Caffeine Heaven

The book of Matthew in Chapter 6 (verses 25-34) had this to say on the subject of worrying:
25″Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
28″And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

One of the most stirring exercises that I can remember in questioning, and strengthening, our faith has to do with writing all the miracles that we can ever remember God perform. The Bible is littered with examples of His awesome, majestic, and redeeming power from the 10 plagues of Egypt to the parting of the Red Sea, from Elijah in Mt. Carmel challenging Baal’s prophets to a contest of “rain calling” to the various miracles that Jesus performed in his years of ministering. Why this exercise is so powerful and touching is because it reminds us, again and again, of the capacity of God’s power (something that we frequently forget or ignore) and the immensity of His love. That we have our life today, despite this tragedy and the countless others that have come before, is a testament to His faithfulness, and He has never wavered in His promise that He will never leave us nor forsake us.

I write this because I feel moved by the events of the last two days. Out there, there is incomparable grief, a never-ending well of sorrow and anguish, anger and even hatred. But God reminds us in Matthew 6:27 that worrying can never add a single hour to our life; that it is in Him where we will find all the things that we will ever need. He loves us so much, and cares for us in ways we can never even comprehend; He sent His son to redeem us from our sins, and His love is eternal, unchanging. He hears every prayer and responds in ways that, while they may not fit our wants, are certainly what’s best for all of us.

I know all this is easier said than done; in the midst of all these trauma, only a few can find refuge in His words. Many will question, and many will doubt!

The Bible says, in Matthew 17:20 “He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you”” Our faith reflects how much we trust Him. It begins from deep within, and is tested and reflected in every thought and every word, whether spoken out loud or whispered in silence. When we believe, that is where faith truly is; and when we truly believe, then we stop worrying.

In Hebrews 11:1 faith is defined as “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Such is the nature of our faith. When we are most challenged, when that very same faith is put into question, it is our response that will define the things we truly believe in. If we truly believe in the big God that we have always claimed He is, these are the times to put that faith into action. Such is the nature of this faith: “We trust that He hears, we believe in Him, so we stop worrying! We say what we believe with utter conviction to the very last fiber of our being, and we stop worrying. We say our prayers and claim His answers, and then we stop worrying!”

Take heart! Let go, let Him!

Let your faith carry you through!

The true character of a person gets tested in times of adversity, not when he comfortably sits in a flush sofa and sheltered from the rest of the outside world. Today, that character is being put into extreme test for each and every Filipino - regardless of whether you live in the Metro or not. Manila has bowed to the wrath of Bagyong Ondoy; some places sit under more than 6-feet of floodwater after a torrential downpour that broke precipitation records all the way back to 1967. Strangers, friends, family, countrymen alike are experiencing a disaster so unexpected, we are like a deer caught in the headlights of a bad-tempered Mother Nature. I don’t have to be visual and vivid in my descriptions, we all know what we are going through right now. The pictures that you see on TV, Facebook, and all other news sources do not even approximate the magnitude of the calamity. And yet, those pictures in themselves are already pretty overwhelming.

Yet, I see that some people find these times a little amusing; or if not, then perhaps just another moment that’s cause for inconvenience, that and nothing more. Ah, Facebook! The ultimate freedom wall for self expression and untainted news coverage. What makes Facebook so appealing is that it paints the “poster” in truly unbiased, untainted light subjecting himself to interpretations that peels off his guises and exposes who he truly is and what he is truly made of. I say this because plastered across countless Facebook walls are the well-wishes of the compassionate and the folly of the insensitive. You see on one end the calls for help and relief aid, for volunteerism, for donations; on the other end, people who casually delight in the fact that Manila has turned into a “Waterworld!”

There is nothing funny in all that has happened. True, the Filipino has the unwavering dedication to vault over problems or power through them, an innate talent to draw upon good thoughts, shrug a shoulder in a protracted dismissal of the ails that pain him, and the uncanny ability to put on a mask of smiles to hide that which consumes him underneath. But sometimes, we sorely and irresponsibly displace these defense mechanisms. They come in various unconscious forms, shapes and gravity one instance being now in these times when instead of voicing out concerns for the better part of the city that is under water, we go about bitching and whining over beautifully organized weekend schedules that got ruined by the storm. We mean no harm, I know. But in the same way, we totally lose sight of that which is sensitive and that which is important.

If we have bitched over brownouts and a slow internet connection over the last 24 hours, if we whined over schedules and appointments that never happened, if we thought that the pictures of submerged houses were mildly entertaining, that people on their roofs are experiencing an “adventure”, that floating cars and raging floodwater are “fun” to look at, if we have resorted to collecting pictures and videos because documenting is a good way to pass time while we sit bored and camped in, comfortable and warm if I may add, then we need to re-examine our values system altogether. “You seriously need a head doctor!”

What happened was beyond bad! The first impulse should be for compassion, a desire to help, a genuine worry for those that you know and love and might still be caught in harm’s way. We might all be made differently, but in this, we should be one! A lot of people need help, the time to whine over our trivial status isn’t now.

The lessons are obvious, and I quote: “No place is ever safe. Nothing lasts forever - nice cars, grand houses, even family and friends that constitute the very essence of what is fragile in our lives. Everything is temporary; life is fleeting - we could even lose our own in a second. The only thing we could hold on to are the relationships that bind us together, and a relationship with our Maker. Because to the very end and beyond, that is the only thing we can ever treasure and bring.”

How did you fair? I can only wish you scored an A+!

Now enough of the reaction! It’s time for the action!

The nightmare that is Manila traffic - really, I don’t see I can how I can make that any clearer and more telling. That phrase alone is already enough to conjure Voldermort-like terror, Hulk-like rage, and Freddie Kruger nightmares in most Manila commuters. There is no other place you would want to be in, day and dusk, than in the streets of Metro Manila wasting your time waiting for the car ahead of you to move another inch, all the while inhaling the glorious air and soot and dust and whatnot that the polluted city air has to offer. And, just when you think it can’t get any worse, you get stuck in a traffic jam caused by motorists going counterflow, or the MRT breaks down and you need to spend an extra 15 minutes inside the most astute of Manila’s prisons, the Metro Railway Transit.

When you consider it, the MRT is the perfect microcosm of a larger Manila: it’s congested, the system oftentimes breaks down without warning, the profit doesn’t get re-invested back into the business and yet the MRT is still mired in tax debts to the four cities along its route (Pasay, Makati, Mandaluyong, Quezon City), and the passengers not respecting the rights of their fellow passengers (more on that later) providing perfect example for the decay in social values that we have come to embrace as the new norm - the best way to describe it all would be, chaos personified! Consider, just the amount of force you get from all the pushing and the pulling would have been enough to roll a train on its belly had it been directed solely to that end. The number of breakdowns and delays and unscheduled maintenance calls would shame the Titanic during its maiden voyage; the age of the trains made inconspicuous only by the existence of two older train systems - the LRT and the PNR; yet, age doesn’t seem to be an issue because with the stress and strain each train is getting from an whole day’s work, who wonders if one of these days a train just unexpectedly bursts at its seams just from the sheer amount of people pressing along its crumbling walls.

Your typical 60 minutes at the MRT goes like this: you climb up 60 stair steps, what is equivalent to a 3-storey building, up to the train platform because the escalator is predictably broken; you line up behind at least 20 people - you unconsciously chose the shortest line because nature has taught you that shorter lines get you to your goal faster - only to realize when you face that elderly ticket lady that you dont have the exact amount and this window doesn’t issue change, so you roll around and get behind guy#45 in front of window#2 and by now you have lost 10 minutes in your mini-cat&mouse game with yourself; prior to entering the station, you line up, again, leading to the security check where the tiniest opening of your bag zippers has convinced them you are not a terrorist, after which you simply entrust all your life and loved ones to the Merciful God who you know won’t lead you to any harm; and as if that isn’t troubling enough, you queue up, yet again, behind clusters of people who stand too close to the platform edge in a move that would make NFL defensive linesmen jealous all in the effort to get themselves ahead of the pack entering the train.. Now, the hard part! Your boarding of the train is essentially a crash course with the riot police; the only way you can get on the train, is if you push people in front of you (and even if you don’t, no worries, somebody’s bound to push you in anyway so you still end up pushing the guy in front of you) enough that they compact themselves inside the train in a manner that would have made sardine-consumers ecstatic and super-satisfied. Once inside, you negotiate the whips and turns of the train by adeptly leaning to the guy beside you because heck, no amount of inertia can dislodge all of you from your intimate and tight embrace. In the most blatant cases of disregard for respect and etiquette, you see pregnant women, the elderly, wives with two children playing monkey on handle bars they can barely reach because Mr. Makati in the snappiest of outfits is feigning sleep while comfortably sitting in the corner. You enjoy what’s left of the airconditioning which has since been reduced to a hum and a fan; you savor the exotic mix of scents and flavors that caress your tortured nostrils; you delight in being stepped on and in stepping on others toes in return, because what else is left for you to do? Ultimately, you close your eyes and invoke all the saints and gods and demigods that you know, asking for them to grant you powers that would allow you to make time pass by as fast as you can and until you get to your destination. And then, the exit from the train! If “counterflowing” cars are bad, imagine “counterflowing” commuters! As the red sea of sweaty people part before you to give way, a sudden rush of people from the outside come inrush back the gap. You drown in the portents of human congregation, like swimming upstream in a river gorging after the torrential rains. You elbow and push, you abandon etiquette and respect, you fight for your life lest you exit 3 stations down the road from where you would have wanted to be.

And just when you think all is well in the land where you dwell, you line up yet again behind hundreds that await their turn behind ever unreliable turnstiles. As you walk up, you see lines merging, people cutting in, turnstiles malfunctioning and your beloved line disbanding only to squeeze themselves into neighboring lines, and some completely ignoring the line and walking up to the turnstile as if they are the President; you wonder if your math teacher in elementary wrongly taught you that a line is made by drawing a single stroke through perfectly aligned dots because you see a line, and then you just see a jumble of people pretending to form lines; and then you realize that human behavior can never be modeled by straight lines, but rather by the elegant Brownian motion exemplified by gas molecules in a confined space. There’s bound to be a tustle here and there, some wee bit of shouting, confrontation and negotiation.. the whole enchilada. The exit alone will take you 15 minutes as you are treated to a pure and unscripted display of human emotions in bold technicolor - anger, patience, discomfort, annoyance, rush, pain, fortitude, resilience and a basketful more - and that is just on an average day. Imagine what a bad day looks like.

Why do countless people put up with all this crap, you ask? Because it’s cheap, and it’s faster than the oftentimes glacial EDSA traffic and because it’s a test of patience and character - yes, I just made up that last one. Painfully enough, this is the only business venture I have ever seen that is so swamped with consumers yet the owners fail to funnel the profit back into the business to grow it further. You do not see new trains or new tracks or new and more reliable cable systems, you only see band-aid fixes and the continuing decay of the infrastructure around you. Wherever the close to PhP60mil in daily revenues go to, one can only imagine.

Where this is the part that I am supposed to make a plea for change and renewal and improvement and maturity, I say instead that I will refrain from a lecture. For as much as you want to be better, sometimes street-smarts is all you can fall back on to in order to survive. I say that because the gravity of the problem implies that only the government and the investors have the power to effect a meaningful change, for when mob rule exists there are only that many options available to push it back and tame it. Yes, we have been reduced to such a state. This is not to demean the spirit of the Filipino people, but if 10+ years of the MRT can be taken as basis, I’d rather wait for the birth of a more responsible government; one who delights in the provision of services, not in the reciting of them, rather than preach words to a bunch of discomfited people who’s only mission is to step out of the trains and into “fresher” and “wider” spaces.

And so this is what we must all go through day in and day out. The whole while we close our eyes in pervent meditation so we get distracted from all that is around us. This is our daily penitensya! Oh how can they be this cruel!

Any one who has had a respectable exposure to provincial AM radio stations, particularly those of the DYHP family of broadcasts, knows of the story of the barangay politician (as told by Teban and Goliat) who one day went into an election rally held to support his bid for re-election. Before long, he was standing on the podium mightily belting his idyllic and almost predictable election platforms, his most favorite being having all the roads in his beloved barangay concreted and beautified (presumably to reduce the level of dust as is the usual case in highwayside-barangays with dry, grainy soil). He went through this routine long enough that one teenage boy who was sitting on the first row innocently inquired “But all our roads are concrete now. What else is there for concreting?” to which the politician cleverly retorted “Then I will ‘concretize’ all of your noses.”

Of course this is a joke, but one can’t help but notice where the inspiration lies. When eletion year rolls around, a good portion of our roads and highways get a make-over. Those that have long remained forgotten in the intervening years after and before elections are suddenly remembered; those that have already been attended to in years past gets the unnecessary and quite costly remodelling, and those that have long shouted for attention (but have been conveniently ignored) with all their vulgar and half-a-meter-deep potholes suddenly find themselves in the middle of so much construction activity. We may not want to admit it or not but it’s true, we tend to realize election is just around the corner because we start seeing construction workers remodel every road, bridge, waiting shed, basketball court they can lay their hands on!!

This is a direct reflection of our mental status as a political animal! We as voters tend to gravitate more towards projects that are easily visible - the next barangay basketball court, the new road, the waiting shed, the remodelled bridge - even the skyway extension which by the way is privately contracted and in no way is a government project, we involuntarily associate with the upcoming elections. The thing that sticks most in our minds are those that are easily seen. The politicians know this, and they are not shy from broadcasting their accomplishments. Every new building/infrastructure/edifice is owned, claimed, and marked with “thru the initiative of…” slogans. And who can blame them for adapting this culture of blatant vulgarity when we mindlessly reward them with our votes and our collective trust for the next 3 years.

This mental model of development, however, is not totally wrong. Every third world country-turn-first world invested heavily on infrastructure as a means towards economic development. Take Japan in the 1970s. GMA is in that breed and has made it awefully clear that farm-to-market roads remain a priority of her administration, and the politicians of old methodically exploit this by passing bills, lobbying (more like cozzying) for funds, getting appropriations for projects that marginally fit the description but are in truth concrete trophies necessary to support the “I accomplished this during my term!” claim.

Perhaps it’s time to be more aware of this fallacious and outdated dynamic of false concrete trophies. At the most basic level, we should be measuring worth by it’s effects: the road that lessens traffic and shortens the travel time from farm to market is more valuable than the alleyway that cost as much but didn’t find a good use. Or perhaps we can be more weary of the politician who is quiet all term-round but is suddenly in the middle of construction projects here and there right before the election period… and is oftentimes not completed especially when it is dragged after the elections are done. Or more importantly, that we start paying attention to accomplishments that are not direcly visible, not necessarily high-profile, but are in every other way as significant and as profound: the reforms on healthcare and the lower cost of drugs, the creation of schools and scholarships, the cheaper prime commodities, the provision of low-interest loans to farmers and SMEs or the preservation of the environment and the restoration of mauled and over-logged forests, harsher penalties for corruption, and a more efficient tax-collection system which sees that taxes go right back to the people and not to deep-pocketed swindlers.

Our ability to transition to a higher state of maturity, one that marginally honors the visual rhetoric of construction and puts more prime on the value of achieving more for the people while asking for lesser demands from the people will ultimately dictate how politicians view their performance and how this translates to precious votes and mandate. There is only that many roads to be concreted! I remain fearful that our inability to do so can only lead to concrete noses.

Or perhaps, we should let them have our noses concreted now if that takes away their excuse for high-visibility/low-impact projects in the future! If we are going down that path, we might as well do it now and save ourselves the misery of the next few years of the same traffic-invested political grandstanding on our very streets. Sometimes the most inane of solutions shatter the most stupid of convensions.

I thought of “dramatizing” this goodbye post with all the adjectives that I can pull out of Webster’s latest release and chalking them up to paint what today amounts to The Big Blue being gutted, sold, auctioned, stripped to the almost bare minimum, and to the throngs of memorable people walking out the door never to see these halls again. I thought long and hard, and then thought some more. Where before their used to be a bustle, a melodic hum, the perfect marriage of control and chaos, there is now only silence; an eery mystery punctuated only by the sound of the airconditioning against bare walls and hollow halls. Where before every thing shines and sparkles, now there is only dimness and dark; empty cubicles, dead lights, abandoned potpourri, forgotten mementos, unwanted things! No more machines wailing, people talking, music playing, footsteps carrying people here and there….

None!! Empty! Bare!

Silence! Undying, ever-deafening silence!

But these condemned walls will not crush everything! Memories live on; friendships do not die. Laughter has and will always remain priceless!

So there is no need for drama! The physical might crumble, the distance will divide! But the memories will linger, the thoughts remain, the feelings are ever present!

Going! Gutted! Gone!

But not goodbye; never goodbye! There is only “Until the next time we meet again!”

Now, it’s on to better horizons and brighter tomorrows.. *_*

We’ve all seen this in one form or another: we are confronted with a problem and instead of dealing with the problem, we resort to an indirect approach that upon closer examination completely misses the point of that which we want to achieve. Oftentimes, the problems we encounter are those of the emotional variety, and our classic response is to do something physical to overcome the problem.

Consider, after a messy and painful break-up which leaves one hanging and still struggling while the other has already presumably moved on, the classic response to stemming the urge to text or call and ask how the other is doing is to delete their number from our phonebook/s. Don’t get me wrong, if the intention is really to sever all forms of communication with the bastard, this response is highly appropriate. However, if the intention is to develop the psyche to resist the temptation to consciously flung ourselves into more pain, this response is just plain wrong. We have been conditioned to design a physical outlet for all our troubles, regardless if the issue is really emotional and/or mental and not physical that we forget most of the battles we wage everyday is of the psychological variety and can only be assuaged by appropriate psychological responses.

To name a few - the lady in the department store fitting the latest Bayo or Maldita release and says “I’m going to buy this even if at the moment I know I look like a tin-foil wrapped banana just because this will motivate me to lose weight and be sexy again” (C’mon, we’ve all heard or said that before, haven’t we?!?); the young new graduate who confesses to being a shopaholic and decides to kick-start her saving habits by only making purchases when there is a sale instead of just changing her lifestyle; the student-procrastinator who decides he’ll just waste away the remainder of the sem in booze and parties and will start his reformation the sem thereafter; or the employee who tolerates verbal abuse every single day and quixotically claims it’ll prepare him for whatever his career throws at him in the future. In each of these cases, a psychological response would have been the more appropriate solution but because we believe everything has to start with something physical - because we are beings more of sense and less of mental fortitude - we let things pass and we endure unnecessarily or justify the mistake or worse device responses that not only miss the mark, they only serve to prolong the problem and delude us with temporary feelings of victory and satisfaction.

I realized this while I was mired in my own version of formulating the wrong solution. Simply put, I want to lose weight for health reasons (everybody does, right?!?) and the most sound solution isn’t exercise and a lifestyle change but to altogether stop eating meals. Ha! I know, when you say it that way, it just doesn’t sound that good anymore compared to when you were still mulling it over in your head.

Science claims we haven’t even used 25% of our brain power, that we have been living content with the obvious and the apparent because it’s the easiest way. But time and again, experience has taught us, although we all choose to ignore it, that most of our battles are in the mind. Most deal with the conscious and uberly hard decisions that we just can’t seem to make even if we know we have to. Our darkest hours have pushed us to turning points when good decisions would have turned our lives around and instead we resort to band-aid solutions and table-top responses. We bury ourselves deeper in the quagmire of our own problems, and in the long-run it gets deep enough that no amount of therapy can overhaul us.

I do not mean to preach, I only mean to share. Because accept it, we will never be devoid of problems and issues and conflicts and trouble. They are here to stay. We might as well start dealing with them the right way.

And oftentimes, it all starts with the conscious decision for a lifestyle change.

Crossroads
(author anonymous)

Shall I follow the stream, or cross the sea?
Strive for a dream or let life be?
Shall it be on neon lights that spell success?
Or a flickering lamplight for happiness?

Follow the thunder? Follow the storm?
Follow the whisper that breeze and leaves form?
Follow my heartbeat, follow my head?
What shall each bring me? Where shall each lead?

I distinctly remembered this poem, from way back in highschool, today both for its dazzling simplicity and the overwhelming aptness with which this poem describes the state that I currently am in. I’m presented with options, none of which carries the ideal pay-proximity-positioning potential trifecta all in one package, and yes I just made up the 3Ps of career decision-making in a heartbeat. The truth is, there are just too many unknowns from where I currently stand; while I do not doubt that I will find work soon after I part ways with Intel, I do not know what kind of work that will be and whether I’d be happy in that work or will come to regret that which I end up choosing. In this economy, nothing’s for certain, and ridiculous as it may sound, every opportunity that presents itself truly is a bargain.

I stand at the crossroads and before me is laid the widest expanse of potential and unknown. Shall I cross the sea and find my place elsewhere, or stay here and be happy where I know I am home? Is it still career, career, career? Or is it time to start arranging the pieces of what would be a life-long commitment? I don’t even know if neon lights are out there, but I’m pretty sure any light is better than a flickering lamplight… but do I really want the bright lights now, or is this dimly lit paradise all that I need to grow and move on? Should I stand pat and let life be, or dare to take the reigns and drive down unchartered roads to find my gold mine? Should I listen to my heart, or should I follow my head?

I know, I’m just re-hashing! In the grand scheme of things, something’s gotta give! You can’t have everything, not unless you reset your bearings and value the intangible over the obvious, live contently in the middle of life’s unfailing and simple joys rather than lose sleep chasing dreams down avenues and boulevards that take you to cities you don’t know where you find no family and get lost in all the madness and mayhem!

I don’t have my answers…. at least not yet!

But two things I overwhelmingly hold on to: hope and faith, and the promise that whatever choice I come into, it won’t be arrived at through the most pedestrian of efforts, and neither will it be regretted nor scoffed at, nor considered the lesser of available evils!

At some point, I’ll make this decision; and in the awkward and ironic abundance of viable opportunities, I absolutely relish the head scratch!

If there’s an award for the most subjective human endeavor, that award would probably go to the business of human relationships. There is just no objective metric for gauging how a prospective relationship will turn out, no clear-cut formula to ensure success, there isn’t even a standard definition for success when it comes to relationships - some people think just being together for years on end already constitutes success, others scoff at the notion of success without happiness sprinkled somewhere in the equation; and worse yet, every single relationship is unique in its own right (different personalities, circumstances, expectations, social and personal pressures, religious idiosyncrasies, pet peeves and interests) that observations gathered from previous relationships are not exactly transferable to the current one in consideration. (I know I’m speaking like Sheldon Cooper, so sincere apologies are in order here.)

A big reason why relationships are as subjective as they are is because people enter into relationships with widely varying expectations and end-goals: some just want to try it out and see how it works like test driving a car before fully making the purchase, some are tired with the single life and all the “snide” remarks that abound come Valentines Day that they jump at the first opportunity that presents itself, others think relationships pave the way for self-discovery as if it’s a journey and along the way you learn more about who you really are, and still others just wanna have fun (or whatever wonderful euphemism you can come up with that alludes to that effect), others misunderstand “like” for “love”, a few think that having the same interests on a few things implies compatibility, others go for the looks and disregard everything else, most argue that it’s what’s inside that’s important but ironically they go into relationships without giving themselves sufficient time to know the person.

Whatever you’re dig is, there is a very high probability that you aren’t one of those who have their own serendipity stories to share. Like the rest of us, you’re most likely struggling with your relationships; the fights, the disagreement, the trust issues, the pet peeves, the things you want changed and the things you wish will forever remain constant (like men remembering important dates, and women appreciating sports and all the action, not just the things you see on the scoreboard, etc.). The sad thing is, most of the things that you dream will change or wish will remain constant forever are entirely out of your control. Going into a relationship means you are willingly subjecting yourself to the prospect of pain, allowing yourself to fall into the mercy of the other, opening yourself to things that you don’t expect will come around to haunt you. In a phrase, it’s all one giant gamble and you struggle to make sense out of everything.

There is one assumption almost everyone wrongly takes into regarding love and relationships… it’s that your partner, your spouse, your love, your bf/gf will complete you as a person! Every clinical psychologist, relationship counselor, shrink, Dr. Phil, will tell you that you are SPOT ON WRONG! (Sorry Jerry Maguire!!) The thing is, a relationship really is and should be about two complete people sharing their meaningful lives together; it’s not about two people looking for answers to their own personal questions and hoping the other person has it, it’s not about broken and battered folks expecting they will be loved by some stranger more than they can ever love themselves. You can’t just give your broken and battered self to somebody and expect them to make something out of it, love you unconditionally, and not rant about the things they wish you have or have not! It’s not about just wanting to get married and crossing your fingers and just praying that you made the right choice in a spouse. It’s not a business venture, not just some arrangement, not some adhoc status that you prefer to be in, not some organization that you chose to be a part of for purposes of affiliation. Sooner or later, there will be fiasco and you both will not like it!

The most ideal relationships are those that are borne out of mutual respect, admiration, and then love! There is no damsel in distress’, no messiah complexes, no you-complete-me/s. There is only complementing, not completing!

..Which is why it is so damn hard to get it right!

..And which is why we all, or at least a good portion of us, oftentimes get it wrong - and end up crying, sobbing, sulking over it!

There is only one question to gauge readiness: do you feel you are equipped enough - mentally, socially, all the -lly circles you can ever conceive of - to share something meaningful to some “likely random” strange other person, and does that person feel the same way about himself/herself and about you?

if you’re/they’re not, then back off!

That’s the thing with relationships, you need to have THE thing for it before it develops a thing for you.

The thing with losing your job is… well, its not a pleasant experience to say the least. No matter how prepared you think you are, there’s always that part of you that screams foul over all the uncertainties; all the impending goodbyes to friends you know you’ll soon leave behind as you move on to hopefully greener pastures; the prospect of relocating, settling down, getting used to living in a new and oftentimes foreign place - new faces, new routines, the same commute, the same perpetuality that drives all of human existence; the hassles of learning the vagaries of the new workplace - and that’s assuming you are lucky enough to find one in this wretched economy; there’s a whole laundry list of pains that you have to go through and none offers any consolation enough to offset the pains of moving on.

The coping is beyond any adjective you want to wisely pull from a list of wonderful words! “There, there!” just doesn’t cut if anymore! While every newspaper, every media outlet, every television station strives to make the report as humanly appealing as possible, all that they manage to achieve is to ramble endlessly over a new statistic. The pain remains, the fear never ends! The truth remains as lucid, the future as vague, the inordinate number of the newly jobless a cogent reminder of the restlessness of business and the volatility of life; at the end of the day, the report boils down to being a simple mention of the statistic, it remains fruitless in its effort to empathize, forever an inhuman tribute to the truly emotional process of being cut-off, regardless of how featurized it is intended to be.

I say this so that everybody will remember that being saddened over the loss of a job is not something you go over, it’s something you have to power through. You don’t vault over losses, you live through them and in them until you find yourself on the other side, better and stronger. The denial of pain only prolongs the inevitable; tears have to be shed, goodbyes will have to be uttered; the prospect of starting anew without the company of people closest to you has to be said, lamented over, accepted, and carried on as you move towards the future. There’s just no way around it. No amount of assistance minimizes the damage, no corporate talk will reduce the impact - it is only in powering through that we speed up the healing process!

Because this, being jobless, isn’t just another statistic! It is a process, a journey, and a painful one at that! It is a black parade into the unknown, a mourning of losses and a hopeful (but never blind) expectation of the gains. Only in that heartset is the truth tempered, digested, accepted, and renewed and learned from.

So cry! Wash all the pain away. Vent, shout, hug your pillows dry! Keep the memories and tuck them safely in your basket of goodness!

Because tomorrow, life goes on! And life is, and will always never be, just another statistic!

I got into reflection mode late last night after hearing, for the umpteenth time, the story of another teenager-acquaintance potentially losing out on the benefits of college education because of unplanned pregnancy. True, not all who venture down teen-mommy boulevard end up not finishing college, but I’m guessing nobody would be willing to bet against the fact that once you have a 6-lb bundle of (crying, burping, peeing, smiling) joy, the last thing on your mind is getting your diploma. This becomes especially and painfully true when the demographic in question consists of the many of us who, through the misfortune afforded by the lineage lottery, were born into poor families.

After maybe an hour of endlessly tossing and turning in my bed, I came to one stirring and largely uncomplicated conclusion - there is wisdom in age. If you closely examine the reasons and precursors for teenage pregnancy, you’ll mostly end up exploring the intricacies of parental guidance, and in cases where teenagers beget sons and daughters that would have otherwise qualified as their siblings 15 years down the road, you find a good percentage of the population blaming it all on the absence of a strong guiding hand. The drama of teenager-parent disagreement, oftentimes attributed to generational gap, is actually a struggle between wisdom learned from years of experience, and the simple proclivity for the unknown and the adventurous that is almost inherent in the adolescent. It’s just another dimension to the ageless war between sociology-philosophy and biology. Before, we think our parents were simply being harsh and strict (this is not to say every parent is rational, yes there are those who simply live within the confines of self-imposed and baseless paranoia and would rather kill their kids than expose them to the value-divested, culturally corrupted, morally decadent social circles that we have come to call “Generation Y”) and because we want to get out and learn the lessons for ourselves, we rebel! We resist control, we dare question their motives; we subject them to the dilemma that goes “If you trust me, you’ll allow me my extended social leash. Trust me Mom, nothing’s going to happen. I won’t get pregnant (or get some girl pregnant)” or some subtle variation along those same lines.

Here is why parenting can be likened to walking on eggshells! You have the thinnest of red lines, between allowing your kids the freedom to explore their newfound (biological) sexual and social interests, but at the same time making sure that they don’t go too far as to cause irreparable damage to their future. The simple predicate? Parents understand that it is not a matter of trust as it is a matter of the young and inexperienced possessing the constitution, the moral foundation, and the normal deductive and rational logic to resist the temptation to explore (and be explored), to test the waters rather recklessly without taking swimming lessons prior, and to subject oneself to social dangers without the promise of personal protection along the way - double entendre intended. Some intuitively get it… Most, unfortunately, don’t!

In the presence of a strong guiding hand, a sound upbringing rooted on the fact that delaying a few social perks early on will go a long way into building one’s stock for a better future, teenagers are given a better chance at life. I know a lot of friends who gained respectable jobs because they did okay in college, something that would be alien to those who spent their late teens and onwards raising babies and caring for immature, childishly-fixated, “barkadista” husbands. There are, obviously, exceptions but the prevailing statistics strongly support that those who did well in college went on to have better lives than those who did not; and for that we have Tatay and Nanay to thank for.

Which gives us more reason to heed Mom, just a little bit more, this time around. I guess the phrase “Mommy knows best!” is more than just another cliché!

And then, the next obvious dimension to this age-old circle of life: what kind of parent will you become?