tagging marriage

There are one and a thousand reasons why people marry. Love and commitment, the foundation of marriage, may not necessarily be one of them.

Britney Spears, in one drunken moment in Las Vegas, tied the knot with a hubby, and the following day, she sought to annul it. There have been many marriages of this sort, when couples, euphoric for an instant, decide to marry, only to realize days after, that there was no love at all. They separate as quickly as they got married, err lust subsides.

Mail order brides? Even before the internet, there have been many unions via the mail. The usual plot is repeated several times over: a lass from a poor country has a pen pal from the rich country. The pen pal is old but has enough money to bail out the lass from the cycle of poverty.

The internet now has only made things a lot easier and faster. Desperate, a lass goes to the an internet café, surfs the net for an online lover, and bingo, if the terms of endearment are okay, another couple ties the knot.

Whether it is through the mail or the internet, you find the same actors and the same script, but the plot now is like that in the movie The Matrix, fast, swift, and surreal. After a series of chat, the man flies over and dresses up the lass, and a wedding before a judge or a mayor is had.

What have become of marriages? Recall the courtship before the cell phones and the internet. Then, the courtship was up close and personal, The suitor goes to the house of the lady, professes his love, and promises to cup the stars and the moons in his hands, and basically offer, his life for the lass, and he does this, before the eyes of the parents. The courtship takes longer, and the man has to pass though many gauntlets, and only those who truly love wins the heart.

Tragically however, poverty has pushed so many lasses to marry not out of love but of a necessity to survive, to break the cycle of poverty. Marriage has a price tag.

As one goes higher in the social strata, the price tags are not packaged in mails or chats, but the same, there is hidden the economic factor. On the average, marriages take place between couple who are capable of economically supporting each other. There is one joke here that says, “teacher, teacher, and doctor, doctor”. Meaning, couples of similar stature should marry each other. Can you imagine a lowly laborer in a wharf marrying the daughter of the president of a country? That was unthinkable, then and now.

But there are marriages that are based truly on love, not necessarily of commitment yet. Commitment you see, does not grow from nowhere; the seed of love during the marriage rite must be planted, nurtured, and grown in the course of the relationship, and until love finally ripen into commitment.

“Till death do as part”, so the couple profess. But life is changing so do passion, lust, and love. You cannot pass through thru the same river twice: the water you step on is in constant flux. As you go through life, you realize that the way you see your beloved at the time of matrimony is not the same as you look at her now, and in the future, and that too is certain. Even the love of eros later on disappears and you begin to wonder what happened in between.

A marriage built on the sandcastles of money, passion, lust, and even love, is doomed to fail. There is the legal provision in the Philippine laws that states: “Marriage is not a contract. It is an institution.” Money, passion, the burning love may later on dim, but for the institution to survive, it must be founded on commitment, the will to perpetuate the union even if all expectations have failed. Even as the couple change, the willing heart and mind commit to something greater than themselves. Passion, erotic love may go, but the will to commit, to take the vow “till death do as part” till the grave, remains.

But alas, should there be a reason for marriage, and love, and commitment? Is it not marrying for a reason reveals the selfishness of it all? Why don’t we just proclaim “till death do as part” out of the abundance of our heart?

Tags: marriage, mailorderbrides, commitment | Edit Tags

Sunday September 16, 2007 – 09:32am (CST) Edit | Delete

Next Post: two untold woes, two cases Previous Post: evolving consciousness

lost in translation: the art of doublespeak

 

The first cry of the infant is the primal, purest form of communication. Without uttering a word, the infant communicates to the world his raw and myriad feelings of fear, confusion, and wonder of a starkly different environment he is being thrown into, which is not of his choice. Yet, without a word, we understand fully well what the infant is trying to tell us, and there is no mistaking of our perception because he delivers the message unfiltered with the niceties of culture and language.

Language as it is, never captures what the person really thinks and feels. Language is both liberating and limiting. The words we speak and write have specific connotations which society have prescribed as it evolves. And thus, our expression of feelings and ideas are imprisoned in the limitation of how society understands, by conventions, the word we use. We use the word “happy” so many times to express our state of elation or bliss or euphoria. But the word can never sum up our experiences of the state of being happy considering that our experiences of happiness vary in depth and degree. Our experience of happiness is lost in translation when it is mediated into words for others to understand. Somehow, we will never express well our peculiar happiness because the society only gives the general idea of what the word means. That is why poetry still stands out as the most enriching form of communication because the reader or listener, as the case may be, is not drawn only to the words, printed or said, but to the similes, metaphors, hyperboles, which convey the whole range of emotions and ideas by being drawn to the experience the poet wants to convey.

The tragedy is that the infant, as he grows older and becomes versed in the language of his society, also learns to use words, not to convey his ideas and perceptions and feelings, but precisely to hide them. In our encounter with our loved ones, how often we ask questions like, “How are you?”, and very often we receive a reply, “ I am okay.” The question needs simple and direct reply. But how often did we reply, “ Am okay”, yet deep inside we are agonizing, but if only not to cause worry and alarm to our children, and parents, our friends, to people closest to us, we say ,” I am okay.” How can a person be okay when he is bleeding inside?

How many have been misled by the most famous phrase, “ I love you”, when actually, the underlying feeling that is hidden in the phrase is that of lust and passion, of sex and nothing more. How can we say the phrase and yet mean the exact opposite, the anti-thesis of love, the selfishness of pure passion and lust?

The infant as he grows older, and is now equipped with the tool of words and language has learned to use language merely as a tool ; that words can be used not necessarily to express one’s feelings and ideas but to cloak them. As students, we are formally taught in school the use of precise word to convey the idea. But the world we are living is one vast laboratory of what can be called as the school of mal-communication.

There are many times that we miss to convey our feelings and ideas not because we want to misinform but due to our ineptness with the language. When there is miscommunication, the other is misled with what one really wants to convey. But this breakdown of communication is never intentional. When we say something to precisely mislead the other, that is mal-communication, not miscommunication.

To re-iterate, our society is the vast school of the art of mal-communicating. In an effort to be politically correct, we have coined words which fail to express the truth. A child who is suffering from some form of mental disorder or deficiency, we call him as “special child”, as if to be autistic, and the like is in truth special. Since when a deficiency have become special? Whichever and however you look at it, there is nothing special about a deficiency. We do not anymore call a handicap person as such, we now call him “ Physically-challenged” . But is it not that the word handicap the true state of being for this person, and being such, we ought to shower him with compassion and understanding? Why not call a spade a spade? Why not cease to say “okay”, when it is not really?

The modern world has exposed us to e-communication. You have the cable tv, internet, cellphones, laptops and print and broadcast media. Everyday, we are bombarded with the news and information. But be wary, there are double-speaks, words that are not said to convey but to mislead and to misdirect. Bill Clinton’s double-speaks were classic. To parry accusations of Lewinsky affair, he said,” I admit to have sexual impropriety with that woman.” He was denying the allegation by admitting some. President Arroyo, when asked about a recorded conversation with an election official the topic of which was obviously to rig the presidential election, instead of admitting the wrong, merely said, “ I admit to a lapse of judgement,” in the Clintonian tradition. What judgement did she refer to? This is misdirecting the listener or reader.

In a world of competing ideas, the threat is not the emergence of radical ideas in the democratic space, but the molding of ideas by sheer propaganda. Slogans are told, repeated, and for every repetition, the slogans become bigger and more grand, Goebbels-style, the grand propagandist of the Fuhrer. Propagandists are the worst proponents of mal-communication. They use words and symbols not to communicate but to mislead, not to expose the truth but to hide. From them, we witness the emergence of people who blindly follow slogans to their graves.

In the information age, there is a compelling need to communicate, to inform, to expose the true feelings and ideas. In a word, there is a need to revisit to the primal cry of the infant, the purest form of communication.

Tags: communication, language, words | Edit Tags

Sunday August 26, 2007 – 07:09am (CST) Edit | Delete

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evolving consciousness

 

Before daybreak today, I drove going to Camiguin, a one hour ride by car and another one hour ride by boat, for a court hearing. Just as last year, when days before the day I first saw the world, I have been in contemplative mood, pondering of the life I have lived and what remains of the earthly journey. In a word, I have this stream of consciousness that never fails to flash in my mind, as in a movie.

The age of reason is supposedly seven years old, when the child becomes self-aware of himself, of the outside world, when he starts to use his reasoning prowess – in a word, when the child slowly evolves into a man. As we look back, there is this realization that what we are now is strangely different when we were, say 7 years old. The way we look at the world, and relate to it, and to act in a community of men, is never the same each passing year. Somehow, our consciousness is not the same as that of last year. We simply change, hopefully for the better, but the reality is that, it is not always so.

The young tends, generally, to favor loud, metallic sounds, punk, or outright rock. Later in life, you realize that you could not anymore groove with the fast beat, when you tend to go cozy with the jazz or the classic.

From what source does the change spring? Is it the natural development of the brain, from childhood to adulthood, and the natural decay as man is nearing the grave, by age? Or is it the myriad of factors, like the people around you, the wares that you strut around, or the place where you hang around? Am I evolving alone, or my consciousness evolves with the collective psyche, with the universal man?

Friedrich Hegel said that the “mind” is evolving, and that this evolution determines how society in general is structured. Social structures are the product of a pure thought which in itself is evolving, and as it evolves, so does society. Karl Marx turned upside down Hegel’s concept when he said “ the economic superstructure determines consciousness”. Simply put, the way we structure our society, culturally and politically, depends on the kind of economy. Agriculture has feudalism; industry and trade have capitalism. The consciousness among the feudal lords and among the capitalists is drastically different from the proletariat. The rich reads the classical novels, the laborer in the hovel, the comics. The rich is concerned with the Victorian table manners; the poor, of immediately using the hand that feed the mouth. The rich lives above the clouds and therefore is conscious of the finer things in life; the poor toils the earth, and is therefore, conscious more of daily survival.

In my youth, Karl Marx never convinced me, and more now.

Yesterday, CNN reported about a scientist in London who is into hybrid animal-human stem cell research. Man, after having decoded the human gnome is now playing god. There may be serious ethical issues here but one fact cannot be disputed: science has evolved in quantum leaps. More than half a century ago, man reached the moon, later planet mars. The internet has drastically changed communication. But, after Darwin challenged the creation theory, the decoding of man’s gnome makes it possible the cloning of parts of the human body. The implications are far reaching.

If there is anything so pervasive and incessant an influence on man’s consciousness, science is it. It may be true that the economic structure determines consciousness, but the economy is determined by the progress of science. Mass production, telecommunication, planes, sky-rise building, internet, medicine, all these we owe to science. Name a field in science, and come to realize, how this field has changed our lifestyle, and the way we relate to the outside world. Before, we wrote love letters with our paper and pen, now we just email it. Even in rigid countries such as Iran, the cable table and internet and constant human travel have influenced this previously cloistered society. Some women are already getting rid of the burqas. Thanks to the information overload.

At no point in recorded history has the influence of science more pervasive than now. The change of our individual consciousness is triggered largely by the rapid progress of science which has changed the way we live, and even the way we perceive things. The gnome project has pushed us to rethink our philosophy vis-à-vis our morality and beliefs.

As I write this blog, I received a cell phone message, greeting me this early. I replied through text message. Twenty years ago, I used to receive a real greeting card, not virtual. I have online friends worldwide which was not possible two decades ago. Things are a-changing, and my consciousness is a particle of the collective consciousness that is now emerging globally.

 

 

 

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Friday September 7, 2007 – 06:33am (CST) Edit | Delete

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the other worlds

It starts with a basic premise. Everything that we perceive is based on the limitations of our senses, and the extent by which our minds process these perceptions. In this sense , man is truly unique; it is not our color, height, or weight that make as an individual, it is our peculiar perception of the reality that confronts us, which is basically determined by our senses and mental capacity, and the memories that we have stored in your psyche.

The dog perceives you starkly definitely from the way you see yourself in the mirror. The range vision of the dog is different from yours. The dog has powerful sense of smell. We, concededly, cannot sniff a bomb. The world we see is not the same kind of world the dog experiences. Imagine if you had night vision: the nights would never be the same again.

At a time when I was engrossed in my study of philosophy, I was enamored with the idea of parallel universes, and the implications they have on human existence. Philippine Studies, my other major way back in the undergraduate, exposed me to the world of faith healing, shamanism, witchcraft, magic, the frontiers of the mind – the other worlds. If we perceive reality differently, ergo, we cannot shut the door to the possibility that parallel to the reality that we now live, there are other possible universes that co-exist with us but which, owing to the limitations of human faculties, we cannot perceive and understand, as of yet.

Parapsychology explains these other worldly phenomena based on the capacity of the mind, and the yet its uncharted potential. Yuri Geller is able to bend metals by merely concentrating on it, and telekinetic powers take over. John of God, the Brazilian doctor turned faith healer, is able to operate without use of anesthesia. Nostradamus had clairvoyant powers, the gift to see the future. If your beloved is in distress, thousand of miles away, you too will feel the distress. Charge it to your extra sensory perception. All these are but illustration of the powers of the mind.

Yet, there are similar phenomena which do not fold quite fully well in the mold the parapsychologist explains as the power of the mind.

Take my grandmother, who incidentally, at the age of 94 can still recognize her grandchildren. At a tender, I witnessed many people who were suffering from the worst form of skin diseases. She did not finish elementary nor medical course. But she has this potion which is heated, and then she would rub this to the affected area, and murmured incantations the language of which I do not understand. Amazingly, living micro-organisms were collected in this hot potion, so hot that I wondered why these organisms were still crawling. The process was repeated depending on the severity of the disease. In days, the skin diseases were cured.

I developed recurring sinusitis way back in high school. Every summer vacation, I would return to our very rural hometown where my grandma lived then. One time, I had this sinusitis, with the debilitating fever and headache. There was this faith healer named Inday Moran (may her soul rest in peace). My grandma accompanied me to her clinic. To my surprise, the same medicines which my doctor gave me were prescribed by this faith healer. She also operated other patients the same way a doctor would. But she would also refuse to administer serious cases like operating on a kidney due to lack of facilities. When I was examined by her, I realized that she was a linguist. She spoke English, Tagalog, and other languages fluently. Yet, she only reached Grade III in the elementary level.

She cured so many people that she was elected mayor of our town, and was undefeated until she died. And my sinusitis? She cured it.

Ever since, I have opened to the possibility of parallel universes. I have to unless I had super human senses and perceptions. If one recognizes his limitations, there is no other logical way but to be open to the possibility that the other universes may indeed exist.

I am prompted to blog about this because of my recent experience. Two years ago, my wife went to Ireland for two months. When she came back, she could barely walk and had been suffering excruciating pain for almost a month already. She was taking pain relievers but the pain persisted. After three doctors and many tests, she was diagnosed to have slip disc, an incurable disease in which one of the disc in the lower spinal column collapsed, and the major nerve compressed. Without surgical intervention, she could suffer paralysis in the lower part of her body. But I asked and researched about the success rate of slip disc operation. The result: it is a 60-40 proposition, with the possibility of major accident during surgery.

I have a German tennis buddy who has slip disc also. There are only two recognized experts in this field, two German doctors in Germany who can operate for a fee of P5 million or $100,000.00. Where on earth can I get the money?

Then, we went to this faith healer. Miraculously, the day after the healing, the pain was gone and my wife can walk again.

Was it our faith that healed? But to be candid, when we went to this faith healer, I was the typically doubting Thomas. The faith healer must have some powers which science, as of yet, cannot explain. The key is openness.

My friend Millie was kind enough to let me read about the Einstein Theory of Relativity. Small objects travel space that is warped by the larger objects, This warping can only be seen in at least 3 dimension-reality. But accordingly, there are 7 dimensions of the hyperspace which are not yet determined with particularity. Will somebody pursue Einstein and explain to us the possibility of parallel universes, the other worlds?

Tags: faithhealing, parapsychology, cosmoslogy | Edit Tags

Sunday August 19, 2007 – 07:40am (CST) Edit | Delete

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of holy wars

Imagine the two human species that preceded the homo sapiens: homo habilis and homo erectus who lived 1.5 million or so years ago. Without any plausible scientific bases, but with the capacity for rational thinking, they were confronted with the elements of nature: fire, wind, air, and water. During the day, they looked – up at the sky, and saw the searing sun, and in the stillness of the night, the moon illumined the earth. Put yourself in their shoes, and you realize the awe and wonder our ancestors must have felt. As one writer puts it, they experienced what we call tremendum et facinans. Extreme fear and fascination.

Owing to man’s rational capacity, there must be order to an otherwise chaotic environment. Bereft without any scientific explanations, the first men that walked on earth had woven tales about the sun, moon, fire, water, air, and earth. Owing to the reasoning power, man has to explain the reason why these elements exist, and if they cannot fathom , they have to embrace these elements as supra-natural; and thus, superstitions about these elements evolved into paganism – sun, moon, earth, fire, wind, worship. Yes, religious rituals evolved around a stone, a river, a mountain, and even animals.

The earliest religious stirring is paganism – a raw, almost reflex reaction to the mysterious earth the early men faced. The mind cannot have without explanation. Chaos is intolerable. There must be order and harmony of human existence, from the material to the spiritual. Beliefs were held, and myths were told, delineating the powers of the gods and how the mortal should relate to them.

Religions however went beyond nature-worship. In the western world, the three main branches – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – have posited a Supreme Being who is the alpha and the omega of the human race. In the east, Hinduism and Buddhism from which many groupings evolved, posited that human being has his supra-natural aspect that is imprisoned in the flesh. To reveal man’s divine nature, he has to unhinge from the karmic principle, to escape from the wheel of re-incarnation to attain nirvana, a state of total bliss.

Of the religions, it is the western groups that have defined the bloody history of the human race. While the pre-historic men embraced religious worship to give order to an otherwise mysterious nature, the modern western religions have created chaos and disorder, by the never-ending forays into another religion. Religions as we now experience, have evolved from a tool of explaining the mystery to a tool of subjugation and annihilation.

Tell me of major wars, and you will see that the cause celebre of the same is rooted in religion. Judaism is the ancient of the three western religions. Yet we recorded its clash with the early pagan Egypt. Christianity saw the expansion of territories by the sign of the cross and the sword. Islam later on, avenged and even exceeded the adventures of the Crusaders. The war on terror right now , it is too, rooted on religion.

Why should man kill in the name of Jesus, or Allah, or Yahweh? Is it because we can now explain nature and de-mystified the pagan idols that we now project the superiority of our respective God by killing one another? Yet the irony is that the God of the west is professed as compassionate, the source of the ultimate love for humanity; and redemption can only be had by following the God.

There goes the clincher – there is only one road to human salvation. The compassionate God has admonished His flock to evangelize, to convert the gentiles and pagans and the infidels. The road to salvation must be shared. But must we kill a person who does not want to take the road we have taken?

But why the brouhaha? A man has yet to rise from the dead and tell the living that he has seen the road to salvation. The road we the living are talking about are mere glimpses of our faith. In a sense, the modern religious are still pagans. Enveloped in the modern mind is still the mystery of whether man has an afterlife. And in order to explain this, we embrace the concept of human salvation through a religion. But how sure are you that your road is the real one? Or are you even sure you have an afterlife?

Granting that your religion is the road to salvation, then your path necessarily excludes other religions. The rest of humanity then would be damned in hell. If your God is truly compassionate, then what kind of love that abandons the rest of humanity to damnation? Even if you combine the Christians , Jews, and Muslims, the number is still insignificant compared to the billions of Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, and non-believers. Does it mean they will not find salvation? To reason that you have a compassionate God that leads you to the only road to salvation necessarily contradicts the true nature of your God. The whole argument collapses and so do the reason why you have to subjugate and kill to convert people into your fold.

Now tell me, why do you have to kill in the name of your God that you profess to be compassionate?

Our pre-historic ancestors worshipped in order to give them relief to the mysteries they have encountered with nature. They projected supra-beings to help them understand, in the absence of scientific explanations of things they saw and experienced. The spirit world was a tool for their meaningful existence of earth. But the modern man has made the spirit-world the end all and be all of human existence. Religion has ceased to be a tool; human existence instead has become a tool of religious practices that see the wastage of human lives. We have forfeited our present existence in favor of the afterlife which we have but only glimpses of our faith.

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read the current news (courtesy of my friend Millie)

Threats Force Egyptian Convert to Hide
Saturday, August 11, 2007 2:58 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By MAGGIE MICHAEL Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — An Egyptian Muslim who converted to Christianity and then took the unprecedented step of seeking official recognition for the change said he has gone into hiding following death threats.

Mohammed Hegazy, who sparked controversy when pictures of him posing with a poster of the Virgin Mary were published in newspapers, was shunned by his family and threatened by an Islamist cleric vowing to seek his execution as an apostate.

“I know there are fatwas (religious edicts) to shed my blood, but I will not give up and I will not leave the country,” the 25-year-old Hegazy told The Associated Press from his hideout Thursday.

Hegazy made a public splash when he took the unusual step of going to court to change his religion on his national ID card. His first lawyer filed the case, but then quit after the uproar; his second is still considering whether it’s worth pursuing.

Hegazy said he received telephoned death threats before he went into hiding in an apartment with his wife, a Muslim who took the name Katarina when she converted to Christianity several years ago. She is four months pregnant.

He said he wants to change the religion on his ID for two reasons: to set a precedent for other converts and to ensure his child can openly be raised Christian. He wants his child to get a Christian name, birth certificate and eventually marry in a church. That would be impossible if Hegazy’s official religion is Muslim, because a child is registered in the religion of the father.

There is no Egyptian law against converting from Islam to Christianity, but in this case tradition takes precedent. Under a widespread interpretation of Islamic law, converting from Islam is apostasy and punishable by death — though killings are rare and the state has never ordered or carried out an execution on those grounds.

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Sunday August 12, 2007 – 06:28am (CST) Edit | Delete

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• Samurai
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An interesting yet profound article to make one think; Very well written and so true…have a great day..

where hath the music gone?

The irony is that the most common experience of human existence is often the most misunderstood. We hear, write, speak about many stories about it, and yet we do not fully grasp what it really means, the phenomenology of it all. The cliches written about it only add to its misunderstanding.

We have not de-mystified what true love really is.

Yesterday, a client came to my office seeking annulment of her 8-year marriage. Hers was a unique case.

I have handled annulment of marriage cases but basically for compelling reasons, as if hers is not compelling enough. The first annulment case I handled was that of a young lady, a dentist in her twenties yet. She got married, and after a month or so of living together, the husband eloped with his true love, never to come back. What choice did she have? Another came to me seeking annulment of her marriage with a drug addict. She was a punching bag, a sex toy, a house maid, and to cap it all, she was the bread-winner. How can I and the court refuse her plea?

I have lost count of the annulment cases I handled, but I can recall with clarity the reasons why those marriages have to be annulled.

But this latest client is a unique case. I asked her why she is seeking annulment. Her ready answer, in such a casual manner is that there is no more love, the so-called infernal fire that overwhelmed the couples’ being pre-dating the marriage has suddenly been doused of with the chill from Siberian wind, so to speak. I pressed on. Is there anything wrong with your husband? Does he support you? Do you have sex often? Are you battered? I only received the nays . Simply put, the music just died, and there is no more reason to dance in the dance floor of life.

Grim, eerie, but compellingly true. There is only left a cold chill between the couple.

Which lead to us to re-examine, what is love really.

There is this favorite article written superbly by a Spanish Philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, “Love, Suffering, Pity, And Personality”. I used to lecture it to my students a week before the Valentine’s day. I never fail to get their total attention. Love is such an interesting topic that cuts-across ages.

Love is not a concept. It is a human experience; it sparks, grows, or dies, depending on the couple. Although homo sapiens has evolved into an intelligent animal, man is still part of the kingdom animalia, and not seraphims and cherubims. Man still is an animal driven by instincts, by the the physio-chemical processes, although his intelligence may filter the most primal emotions, and suppress their outward manifestations. The first encounter with the beloved, and this you must accept, is driven not out of love, but the whole gamut of lust, attraction, and longing. When you are wired emotionally, then you start to experience this loving relationship.

Just like any human relationship, be it love or say, even hatred, it grows or dies, depending on the couple. The lover is still an individual, and how he relates to this loving relation depends largely on the kind of person he is. The bond of love is strengthened not by how much a lover has become unique, but rather, how far the couple have forged a common personality, a one loving experience which they can identify with, not as an individual, but together as one. And the forging of this common personality is not borne out of the joys of love but of the suffering the couple has to endure in order to sustain the loving relation.

To paraphrase Unamuno, “True love grows out of the common mortar, enduring the common pestle of suffering; the more they suffer, and endure the suffering, the more they identify to one common bond of pain, the more the love grows, true love, that is.” The wife who sought to annul her marriage from a drug-addict, instead of trying to forge a common bond with the beloved, went out of the mortar of pain, to seek her own identity, instead of nurturing a common personality. Her loving experience ended when she tried to go on with her own experience, searching for her own self.

Love does not grow during the honeymoon stage. It is only the fruition of the physio-chemical processes, of man’s primal emotions. Real love starts to grow when the relationship is buffeted with the winds of financial distress, sickness, failures in the careers, or even the death of the dear ones, like, say, a child.

Those who survive the wind create a enduring , stronger bond.

When you swim in the sea of happiness, you satiate your senses, you gratify yourself, and thus, you tend to savor the sensation of your experience; in a word, in moment of joy, you become inward bound, savoring every minute of the euphoria, or the moment’s sense of bliss, though too fleeting it actually is.

Man, in a moment of crisis, is outward-looking, seeks for the hand that he can hold onto. When you are tossed in the sea, you hold the hands of the beloved, knowing that your survival depends largely on the other, and her survival rests also in your hands. In this way, you and the beloved, lose yourselves, and you thus create and identify with , to a bond, a “self” superior to your individual selves. Here, you start committing not only to each other, but to the union of your beings, to a separate personality which you can each identify with and you cannot live without.

Love grows from emotions to commitment to a self far greater than the individual. I am amazed by how the Family Code of the Philippines defines marriage: ” It is not a contract but an institution”. And if I may add, true love is a commitment to an institution of a loving relation. When there is commitment to the institution, your search for meaning in life is directed to making the institution stronger. Life-altering decisions have to reckon with the question, “Will this choice promote the institution?” In choosing a career path, your factor always how it will affect your family, and the children.

Our superior intelligence enables us to commit to a higher cause greater than ourselves. But the pitfall of most marriages is that in the process of committing oneself, the self-identity is lost. Don’t forget that, unlike angels, we are still animals deep down longing for self-satisfaction, for our individual self-worth. You cannot give and commit what you don’t have. True love is happy in suffering and sacrificing for the beloved because, in so doing, he finds his own meaning in life.

By Monday, when the client comes back, I have to accept her case. Since the infernal fire she had to her husband during the honeymoon has not grown into a commitment, then there is no reason for the institution to continue. Her searching self must be freed and not imprisoned in the institution she does not and cannot identify with.

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Saturday July 28, 2007 – 07:14am (CST) Edit | Delete

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soulmates

shaped in the same cast, we trek apart

searching for our own cithara sings

the melody written in the universes of our fate

distanced by space, longing for the presence

we keep on humming, the same tune of our birth

when we sing, there is always the broken chord

that empties our being, and longing

in the concert hall of our heart, we know what

the music that completes the song

the soundtrack that our destinies must play

to our heart we keep, the testament of our birth

wherever we trod, we hear

the murmurs of the heart

the same melody we have always known

that by fate we, each, sing alone…

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Sunday July 1, 2007 – 06:17am (CST) Edit | Delete

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paradigms

I have devoured books. Books about sports, history, bios, philosophy, religion, and even, banned books. I too read pornography, and true art as well. What I am now, for sure, is not not only the synergy of the real lessons in life but also, the teachings the books taught me. Real lessons, once learned, cannot be unlearned: like a chronic disease, they become part of your being.

But in our readings, there are books which we imbibe the most, books which become prisms on how we view society and life in general. Two authors stand out for me: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Stephen Covey.

Hegel’s The Philosophy of History demonstrated the well – known dialectical reasoning of thesis-anti thesis and the resulting synthesis. For him, reality as we know it is the unfolding of the progression of the human thought, the dialectical materialism; that for every stage in history, there is the embryonic seed of destruction that would result to a synthesis which is a progression of the former state of things, which synthesis, in turn become the thesis in the historical ladder.

Heavy concepts , it seems. When I read Hegel’s books, at first, I thought I was facing a blank wall. I had to read several of his books before I took hold of his idea. The idea is actually unfolded in history. The affluence that wealth brings in capitalist America is the boon and bane of that state. Because people live in comfort and luxury, the incoming generation tend to be less industrious compared to the fathers that toiled for the wealth. There is the loosening of morals and discipline, essential traits of the nations that brought the wealth. The thesis, the wealthy society that is America, therefore, generated its own seed of destruction, the coming of the generation that marvels at comfort and luxury without the corresponding industry and discipline which the fathers had.

The anti-thesis of a free and honest election is the massive cheating, fraud and terrorism. But that too will necessarily end, not now perhaps, but if we follow the Hegelian dialectic, it will have its end, or at least refinement, in a new synthesis. Why? Because the anti-thesis of the free election, if pushed to its limits, carries with it its own demise. Massive electoral cheating, if it becomes intolerable, will invite its fierce foes.

What does this idea of dialectical materialism impact on me? I view events positively. When I read the horrible headlines, my spirit is not necessarily dampened. Terrorism, corruption, electoral cheating, these too shall pass and be resolved in a new synthesis. These are mere material manifestations of the progression of human history, and the evolution of the human thought. When this anti-thesis to a good society is exemplified in its worst forms, society will inevitably bring forth the synthesis. The wrong idea of actors being elected to office reached its apex during Erap’s election, and that the idea, as shown by the recent polls have to be killed. Cesar Montano, Richard Gomez, Lito Lapid were sent packing for their movie shoots and not the public offices.

The second book that impacted on me tremendously which changed my paradigm about people is that of Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It was gifted to me on my natal day by somebody I treasure for a lifetime. Accordingly, every actuation of a person can be understood based on a paradigm. Why do some Muslims regard Christians with enmity? Go to their paradigm. For them, we Christians are still the infidels who have desecrated their religion. If you understand where they are coming from, you understand the manifestations of their paradigm, and the greater your tolerance for cultural differences. Why does my eldest kid misbehave? Then go where she is coming from. Her next sibling followed barely a year after. When she needed our parental care and understood what it meant, we were coddling mostly the newborn. Her misconduct is a way of telling us that she too exists and needs coddling. Covey’s book opened my reservoir of compassion to other people. When I see people and their actuations, I relate these to their respective paradigm.

If every person would just view each other’s actuations based on the paradigm of that person, then the world will be very peaceful. Pope Benedict XVI, in fact, when he made a speech in a German university, though he was heavily criticized, invited Muslims and Christians to a true dialogue, a deeper understanding of the true bases of our discord.

The way we relate to people based on their respective paradigm is a paradigm in itself. But lest I may be misunderstood, Covey’s book is not an invitation to tolerate the commission of a wrong. Our paradigm is limited to our own perceptions and experiences. As my late professor in Metaphysics, Fr. Montero said: quid quid recipitur, recipitur secumdum mudum recepiendi. {Translated, things are received or perceived depending on the capacity of the receiver}. Ones paradigm and his understanding depends largely on his capacity to perceive and understand. Though our paradigms differ, the manifestations must be guided with the natural law of right and wrong. Killings cannot be tolerated just because one paradigm allows it. To detonate a bomb to kill the infidels may be understood in the light of one’s religious paradigm. But understanding and tolerance are different concepts. To kill a person, not in self-defense, cannot be universally accepted nor can it be justified in the tribunal of our conscience. I may understand why you box me, but hell, I cannot tolerate that it be done to me.

Should I keep these lessons throughout my lifetime? I doubt. Hegel said that the true nature of man is unfolding yet in history. The kind of life and being that I may become in the future is not a fixture, definitely not static. The lessons I have, true enough, may be not be unlearned, but as I march to towards life, I may find my own thesis-antithesis-synthesis, that the idea I treasure most, may find a different expression.

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Monday June 11, 2007 – 07:31am (CST) Edit | Delete

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the kids

meet my kids: (left to right) lynette, matt steve, lesette; second, the youngest, and eldest respectively.

i really dont know what to write, how to start, and in the first place, why i am blogging about my kids. anything about the kids conjure a whole gamut of emotions, that one can hardly differentiate one from the other; but the moment a parent starts to write about the kids, there is no stopping, as there is no range limit to the full orchestra of paternal love for his kids.

let me start about what i am learning from my kids. the individual pursuit of happiness cannot be defined by the parents. The moment parents tell the kids what interests to pursue, the kids cease to be their own, and as they live life not of their own making, they cease to have an individual persona, their identity.

lesette, 13 years young, the eldest, is one kid a conventional family treats as the black sheep: one who does not conform with the expected behaviour. She started prep school at the age of five, from then on she showed lack of interest in studying her lessons nor listen to her teachers. but while in prep school, she befriended the security guard, all the teachers, the principal, school directress, and all the students of that schol. The school was small so everybody knows each other, so a I thought. but when i transferred her to a university, she easily went on to be the most popular student. One afternoon, i was suprised when she asked her mom to prepare snacks because she had a meeting with the officers of kids’ association in our subdivision. she organized the group and she was ten years old then. though apparently she lacks the textbook lessons, she is learning well in the university called life.

lynette , 12 years young, is the exact opposite. at the age of four, we had to enroll her in the prep school because she would cry if we did not. she went on to top her classmates from prep to her elementary years. but unlike lesette, she is a home body and tends to keep a small circle of friends. she is hard to befriend with. but unlike lesette who indulges in different interests, lynette is focused and if i may say, fiercely driven. at an early age, i had her tutored for piano lessons which she excelled. i did not introduce her to my passion – tennis – as she appears to be very poised at a very young age, and her complexion may be burnt by the searing sun. to my surprise though, she took the tennis racket and insisted that she be taught. she started june of 2006, and yesterday, she was a champion in the 12 under category in a tournament participated by the seasoned players in Mindanao, Philippines. she has overtaken tennis players who have played for not less than five years already. let me show off her trophy( hehehe) hereunder:

matt steve , six years old, on the other hand is combination of the personalities of her two sisters. gragarious enough to have many friends, but not quite as driven as lynette. i was surprised though when i saw his grades to be 90% above in all subjects, even though i have not seen him study his lessons. but he is ferociously driven about computers. he can play 24/7 in a computer.

my friends will always compare my kids from each other, specially lesette and lynette , whose personalities are exactly opposite each other. but as a father, and knowing that life is not only IQ and grades, i never compare my kids. education is not merely about the lessons in the classroom but also , if nor more, of the the outside world. in the end, what matters is the kind of journey in life they will take, and whether they can hurdle the obstacles in their respective journeys.

my apologies if i indulge you in a cheering spree for my kids. but if not me, who else? (hehehe)

to live is to discover life, and the realization of one’s full potential in the pursuit of his own meaning and happiness. i don’t play my kids’ lives, nor tell them to choose one path from another. i am only their coach of the kind of life they want to live.

i dont know what my children would become with the kind of parenting i practice. my only philosophy in life is that i should pursue the kind of life i find meaning with. i may fail, but at least, i don’t appear successful to the multitude but inside is bereft of meaning. If i hold that philosophy, how can i not let my kids seek and live a life they can relate to, and be fullfilled with?

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Monday June 4, 2007 – 09:47am (CST) Edit | Delete

Next Post: Paradigms Previous Post: belonging and alienation

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belonging and alienation

Way back in college, there was this professor, Fr. Malley, who analyzed divine and human history in terms of alienation and belonging, instead of thesis and anti-thesis, the latter being more popular to the students considering the political temperature during Marcos time. The Marxist dialectical materialism took man as a mere object, a mere commodity in the historical moment. Fr. Malley’s analysis however considered man as the focal point of history. If history has to be understood, we have to dig deeper on the nature of man. To him, history is the full stretch of the tensions of belonging and alienation, played in the recesses of the human psyche and outwardly projected in our collective history.

twas in the Garden of Eden when alienation started

The Garden of Eden, although more allegorical than historical, jump starts the connection of the divine with the human and at the same time the alienation of man. At the end of the story of the Genesis, when God already breathed into man the breath of life, the Creator gave man an abode, which was a paradise on earth, the Garden of Eden. Man belonged then to the embrace of the Creator. But the snake in the garden which tempted Eve to take the forbidden fruit, opened man to the other world, the possibility of living beyond God’s reach.

It was in the Garden of Eden that man strayed away from completely belonging to God. Throughout the Bible, there is a constant struggle to belong to God and at the same time to be alienated therefrom. Moses, in leading his people to the promise land, was faced with pagan-worship, bacchanalia, sex orgies, and all vices in complete defiance of God’s commandments.

Moses parted the red sea only to be betrayed by the people he wanted saved

Human history is a mere extension of the biblical tension in terms of religious wars. In fact, the most gruesome war is not political but religious; the former war aims to conquer territory, but the latter is concerned with the conquest of the soul. What we witness today by way of terror attacks is not a clash of civilization but of one group trying to consolidate its piece in the already fractious religious debate, claiming their religion as the only path to salvation and the rest will lead to the road of perdition. The issue, to what religion should man finally belong, Christianity or Islam, has only alienated man from the source of love and belonging. In an attempt to spread its own version of salvation, people have been killed, and when called upon to account for the deaths, these groups would only charge the killings to collateral damage.

But why should man kill if he only wanted to belong to his divine? The answer lies in the estrangement of man. If we have to read historical moments, we have to go back to human nature. Without roots in the divine, man is a broken piece. The sentient, and intelligent man needs to belong, to the divine and to the people he truly loves. According to Saint Agustine, “My heart is restless until it rests in thee”. Ironically, the jihadist that kills is moved by the overpowering mission to accomplish a mission that is, for him, truly divine. If he fails in his mission, he not only fails his Allah but the people around him as well. He needs to belong, and if he has to kill to achieve this, then kill he must. Alienation is at times worse than death.

So too the Crusaders who slaughtered the Muslims on their way to redeem the Holy Land. The medals of war conferred on them were mere testaments of their deep desire to be accepted and to belong in the bigger Christian community.

The most lethal assassin is not one who brandishes his weapon with dexterity; it is one who is willing to die in the pursuit of a mission imposed upon him by his group that sets the common vision. If he dies, he will be a martyr to his brethren, no matter the scorn of the society that he has wronged. Unfortunately, in man’s desire to belong to a common mission, divine or worldly, he sets him apart, by force of circumstance , from the larger community. What we see now are packets of cohesive groups unwittingly annihilating each other.

The necessity to belong is both divine and human. It is existential in character. There is a proverbial hole in a donut. A donut ceases to be one without the hole. Man is suffering from an existential hole, an emptiness that he carries to his grave; he is forever in constant attempt to fill-it up but never succeeds. The members of the family, friends, and other humans who we love and care are sources of

the hole remains till we die

belonging that somehow fill-in the hole. But while still alive, we look upon God as the source of total completeness, as the Being with whom we truly belong.

Historical movements are manifestations of this existential hole in every man. People seek salvation in recognition of this hole. Otherwise, if man feels complete, there is no need to look for the beyond. Push to the extremes, we see congregation of people, who, in their search for their own version of salvation, have relegated others as mere collaterals.

Is man cursed to kill each other in the name of salvation? Look at the mayhem in Bali.

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Sunday May 20, 2007 – 08:30pm (CST) Edit | Delete

Next Post: the kids Previous Post: How to cheat in the election

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