I don’t mind swallowing my pride in exchange of wisdom and enlightenment. If someone will ask me how many times have I done that, I would tell them I don’t know. I’ve lost count. But if pride is capable of providing nourishment I would’ve been severely obsessed by now.” – 名前がない男の人
I am very much thankful for the succinct explanations of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Diwa C. Guinigundo regarding the inflation rate, the real score of TRAIN law, among others. Totally comprehensive that even people who are not experts in global and local economics like myself can pick up that easy. (Just scroll to find the phone interview if you don’t want to watch the whole episode below.)
Thank you very much Deputy Governor Guinigundo and thank you Karambola for being an objective source of information.
The down side is it further irked me of the main stream media for sowing misinformation to advance their self-serving interests. I want to believe that you’re better than the one you’re accusing of being a dictator and slayer of your so-called freedom of speech or someone who bends the truth to suit with what they want the people to believe to keep them stupid and oblivious while making a malevolent political maneuver.
Come on guys, you can do better than that can’t you?
We grow so comfortable with stuff we built over time, be it work, social circle or whatnot that it becomes so hard to let them go. We’ve built it overtime with failure and success on top of the other in an odd pattern. We nurtured it with a concoction of sweat, blood, and tears.
Hard-earned is the word which makes it “rightfully ours”. Anything threatens to take that comfort away from us and it’s guaranteed to be the most gruesome bloodbath ever recorded.
But why give it up in the first place?
Because we either chose to awaken from our stupors or we are prompted by a pressing situation at hand to evolve or else we die, be it figuratively or literally. You might have figured out by now that life which is as dynamic as hell, changes irrespective of our status and how we feel.
Natural tendency is we fight for our lost “right”. Vehemently like a bigot gone bananas. We’ve become disillusioned with comfort that we fail to see that it already transformed into the misery of the known, boredom of the mundane, the small circle with iron walls that keep us from becoming the best that we ought to be.
We’ve come to worship the static. The same static that the medical personnel in the emergency room will cringe at the sound of which.
Because static is dead. Thermodynamics will attest to that.
And changes are nothing but the same medical personnel that is earnestly reviving us because we’re drifting away from the light. Because we chose the familiar comfort, the static, and death.
photo from homeplanetearth.org
Being genuinely thankful for the moment just as it is, devoid of expectations and invisible strings attached work wonders. Life’s drudgery is more bearable thinking every moment’s a miracle rather than decadence or a death warrant of suffering and meaningless existence.” – 名前がない男の人
photo from effectivemanagers.com
One thing that I can hardly get used to in terms of dealing with the younger generation today is the need to be funny in whatever you say or do. This is evident as I dumbfoundedly listen to such typical conversations that surround me every day. They are all cracking up while I’m left, with eyebrows crossed wondering how did that became funny at all. I just try to fake a smile or laughter despite my personal objections when I am expected to give an acknowledgement.
I am constantly reminded of Sharon Cuneta, dubbed as Megastar, who has a hard time not laughing all throughout the duration of her interviews for basically EVERYTHING. I don’t know and I can’t understand why she seemed to have her funny bones all tickled at the same time for no funny reasons at all.
It’s all very strange to me. I am not a grouch by the way and I know how to laugh a hearty laughter when I see/hear a good antic or joke. But to laugh at practically everything? Man, there must be something very fundamental that I’m missing here.
It’s for the same reason that I’m horrified when I am with a group of ‘jolly’ people who are talking to me. At the end of their banter, you would’ve heard a pin drop as they rabidly await what I have in response. Shall I just laugh? Do I need to scramble for a punchline? Do I smile instead without saying anything funny at all just to let them know that I am one of them? I don’t know. I am always thrown off-guard when I come face to face with this conundrum.
But they’re so used to it that their reactions are a reflex. They can automatically tickle themselves with the slightest stimulus that doesn’t even need to be qualified as ‘funny’ and laugh just as hard as if they’re going to sneeze and cough their brains out.
Laughing even if nothing’s funny at all isn’t as funny as I thought it was.
I must admit that one of my motivations in my quest to become an analytical writer instead of an emotional one is because of the intelligent lady that I’ve been mentioning here.
This commenced when she stopped reading me altogether. And perhaps one reason is my excessive use of argumentum ad hominem and emotionally-charged tirades in some of my posts. You see, in the realm of the intelligentsia I’ve learned that the use of such kind of arguments lower the quality of the discussion. Emo in itself is an unwanted guest unless it is backed by irrefutable facts. I just felt that she doesn’t want to be entangled with such kinds of hollow discourse and to people and writers who dumb down the discussion. And she may have seen me as someone not at par with her intellectual chakra and preferences.
Will this matter to her? Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter to me? Hell yes. But why?
My awe, respect, and admiration towards her never left me at all. And aside from that (which is again obviously emo in themselves) I also want to up my game a notch. I want to be able to deal with people of such intellectual prowess without wallowing in self pity and complaining about my perceived self inadequacy. I want to be able to speak to them squarely with my head unbowed. I want them to be unable to resist discussing things with me because they also want to hear my opinion. I want to improve and be a part of the class A, the cream of the crop, the elite. And I wont get there if I keep thinking I’m an outsider. To lift yourself, you have to dream of becoming better. You have to BE the one you dream of becoming. Because I am. Thanks to Jolens, that dream busted the idea of a better me out of my head, and made me very uncomfortable enough to get me to take action and grab that dream by the balls.
And if I may, I want to end this with an emo note.
I liked her and I like her still despite that I’ve only known her based on reading her personal accounts. Her magnetic waves are at the perfect frequency when it hit me home, all in the right places. I am no less than attracted to her cosmic magnanimity and enigma. I did and I still do. Although it evolved into something else, I just cant find the succinct words to describe it. And my feelings for her have become one big jumbled mess that is still behind my full comprehension.
I used to hear this when I was a child and it never left my consciousness since then.
And when I started drinking beer, the more it became a part of me. Whoever wrote this song is a genius.
Cheers to my childhood memories and of course, to the timidity-inhibiting and making-a-singer-out-of-everyone, heaven-sent substance! (Ok processed, but the raw materials are not!)
A mouth-watering view of a lady’s busts; preferably subtle and peeping just enough to tease the beast within a man and drive him mad with desire.”
Credit goes to whoever owns the photo above.
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance.’ – Hanlon’s razor
When a person is intelligent, and it shows, they are often referred to as show-offs and arrogant. Well it can be that that person is indeed arrogant, or it may just be an inaccurate perception of confidence for cockiness. There’s a big difference.
And it all boils down to envy to some that are in possession of what the others had only been drooling of. Come on, the dude has it and you don’t, how bad can that be? But depending on who you got on your side, one may go along with Small Mind in whining about the ‘injustice’ and hurling insults and labels to the ‘pompous’ intellectual. Or you can say along with Big Mind with eyes teeming with excitement ‘damn, he’s got his shit together, I’d be that too!’
If one will follow Big Mind, what he’ll do is work on his shit, adjust something here and there, and even emulate some of the qualities of the other until such time that they are no longer dizzy and intimidated with the mere presence of the intellectual. One will cease utilizing argumentum ad hominem and just have a plain conversation of the mind, devoid of prejudices and deal-breaker emo. What you’ll gain is a sound state of mind at par with the intellectual you once envied.
In today’s society however, Small Mind almost always gets the final say. Because they allow it to, of course. In doing so, they are unwittingly imposing upon themselves their self-created caste system in labelling the others as the intelligentsia and themselves as the proletariat and limiting themselves in the process. They strongly believe that it puts them on a morally higher ground which automatically demonizes the other and labelling them anti-poor, know-it-all, yada yada yada. They detest the disparity. They abhor it to the bone.
But what baffles me is that most of all the self-labelled commoners relish that hollow me-good-they’re-evil rhetoric. Perhaps because their ‘I am a victim’ tenet is further substantiated and justified – which actually accomplishes nothing on their part. They resort to this pathetic excuse when confronted to change internally to improve their plight. They’re appalled at the sight of the required monumental internal work to be done to transcend from being a parasite to a dignified man ready to roll his sleeves and start working towards the betterment of his identity and country.
And so they postponed confronting it, indefinitely. Left alone, the elephant in the room already evolved into a leviathan, whose presence they wish they will only see once and no more.
Over the weekend, my son recited from memory some dont’s-and-do stuff from the books he read, which he usually does.
‘Saan mo nabasa yan anak ko?‘ asked my wife. (Where did you read that son?)
Before he can answer, I quipped ‘sa mga mabubuting aral ni Hudas‘ as I hardly suppressed my laughter. (The gospel of Judas Iscariot.)
‘Hala sige,’ came my wife’s response with a comic reproach. ‘Adda la kuman tang tinapis na kan.’ (If only my father was here he would’ve hit you in the head!)
