Doing it with passion

Youth is synonymous with energy, and with it, the passion of doing things, of having  energy rush  for every new adventure.  The infant is bewildered with the world around him, the same sense of awe that drives him to experience anything new.  The unknown is always a source of adventure.

As a child, I watched my elder sister play hide-and-seek during full moon, in a place that had no electricity then.  When I was six, and my parents allowed me to play during full moon,  I counted the days the day right  after the full moon, the start of the wait  for  another moon cycle, so I could go out and be lost into  the night.

The river in our place caught my fascination that I would cut classes so I could swim in the then pristine waters.  One time, I brought along with me my two younger brothers, to swim, and when my father discovered it, he punished the three of us to kneel for hours before an altar.  But that never deterred me.  The wonders of the river always beckoned me, even with the punishment.

When we grow older, we tend to do things sans the element of adventure but of our ideas about the activity.  Having had previous experiences, we know already the feeling, and understood the reasons for the activity.  Somehow, we get detached from the activity because at the back of our mind is the mental picture of the activity.  We thus tend to be more cerebral than emotional when we tackle the activity. It is not   the heart that dominates but the reason why an activity has to be done.

When I became a lawyer, civic groups invited me, and joining is a must, as any lawyer should, if he intends to establish a network of friends who are prospective clients.  At the age of 25, months after passing the BAR exams, a prestigious fraternity opened its otherwise secretive gates for me to enter, the FREE MASON.  I was already in the venue where the “raising”  (or formal start of the initiation) was held,  but my heart was not beating fast for that fraternity – there was no fascination nor wonder in joining the group.  Before the gates were opened, I left hurriedly.

At the age of five, I was playing competitive chess.  I played for long hours every day, honing my skill, competing with players much older than me. I could then play chess in my mind. Every chess game was an adventure.  But when I was already playing top level chess, the passion suddenly went pfftt. The need to be a champion took away the adventure the game once had. Chess ceased to be an adventure but a duty to practice daily to be a champion. One day, I could not find in my heart the sense of adventure when I played chess.  The fire was spent. At the young age of 13, I stopped playing chess.

I tried golf, and shooting, and went competitive, and was quite successful. After learning the ropes of the game, the passion was just gone.

What caught my passion early on in my professional life was the handheld radio.  That was in 1993, when cell phones and internet were yet unheard of in our country.  There was thrill in talking to people from distant places, of dismantling the radio set to analyze its parts, and studying for the licensure exam for radio communicators.  That was the time when I designed, and made my own radio antennae to compete with other enthusiasts.  The passion lasted for almost three years.  It was so short but the radio group I founded swelled to 1,500 members that everyday there was always a birthday celebration I had to attend, or in some instances, to visit the sick, dying, or deceased member.  The cell phone crazed naturally supplanted radio communication but the friendship among the members last even up to today.

When I was thirty years old, I got injured in a basketball game that I was limping for almost six months.  Though the spirit was still throbbing for basketball yet the bones were becoming brittle and the muscles, atrophying.

Accidently, while recuperating from my injury, I saw a tennis clinic for beginners.  At first, I thought the game is easy until I borrowed a tennis racket and tried to hit the ball and never to hit one correctly until more than ten attempts.  Secretly, I trained on my own, at the wall of church.  That secret training, without my knowing it, defined my life – from 1996 up to the present, not only my life but that of my family and the people who have been involved in the tennis movement in this part of the region.

Admittedly, the passion for lawyering has always been burning inside. Despite the experiences of how justice can be bought, or squandered by the sheer ignorance of a judge, the court scene is always never the same; it is always something new, and therefore, a possible source of infinite wonder and awe. But the profession is just too taxing for the mind and body that already, I am thinking on going into another field – politics.

Tennis is another story.  Almost every day, when my lawyering schedule permits, my family and I would be in a tennis court, to play tennis, or just to talk and drink with tennis buddies who are like extended families to me already. Every time I play tennis, the passion is still burning.  Maybe, this too will not last.

When we engage in activities with child-like fascination, we often excel and are generally fulfilled. But the moment the passion is lost, we search for other concerns, a new experience  to explore, and to unravel its thrill – the search may be endless.

Happily though for me, my writing for passion still throbs inside, to chronicle the varied concerns I have devoted my time into.  May be the fire for writing will one day end, when my heart does not seek anymore for a new field, a concern, a sport, or an activity.  That time perhaps will coincide when the candle of life ends.

where hath the home gone?

 

It was a reunion.  Yet when he entered the campus, the location was different and the structures unfamiliar.  Is not a reunion a reminiscence  of the good old days,  both as to persons and places?  How could this be a reunion in an alien place?

Then the host welcomed them with her speech: “ This is not anymore the house you used to play around.  The new high school campus is here.  The buildings you used to spend your time have now been destroyed.  Yet, we welcome you all to our home because it is in our hearts, in our collective memories.”  No one indeed can take the home away, but can she possibly relocate a new home for the alumni?

A house is not a home, so the cliché goes.  Wordweb says “the house is a dwelling”  but a home is a social unit living together”. 

He has  lived  in three cities and three provinces, and spent years in those different  places.  But whenever he was asked where is home, he always blurted the place of his birth, Libas, that place that wherever he would be, he still longed to return and revisit, to renew lifelong ties. His umbilical cord was buried there by  a “mananabang”, one who assists in a delivery even though she has no  formal schooling.  Of the siblings, his connection to his birthplace is the strongest.

Way back in the school days, vacations and Christmas were not complete without going home to Libas.  The place seemed to contain psychic energies that keep aflame the fire of life, when all the stresses of campus days gave way to charivari at night drinking “tuba” with childhood buddies, and recovering from a hangover  by diving into the then pristine river.  If the womb would nourish the fetus, Libas, his home, nurtures life.

But the home was lost. It started with the house.  In 1984, super typhoon Nitang felled two coco trees near the house, damaging the greater part of the kitchen.  The ancestral house was never the same since.  Then, the  dog which reached 13 years, got blind, sedentary, and then died.  The dog, even if he were away for a year, never failed to meet him at the wooden gate, wagging his tail and jumping at him, as if reaching for an embrace.  The saddest news struck: his  grandmother’s brother died.  There was no one left living in the house.

He cannot recall now when the last time his saw the ancestral house.  The windows, the roofs, the pillars, without his knowing, slowly disintegrated that what he sees now as testament of his  birthing home, are concrete posts.

The last time he attended the fiesta of  Libas was almost a decade already.  Together with a law partner, he joined a gathering of people watching a program, and then later on, public dance which the folks claim to be a “disco”.  He did receive few handshakes from people  whose name he could not recall anymore.  For the first time, he felt estranged in the place of birth.  Ah, could these folks not remember that for several years he was there in the stage to emcee the program which he orchestrated?  And these wannabe bullies, could they not know that once, he was a “gang leader” here?

In a place that once was so familiar with you, now is a place where you become a stranger.  How could it be when he thought he owned this place because his umbilical cord was buried here?

Where is then home now?

The host in that high school reunion told them that home is in the heart, that even if the old campus is now gone, there is  a new campus which they can claim theirs.  After her speech, he wanted to tell her, “ Our campus was the place where we played basketball, milled around, peeked at our young and sexy teachers, played out our foibles and whims – our campus was the only witness of the secrets of our batch.”

Sorry ma’am.  Your new campus cannot be his home.  The campus where he once belonged had been destroyed. There are new buildings which he could not associate with.  True to worbweb definition though, “Batch  ‘82 is  a social unit”  which is now finding a house which the batch hope, over time, after so many interactions, can be called home.  Rebuilding the old campus is impossible but in the virtual world, they have found a house, where all the batchmates, who are now in different parts of the globe, can congregate, share foibles and whims, and in the journey in time, he may call this house – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xuhs82/ – our newfound home.

To live without a home is to go through life without the beginning.  Somehow, if the old home is neither here nor there anymore, one has to search for a new home, a place which nurtures life.  Libas was once a home, but it has ceased to be one when one day, he felt he was a stranger, when everything else seemed alien. 

Where is that home?  The batch has found a house. But his new home is out there, in the process of making. Or, who knows, there could never be home anymore like Libas.

pausing from a blur

It has been months since I last blogged.  The events, both professional and personal, have been a blur.  The lawyer’s life is almost everyday racing to beat deadlines of legal briefs.  On a personal side,  constructing  a new house which is near the children’s school took my  off office hours.  But as in the past,  I always take time to reflect during my natal day.  Such day is today.

 When we are young,  time seems too slow.  During my elementary years, I wanted to finish fast so I would be in high school; and in high school, I wished time would pass fast so I be in college. But past forty, it seems that time passes so fast that you want that it would stand still.  There are so many concerns you want completed that one desires for more time.  I have seen people in a funeral, and wondered why people walk slowly as they lay the dead to the final resting place. Now I realize that the walk is precisely to bewail for the lost time not spent with the dead.  If only we could turn back the hands of father time.

But time has to pass; so too this borrowed life.  In the end, I ask, what are the things I have done, and things that I should do, so that in the end, I want everybody not to walk in the funeral but run as fast because the life once lived had been meaningful. If it were a sentence, the grave should be the final punctuation mark, a period, that to extend it would mean the loss of the magic the sentence evokes.

Meaning???!!!  Ah, how many lives have been spent without really finding it, and how many journeys ending in a meaningless search.  Once, I wrote about one’s meaning in life, and I received a rather harsh reaction from fellow blogger virtually called PAPA.  The meaning of one’s life is not something cerebral; it is the way we live and relate to people, in  perking up the otherwise mundane things; in celebrating triumphs and arising whole and intact from failures.

Today, I have forgiven in my heart the person who hurt me badly these past days.  I could not understand why that despite the help I am extending,  venom still comes out from her mouth.  Even as she refused to acknowledge the wrong, and thus refuse my forgiveness,  it does not matter.  My heart is now cleansed.  A poisoned heart is not at peace.

Then I recall Stephen Covey and his idea about paradigm.  What makes man unique is not his genetic make-up.  Science can make a clone, a close copy of the double helix of the original.  What makes man truly unique is not his DNA; it is his perception of reality.  A clone may have the genetic make-up of the original, but it does not have the consciousness of the latter.

When one arise from his bed every morning, he either sees the receding darkness, or the rising of the sun from the horizon.  There you immediately see the persona, one distinctly different from the other.  Among those who see darkness, the shades of the dark differ ; for those who see the rising sun, they too differ in their perception of the intensity of the light.

The challenge for human understanding and compassion, is to be able to see how the other perceives reality, the standpoint from which he sees the situation – in a word, his paradigm.  Knowing and understanding the other necessitates viewing things from his paradigm.  If one is able to do this, compassion prevails in his heart.

In my career too as a lawyer, I always try to understand the paradigm of  my client, the adverse party, the opposing lawyer, and upon  knowing  where they  come from, I tend to know what strategy they will use, and what measures needed to counter the tactics.

Yes, PAPA,  it is not finding meaning but in being fully alive and awake, of passion  for life that truly matters.

I have celebrated life with my relatives, employees, friends, even with unknown individuals.  Bottles of beers have been emptied; tennis balls have been struck with precision and ferocity; tempers have flared-up;  jokes have been shared;  legal briefs have been written; and yes, tears too have been shed -  all these in celebration of a life.   Today is the best day to renew the passion for life, in real life and yes, even in the virtual reality.

                                                   

 

doing it with passion

Youth is synonymous with energy, and with it, the passion of doing things , of having energy rush for every new adventure. The infant is bewildered with the world around him, the same sense of awe that drives him to experience anything new. The unknown is always a source of adventure.

As a child, I watched my elder sister play hide-and-seek during full moon, in a place that had no electricity then. When I was six, and my parents allowed me to play during full moon, I counted the days the day right after the full moon, the start of the wait for another moon cycle, so I could go out and be lost into the night.

The river in our place caught my fascination that I would cut classes so I could swim in the then pristine waters. One time, I brought along with me my two younger brothers, to swim, and when my father discovered it, he punished the three of us to kneel for hours before an altar. But that never deterred me. The wonders of the river always beckoned me, even with the punishment.

When we grow older, we tend to do things sans the element of adventure but of our ideas about the activity. Having had previous experiences, we know already the feeling, and understood the reasons for the activity. Somehow, we get detached from the activity because at the back of our mind is the mental picture of the activity. We thus tend to be more cerebral than emotional when we tackle the activity. It is not the heart that dominates but the reason why an activity has to be done.

When I became a lawyer, civic groups invited me, and joining is a must, as any lawyer should, if he intends to establish a network of friends who are prospective clients. At the age of 25, months after passing the BAR exams, a prestigious fraternity opened its otherwise secretive gates for me to enter, the FREE MASON. I was already in the venue where the “raising” (or formal start of the initiation) was held, but my heart was not beating fast for that fraternity – there was no fascination nor wonder in joining the group. Before the gates were opened, I left hurriedly.

At the age of five, I was playing competitive chess. I played for long hours every day, honing my skill, competing with players much older than me. I could then play chess in my mind. Every chess game was an adventure. But when I was already playing top level chess, the passion suddenly went pfftt. The need to be a champion took away the adventure the game once had. Chess ceased to be an adventure but a duty to practice daily to be a champion. One day, I could not find in my heart the sense of adventure when I played chess. The fire was spent. At the young age of 13, I stopped playing chess.

I tried golf, and shooting, and went competitive, and was quite successful. After learning the ropes of the game, the passion was just gone.

What caught my passion early on in my professional life was the handheld radio. That was in 1993, when cell phones and internet were yet unheard of in our country. There was thrill in talking to people from distant places, of dismantling the radio set to analyze its parts, and studying for the licensure exam for radio communicators. That was the time when I designed, and made my own radio antennae to compete with other enthusiasts. The passion lasted for almost three years. It was so short but the radio group I founded swelled to 1,500 members that everyday there was always a birthday celebration I had to attend, or in some instances, to visit the sick, dying, or deceased member. The cell phone crazed naturally supplanted radio communication but the friendship among the members last even up to today.

When I was thirty years old, I got injured in a basketball game that I was limping for almost six months. Though the spirit was still throbbing for basketball yet the bones were becoming brittle and the muscles, atrophying.

Accidently, while recuperating from my injury, I saw a tennis clinic for beginners. At first, I thought the game is easy until I borrowed a tennis racket and tried to hit the ball and never to hit one correctly until more than ten attempts. Secretly, I trained on my own, at the wall of church. That secret training, without my knowing it, defined my life – from 1996 up to the present, not only my life but that of my family and the people who have been involved in the tennis movement in this part of the region.

Admittedly, the passion for lawyering has always been burning inside. Despite the experiences of how justice can be bought, or squandered by the sheer ignorance of a judge, the court scene is always never the same; it is always something new, and therefore, a possible source of infinite wonder and awe. But the profession is just too taxing for the mind and body that already, I am thinking on going into another field – politics.

Tennis is another story. Almost every day, when my lawyering schedule permits, my family and I would be in a tennis court, to play tennis, or just to talk and drink with tennis buddies who are like extended families to me already. Every time I play tennis, the passion is still burning. Maybe, this too will not last.

When we engage in activities with child-like fascination, we often excel and are generally fulfilled. But the moment the passion is lost, we search for other concerns, a new experience to explore, and to unravel its thrill – the search may be endless.

Happily though for me, my writing for passion still throbs inside, to chronicle the varied concerns I have devoted my time into. May be the fire for writing will one day end, when my heart does not seek anymore for a new field, a concern, a sport, or an activity. That time perhaps will coincide when the candle of life ends.

vignettes in the mind

These days, the topics I want to blog about are racing in my mind, each wanting to find expression ahead of the others. Instead of writing one topic, let me outline the sketches.

Of Palawan

1. Last week, I accompanied my daughter to Palawan, an island province in the Philippines. She was playing lawn tennis in the national games. I promised her that if she would win the regional eliminations, I would be her coach in the national tourney. She did not make it to the top spot, but for a girl who sidelines in tennis aside , placing fourth is a feat already.

2. The moment I set foot in Puerto Princesa, the capital city of Palawan, I immediately realize that there is hope for the Philippines. Puerto Princesa is the cleanest and greenest city in our country for almost a decade now. The place is so clean that any visitor would be ashamed to litter it with cigarette butts, candy wrappers, sticks, or any form of garbage. The residents’ concern for cleanliness was so infectious that we visitors from other regions - who think the entire Philippines is a big trash can - had to keep our garbage until we found the garbage bin.

3. I left my cell phone in a motor vehicle (known as tricycle). After almost an hour while in the tennis court, the driver approached me and handed back my phone. I asked a friend who is the chief of the intelligence agency there about the crime rate. He said it is the lowest in the Philippines. This is one low statistics that we should be proud about.

4. Palawan was threatened with poachers, loggers, fishpond operators that destroy the mangroves, illegal conversion of farmlands. But since 1994, when Mayor Edward Hagedorn was elected, he drove away the illegal loggers, poachers, and illegal fishponds. He summoned the help of his province mates. Political power has been wielded for the common good, and now, even if the mayor would not be around anymore, people power will ensure that the rich bio-diversity of the entire province is protected.

5. The animals and fishes are not afraid of humans. We make them afraid of us. In one island, I went snorkelling. I panicked because I was suddenly surrounded with school of fishes that I thought I would be attacked. I immediately went ashore and told our guide of the incident. He just who just laughed. The fishes are not afraid of humans.

6. I spent the last few hours in Palawan swimming in a white beach facing the South China Sea. I could have stayed my entire life in the fresh, unpolluted, pristine beach. But the reality of life beckons me to pack my bag, back home.

7. I have always kept my principle of making friends instead of enemies. Years back, I came to know of a major in the military. He was promoted to colonel and went on to head the military agency in Palawan . I texted here that I was already in his AOR. I thought with his promotion he forgot our friendship. But to my surprise, he was so glad to be my host that he treated me almost nightly, and facilitated all our local tours with virtually no cost to us. Bridges once built should always be kept.

Of rice shortage

1. Early dawn this morning, I sped fast to the wharf bound for Camiguin Island, another tourist destination, this time not for a rest but for a court hearing. In the wharf, I was greeted with the presence of military men who are advance security of President Arroyo who would visit the island tomorrow. In the wharf, there was this big billboard saying that there is abundance of rice and President Arroyo is the instrument.

2. With still alcohol in my system, I almost puked upon reading the billboard. How can there be abundance of rice when the people have to line-up to buy rice? When the Philippines is the number one importer of rice? When by July, the price of rice is expected to skyrocket to P50/kilo or US$1.25?

3. President Arroyo indeed is the instrument, not of rice abundance but of the crisis. In the May 2004 election, almost ONE BILLION PESOS intended for fertilizers could not be accounted for. Jocjoc Volante who is the pawn used by President Arroyo siphoned off the money to fund the presidential campaign, Until now, Jocjoc Volante has not been charged with a crime.

4. I always believed in karma. Whatever you do, something will be done to you in return. You convert the rice fields into subdivisions, you lose the source of rice production. In Palawan, there is this penal colony known as Iwahig Penal Farm. 32,000,00 hectares of agricultural lands are being tilled by prisoners every day. Can you imagine how many sacks of rice you lose if you turn these farms into subdivisions? Can you eat your housing units? Without house, you still live. Without food, you cannot outlast the fasting of Jesus Christ.

5. Bio-diesel is welcome. But we have to re-think our strategies. If you convert rice fields into cassava farms, then you substitute rice for fuel. Don’t tell me you would opt to fuel your car than to fuel your body with food.

Of parenting

1. I have to play catch-up with my work due to the one week that I had to spend coaching my daughter. But catch-up I must. The work can wait but for my daughter and for my other kids as well, every minute lost showing your love, is an opportunity lost forever. If you miss the opportunity now, someday, it will haunt you with problematic kids, children whose lives you cannot understand anymore.

2. A friend asked me why I have to spend training my three kids in tennis when in the Philippines there is no monetary reward for tennisters. I have been a sportsman all my life. Name a game that is played in the Philippines, and I have played it. As a kid, my parents did not push us to study. They guided our studies but there was no stick. We were allowed to play the games we wanted. And in those games I played, I learned a lot about people, team work, discipline, reaching a goal, sacrifice, pain. Winning is sweet but the road is bitter. Name any human experience , it is played in the games already. I don’t expect my children to be a Federer or a Sharapova, but I do not wish to be an obstacle of the possibilities that they may become.

3. I bond with my kids more in tennis. I play tennis a lot. With the game, we talk about the power serve, tops spin, slice. We watch tennis games in TV and in real life. We play with each other or against each other. After all, any sport is not mere statistics. The human drama is just like any drama outside of the tennis court. Tennis imitates life, or is it the other way around?

the reflective capacity: “cogito, ergo sum”

Between man and all those that belong to Kingdom Animalia, there is an eternal chasm. Of all creatures, only man is capable of rational thinking. Rene Descartes exclaimed: “Cogito, ergo sum.” Translated, “I think therefore I am”. But there is even a greater divide between the rest of the members of his kingdom: It is only man who is capable of thinking that he is in fact thinking. In a word, man is capable of reflection, of transcending himself from his present existence.

The Myth of Sisyphus has been like a biblical parable to the existentialists. While the Garden of Eden saw Adam and Eve created to multiply, subdue the earth, and have dominion over all things, Sisyphus was condemn to roll the stones up the hill, and when it reaches the peak, the stone rolls down. For Sisyphus, there is no end to the eternal damnation. Since he was damned, he has to find meaning of the existence he did not choose.

But confronted with the circumstance of his existence, he has to project something beyond the present, beyond his present circumstance. In a word, in the face of the absurdity of rolling the stone upwards, there got to be meaning; otherwise, absurdity can easily turn to insanity, if not to suicide.

Human existence – stripped of the religious content, of the faith element which no argument is needed – is of Sisyphean genre. Every day, man devotes his time learning, working, socializing, ministering to his material and spiritual needs as well. But after all the lifetime of doing all these, everything is reduced to a dust, as all humans are destined. Life, and living it, is one prolonged trajectory from the cradle to the grave. After all the time spent surviving and living, ironically, every day spent is a day inching towards the grave. If life would have to end in that absurd way, why live at all?

For the religious, faith teaches him that there is afterlife. If there is afterlife, then the present existence must be spent following the rules the Creator ordained for human salvation. In the light of the promising future, there is meaning in what one does at present.

But the grace of faith, even if is bestowed on all humans, is not all the time recognized and lived. What then of present life? And besides, supposed there is no after life, what to make of one’s life? Would it mean that people are licensed to commit suicide because living and trying to survive is absurd?

Man is thrust in the world without freedom. No one choose to be born. But having been born alive, he is called upon to live and survive the kind of life that he wants, a life project that he has to forge and nurture. One realizes though that the other fellow human beings were born, and many will be born, without any option not to. If the mother’s womb nourished the fertilized egg until it is born, society is the womb that enables human to survive and live, using the tools of civilization – language, mores history, culture. Not only did man not choose to live, he too has to reckon with another given in his life – his social milieu.

Why does one grope for meaning in life? Why does Sisyphus have to appreciate the drudgery of rolling the stone upwards, and up again every time the stone rolls down? Take out the meaning content of life, and you lose the reason to continue living. And why does one have to have meaning in order to go on living? The key lies in man’s nature. Man not only thinks, but he is the only living being that is aware that he is thinking. Due to this human faculty of reflection, he is capable of finding meaning. Ironically also, man’s capacity to reflect is the same reason why he feels the gnawing angst if he loses meaning in living further. If man cannot relate something transcendental to his present existence, he feels the existential angst which all men are heirs to. This angst is the feeling of loneliness in a crowd, the barrenness of life amidst material plenty: it is the sadness that lays hidden behind the smile.

For animals, the definition of their nature and their kind of life is summed-up easily by their present circumstance. Man, on the other, is not defined by his present circumstance because he has transcendent nature, the capacity of going beyond the circumstance as he waives dreams, and fashions a meaning which is only accessible to him. You heard tales of great men who, despite the face of death, still uphold their ideals and dreams, men who dared to lose their lives so their life project, the meaning of their existence survives.

Because man reflects, he transcends the present. He is willing to lose his life so the meaning of his life may not be put to naught.

But ironically, man’s capacity for self-awareness, for reflection is also the bane that he carries until the grave. As one takes a mental picture of the kind of life he intends to live, and compare it with his present circumstance, there he realizes that there is a seeming unbridgeable divide. Even as he tries to realize his life project, his present prevents him from doing so, and even if he tries to bridge it, it appears that life project is receding further beyond his reach.

There was a boy born of poverty. He dreamed to be a doctor. By sheer diligence and hard work, he realized his dream. He succeeded. He acquired material wealth which he only dreamt of before. He became prominent. But then, even with his success. He committed suicide. We ask why?

Man’s projection of himself differs vastly in content. The doctor, owing to poverty may have dreamed of acquiring material wealth. The sure road is the medical profession which is paid handsomely. Yet, he may have realized later on that what really completes him is not material wealth, but something which may be yet undefined.

What then characterizes this meaning in life? Is the goal we set the meaning of our life? Take the doctor. He has achieved his goal but he snuffed out his own life. The problem with a goal being the end-all and be-all of one’s life is that when we achieve the goal, we realize that it never completes us otherwise we see no more reason for living. We struggle in life because there is something yet missing, something that we have to find. Once a goal is achieved, there will always be another one, and still another. The heart will always be restless.

The meaning of life, the true meaning that is, lies in the way we live life, in finding happiness in everything we do, not in the fleeting euphoria after having achieved a goal. This way, you do not hunger for what is not within your grasp because you are at peace with what you are and with what you have. Sisyphus did not aim to roll the stone upwards because there was a futility of the effort. If we aim to amass wealth, acquire knowledge, achieve the goals, the absurdity of it all is that when we die, all these turn into dust. The key therefore is to transcend ourselves and find the kind of life that we find our heart at peace with. That way, every step towards the Sisyphean apex is a source of joy notwithstanding that up the hill, the stone rolls down again; just all men, everything they do, end up in the grave.

The tragedy of life is not in failing to achieve the meaning of life, but to die without finding the meaning of his existence.

 

simplify life

Peter, at the age of 28, is two ranks away from becoming the captain of an international ship, after just seven years in the sea.  While others envied him for his stellar rise, he suddenly stopped, and decided to go home, and restart life by going back to school and study another course.  I asked him why, and he said: “ I have whispered so many dreams to the surging waves, and whilst my time in the vastness of the ocean.  For once, I want to sleep in my own pillow where my heart rests at peace”.

I dreamt of becoming a lawyer with lucrative practice, and be a politician.  After just five years into law practice, I was in the law firm where clients have to secure appointments, and a firm where I could launch my political career, one partner being a congressman already.  Then suddenly, I realized that I wanted a simpler life.  In 1999, I chose to resettle and open a new law office, and started all over again.

When the new year is only nights away, it is time to reflect on what one has done and has failed to do for the year,  and yes, not even for a year, but of the years one have lived so far.

People have amassed wealth. Bill Gates was once the richest until he gave to others the chunk of his wealth.  Others sought fame and glory.  Still others put a harem.  Bin Laden chose the path of terror.  But when people reach the top of the ladder of the path they have opted for, they realize that the ladder ends in eternity.  There is no so-called peak of wealth, fame, glory, and yes, even infamy.  When you think you reach there, you realize that there is something still which you can never reach nor acquire.

Many have burnt their life energies in pursuit of their dreams, only to realize that there is something lacking, that the dreams can never come in complete fruition.  Others even die without knowing if they have reached the apex of their dreams.  Still many choose death in utter frustration of the inherent impossibility of achieving the fullness of their dreams, and of their desires. Worst, there are those who died without even knowing what dreams they have had.

Human existence has, as it were, always “a hole in the donut”.  There can be no fullness in living.  Man like a donut, has always that existential “hole” that prevents him from being complete, of being fully satisfied; otherwise, if there is no such hole, he ceases to be human, and the donut ceases also.

Fr. Michael Moga, S.J.,  the principal exponent and author of Man’s Infinite Hunger,  once told our class: “ The key is not to achieve, to acquire, to dream: the key does not lie beyond but is inside your heart.  Try to ask yourself, what truly makes you happy and content, where can your heart find peace and solace, if you have found this, then live that life.”

I asked Peter why he stopped being a seaman, and choose to live frugally.  He told me: “For seven years I stayed in the ship, I had only one vacation every two  years but  I earned dollars.  P1000 then was only a loose change. I can easily give the money away.  I could buy food, wine, and women. During thirty days of vacation, I could do everything I wanted to.  Then after, back to the reality of surging waves and the expanse of the ocean.  In a word, I bargained two years for thirty days of bacchanalia, hedonism, and gluttony.  Now, every penny counts. I don’t stay in hotels anymore but stays in the house of relatives and become closer to them.  I do not ride in taxis anymore but in public vehicles where I got to talk to co-passengers who are my neighbors, and we exchange jokes while riding.  Since I do not have money, I do not go out on Sundays but I instead go to the church where the priest will not compel you to give tithes.  So I become closer to God.  I am happy for the full one year without losing my life n the seas.”

The key to living is not of having nor achieving but of finding meaning.  When I was young, I could not understand why my grandfather would close the door of his room, and do nothing for the day but read books.  When he died, and I was tasked to give a eulogy,  I was thinking of what to say.  Then I went inside his room, and browsed the books.  There I realized that for every line of every page, there was always a comment or a cross reference.  Reading his books, due to sheer volume,  could last a lifetime.  So only a man who found meaning in reading the books could so passionately comment on every line the author  said.  When I was called to give the eulogy, I was almost tempted to say: “Here lies a man who had uninterrupted lifetime of orgasm reading books”.  In deference to my elders, I simply said: “ My grandfather has no wealth, has no diploma, but he had the fullness of life he only knew, and had we known, we could only envy about.”

Before I decided to relocate my law practice, I was a  heavy, and gasping 86 kilos, thanks to  birthdays,  baptisms, anniversaries, or plain charivaris among buddies, which an aspiring politician cannot  refuse. Home everyday was early dawn when my children and wife were already sleeping.  Even in the house, clients would come, taking away the time that I should have spent with my kids.  Then I resolved that I did not have to be a high profile lawyer.  Deep in my heart, I was only longing for the simple joys of trial works, of cross-examinations and arguments, without sacrificing a family.  In an attempt to balance my life, I relocated my practice and simplified my life to work, tennis court, and home, and attending parties do not come as obligation.

I do not claim to have the fullness of life but I never regret my decision to start life anew.  Hopefully, Peter, who just made his decision three months ago,  will not also regret later in life.

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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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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going back to the core of life

Yesterday, I received a tragic news: my once tennis buddy, Dodong, died, apparently of car accident. But there is more than meets the eye. At 1:00 o’clcok in the afternoon of March 24, 2007, his car rammed into a truck that was parked at the road shoulder. He must be running with a speed of 120km/hour that his car and his mangled body were beyond recognition. Initial finding points to a suicide. Accordingly, his young wife, called him over the mobile phone to break the tragic news: she was leaving him. One tragic news leading to a more horrific news.

We were stunned, numbed. How could he took his life? He was doing well in his business? He was a class “A” tennis player, and for us, tennis players, “tennis is life”. So long as there is a tennis court, life continues. And yet, Dodong’s case proved that afterall, contrary to our slogan, there is more to life than tennis, that behind the grunts for a power stroke, underneath lies the sobbing self, hidden behind the facade of a happy face.

One time, I eavesdropped upon a conversation between two of my friends. This friend is planning to resign from his present job that compensates him enough to place his family in the middle income bracket. But he is planning to go to Canada for greener pasture, leaving his family in the Philippines. I joined the conversation, and asked this friend, what really does he want in life. He is doing financially okay here in the Philippines, but he is willing to leave for a higher income, despite the terrible adjustments that he has to make in Canada. The question struck a chord. He could not answer what he really wanted in going to Canada. And yet, he was then in the verge of deciding to leave.

How many times have we embarked on something, yet if we are asked why we did that, we become speechless because we dont have the reason why. Once, I gave a peptalk to my students. “Why are you studying? So that you can work later on? You work so that you can earn your bread, and you need to earn your bread, to give you energy. You need energy so that you can work well.”

You go to companies and other workplaces, you find people who are working without being able to transcend the workplace, meaning, unable to break the cycle of working to earn the bread to give energy, to work well. Life becomes a conundrum. A person lost in a riddle of life may later find no direction.

We are living in a dizzying world. Knowledge, information, and events come to us in a fast pace that we can hardly catch-up. Often, we do things as a knee-jerk reaction to events without truly reflecting on the reason why we do things, or we decide on something. I often ask students why are they taking a particular course, the usual refrain is that it is what their parents told them, or, it is the easiest course, or it assures them of job in the future. It was rarely when somebody answered me, “Sir, because I am excited and happy to learn about this course.”

In this dizzying world, the call to humanities is most imperative. The sciences may provide us with the technological know – how on how to deal with the present world, but it is in the humanities that provide us with the reason on why and how to deal with the present world. The humanities open our eyes to a deeper appreciation of life, a life that we chart and travel. There is a need to ask: Why and what am living for? The meaning of one’s life, and the depth of our conviction to it, is like a shining star that where ever we are, as we charter our ship of life, will guide us, and tell us whether we are on course or not.

Once we have an existential connection to the deeper meaning of life, no wind nor wave can buffet us into the neverland. We will always find our bearing in the turbulent seas because as we look up in the sky, we still find and relate to the shining star.

My tennis buddy Dodong may have been buffeted by the howling winds, and perhaps, did not place his shining star up there. Seconds before he rammed his car into a truck, the record show that he told somebody from the other end of the phone conversation, “I will ram this car into the truck.” Which, tragically, he did. He lost touched with the core of his life, the reason for living.

Maybe, he had placed a shining star, but he did not have a strong existential connection to it, that at the instant that the shining star was to be his guide, it dimmed, and failed to lift his spirits up, and there, his life went into oblivion.