked him about resilience, he said that resilience is being firm. In the process of standing up for something, there are forces that would try to break you, pressure you to give up. He explained that being resilient entails a continued courage,  believing that you can not lose yourself or become lesser the way you are at different stages of your struggle. You may be hurt at some points of your battle but you regain strength and have renewed faith that you can surpass the struggle. Resilience comes after courage, it is not giving-up something that your courage initially started.  It is holding-on with what you believe, being who you are no matter what.

Based on my interview as well as to some other experiences I had in life, people are courageous because they have the desire and passion to stand-up for what they believe and they are willing to accept any consequences just to do what is right, fight for what is right. Courage is not merely being brave or full of pride, it is knowing that somehow you may fail but one decides to accept such risk of defeat. As the quote  at the beginning said, “It is knowing that I am only one but still I am one”. Despite overwhelming odds,  a courageous person pursues something he believes that he can do. This also applies to people who recognize who they are, what values the should adhere to and how one’s possibilities in life can be turned into realities. Resilience on the other hand is a continued persistence of courage, it is holding-on with what we truly value in life. It is not giving-up, its is a decision to move on and go on with the struggle with the conviction that one will succeed, one will triumph at the end of the journey. Perhaps people are less courageous and resilient because they are not fully aware of their potentialities and are stuck with their incapabilities in life. Moreover, they bow before they fear clouding their inner strength in the process. Some people are also unwilling to take meaningful risks in life. They reside within their comfort zones even though with the awareness that one can make a difference. Thus, if one can only realize that fear is nothing compared to who we are and what we can do about it, then there will be more courageous people in this world fighting for what we believe in. We will be more resilient people continuing to protect what we value and become fully ourselves.   Courage and Resilence are where our inner strength, our authentic self,  resides and perpetuates.

     I have always believed that love is undefinable and unfathomable. Whatever paradigm I share here is a just an attempt to humanize love as I know and experience it to be.

     Love is often associated with feelings. When I was younger, I thought love is just an amalgam of excitement, attraction and desire.  There’s usually a strong emotion or attraction towards a person.   When I love, I become inspired and motivated to do things, traverse that extra mile, be better and more appealing to my apple of one’s eye.

     As I grow older and a little bit wiser, love seems to be more than the positive and physical associations I had. It changes or evolves to a more complex understanding involving the values and principles that I nurture.

     Love is a paradox, it can cause both pain and joy. It can hurt as well as uplift one’s feelings. There seems to be a a kind of self-fulfillment arising  from self-sacrifice/compromise. It is a choice I take albeit the incalculable risks and outcome that lies ahead.

     Love is its own reward yet sometimes it’s expectant to be loved back. Thus, it is both a present freely given yet there’s a mutual/circular movement of such generosity. Moreover, there’s a formation of a "new I/me" in the "new we/us". Love becomes an interdependence of the "I", "You" and "Us", a trinitarian concept. Collapse of ego boundaries, self-transcendence and letting go are also encompassed by love.

     Quintessentially, love leads to growth. I would have wanted to discuss, elucidate and explore each paradigm I stated but I guess my future blogs will be a good avenue for them.

     Finding love as I see it is finding a rare diamond amidst tons of invaluable minerals/elements/particles that compose the earth. Actually "finding" is an understatement as diamonds are often cut to precision,faceted, polished, graded, etc. Love then is found and nurtured. Amidst all the pressure underwent, a rare diamond emerges to its glory. Like a diamond, love encapulates its extraordinary brilliance because of the many facets shining in unison. The facets are paradigms. The 4Cs are like the criteria of genuine love (paradox, circular, interdependence and growth).  Love’s beauty lies in its complexity. Its true test lies in longevity. Diamonds are forever as love transcends time and finitude (human finity, possibilities, being and death).

     Complex as it were, I always believe that loving is gently leading the beloved back to himself. Genuine love for me then is when and with whom I can truly say, "I’m finally home".