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.

Arrogance of power

Who do not want power?  Juan de la Cruz?  Priests?  Politicians?

Juan de la Cruz wants power desperately.  He has suffered injustices for so long.  He could not even eat three times a day much more send his children to school. With power, his woes would be over.

The hierarchy of power in the Catholic Church, and other religions are very elaborate.  Subordinates are directed to observe blind obedience to the superiors.  After all, the superiors are held to be the vicars of Christ. Power is wielded so the apostolate may be propagated.

Politicians occupy positions of power.  They hold the reigns of the government.  With millions of constituents under them, they need the awesome and vast state powers so the common good may be promoted.

Power per se is not wrong.  Without it, there can be no control, no peace and order in the world, and even in the universe.  Can you imagine what happens to the cosmos if the fallen angel Lucifer were as powerful as God?

The problem sets in when there is disconnect between the ideal and reality.  This is particularly of strong significance in case of politicians because they wield the vast resources of the state.  Corporations may fall; religious sects may fold up.  But their effects are not as pernicious as the failure of politicians.

When politicians fall, and wield power in a manner diametrically opposed to its avowed purpose, the mayhem it will cause to the people multiplies a thousand fold; it is even exponential.  The people suffer physically and spiritually. With wrong exercise of power, people get hungry and illiterate, and their freedoms curtailed.

By virtue of the command of politicians over the multitude of citizens, they can easily play god over the plight and fate of so many people. The trouble with this is that the more they exercise power, the more they think that they hold the destinies of people, and the more they delude themselves of being gods.

Politicians who go beyond the threshold of powerful leaders to being demigods do with delusions that they are already indestructible, that no opposition can stop their further ascent to power, and of perpetuating their grip over it. This is a psychological threshold that not only wreaks havoc over the nation but over the person himself.

We have witnessed in history men who have deluded themselves to be demigods that they led with seeming impunity. It is history too that proved that as long as these leaders are still made of flesh and bone, they too have to suffer the penalties of their abuse.

Adolf Hitler. Benito Mussolini. Saddam Hussein. Joseph Stalin.  These are international figures that have fallen from the ivory tower of their delusions to the ashes of their destructions.

In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos is too recent in our memory.  He usurped presidential and legislative powers, and ruled with seeming impunity for more than two decades.  He too, like the rest of his breed, had to suffer the humility of defeat and destruction.

Despite the historical lessons, people do not seem to learn, and still insist on threading the path where others have fallen.  Is it human nature to learn things when they experience personally the agony of failure? Or is it just like a child that has to burn his finger to learn that something is really hot which much be avoided?

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a well-read person.  She does not hold a graduate degree in economics without a good reading of history.

But despite the historical lessons, she is showing the symptoms of arrogance of power.  Maybe her stay in the palace when her father was then president, and her own nine years stay there has pushed her to a psychological threshold when a leader thinks that whatever she does, nothing can stop her nor could she be held accountable for it.

History has shown that when this psychological threshold is reached, the leader is prone to commit stupendous blunders.  These are blunders which the people could not anymore take, and therefore, they have no option but to punish the leader.

President Arroyo may have to meditate deep and long whether her charter change moves amount to a psychological threshold of arrogance of power.

lost cause

THE cost of the guerrilla war the communists have been waging for four decades now is huge in terms of money, lives, and opportunities for development and peace.

How many billions have been spent on either side of the tracks to buy munitions and allied operating costs that go with a war? How many lives of young men and women have been sacrificed in the altar of ideology?

 

The money could have been spent to alleviate the plight of the poor. Bright young minds could have been channeled to nation-building instead of destruction.

Way back in college, when the blood was searing hot with ideals, I cannot count anymore how many mass actions I participated in – Welga Ng Bayan, picket lines, civil disobedience. That age was the time when dying for worthy causes seemed a better option than just being a bystander watching history unfolding.

Yet, for all the ideals, there was not an instance when I entertained the idea of embracing communism. Many student leaders who I knew then were already in the front organizations of the National Democratic Front goaded me to hop into the wagon of rebellion. Ironically though, most of the ideologues did not understand fully well the Marxist thought. What they had were slogans and sound bites.

The sounds never bit me though. Two years of reading the primary works of Karl Marx, Hegel, and even that of Lenin’s and Mao’s led me to conclude that yes, communism needed a leap of faith to hope for a classless society, a utopia, a promise of a Neverland much like religion which Karl Marx described as the opium of the people.

Equality among men can never be attained. What we can hope for is equal opportunities and equal treatment before the law. The latter is already enshrined in the equal protection clause in the bill of rights of our 1987 constitution.

But to hope for a classless society is more faith in content, much akin to the promise of afterlife. Always, there are always men of sterling character who will lead the masses, men gifted with charisma and leadership skills.

They may be men like Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and to be current, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin who still calls the shots in the Russian politburo. You can find these men in the different echelons of society, men who are living witnesses that God did not actually create men as equals. This is a reality which we cannot deny.

Despite the hallow promises of communism, many of my brilliant friends indeed hopped into the wagon, and never to be heard again. There was this editor of Ateneo de Davao, a law student in Xavier University, and before I forgot, my literary editor who surreptitiously inserted in our publication the manifesto of the Kabataan Makabayan.

The burden of brilliance is that you cannot help but dream, and forge a vision of society. To the inquisitive mind, the status quo is always wanting. The tendency is to be non-conformists. During the Marcos regime, the universities were fertile grounds of idealistic and brilliant students who did not need convincing to join the underground movement.

History has unmasked the illusions communism promised. The 90’s saw the collapsed of the iron curtain, and with it the fall of East Berlin, Romania, and other communist regimes. Russia, under Michael Gorbachev, had to invent glasnost and perestroika; China, starting from Deng Xiaoping, opened her doors to the capitalist system.

Otherwise, these once two pillars of communism could not have survived the economic challenges the new millennium poses. [Content-wise, Russia and China are not anymore communist states but socialists with authoritarian rule.]

Yet, the Communist Party of the Philippines still continues to wage the guerrilla war. The tolls are beyond measure. The masses are still burdened with revolutionary taxes. The guns are still firing in the countryside. Even within the rebel movement, purges every now and then saw the excavations of mass graves, of skeletons piled atop the other in the name of an ideology.

And you cannot help but ask, for what cause and towards what end? Why fight to install a communist’s regime that has unmasked its falsity?

History has relegated the pretenses and illusions of communism in the dustbin. What are left now are the detritus of the ideological conflicts of the past century. History as it has unfolded simply cannot make communism a viable alternative. In fact, whenever the adjective “communist” prefixes an ideologue, one wonders what the adjective really means.

Communism is better put for good in the closet, a red-shirt once worn – a social experiment that never proved its hypotheses correct. Why wear the clothing when it has been shown that it does not fit the occasion? Why insist on an ideology that in the vast experiment called life, nothing has been proven right?

It is time for the Communist Party of the Philippines to re-invent itself. Insisting on pursuing a violent struggle is a blind pursuit of political power without a really strong ideological mooring. It is a walk in the dark without knowing where it should end.

Or, shall we ask, what for comrade?

 

Revisting Marxism

Then and now, I have never been convinced of the Marxist prescriptions of what ails our society.  Then and now, Karl Marx diagnosis of the capitalism has always been right.

    In the 90′ after the Berlin wall was pulled down, the collapse of the Eastern European nations exposed the inherent weaknesses of communism.  The communist ideology stifled the basic motivation for any human enterprise: reaping the fruits of your own endeavour.  The profit motivation in the capitalist system is absent in Marxism where production and the market forces are state-controlled. 

 What we saw in the 20^th century was the inevitable collapse of the communism.  Suppression of the basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and travel may be tolerated by the people. But where extreme poverty is shared by the people in then communist regimes, the ideology that brought them a shared misery has to be torn asunder.

 Besides, Karl Marx prescription was short of a prophecy, more of a religious leap of faith rather than realism.  His utopia of a society where everybody is equal is a dream detached from reality.  Amongst men, there are always who rise above the rest.  There are always men who are born leaders and charismatic who are destined to lead the proletariat – the politburo, a class of men who become the new elite instead of the bourgeois in the capitalist system.

But Marx critique of the capitalist system that he saw in the 19^th century rings true, then and now.  Germany, London, and France saw the birth of the industrial revolution.  There, feudalism which was agriculture-based gave way to capitalist system where industrial moguls built factories.  In these factories, men, women, children and adult had to literally swim in the dirt to propel the engine of growth: the industries. 

 The market forces though were owned by the capitalist.  Labor, and farm products were cheap.  On the other hand, processed goods, and services were expensive.  In the scheme of things, the poor get poorer and the rich, richer.

 Society then is propelled by one motivation: greed.  The need for more profit saw the dehumanization of man, and the estrangement of his labour.  Men are made slaves.  They work and are paid so they can eat, and survive for them to work in the factories.  Clint Eastwood in a movie puts this perfectly:  “I work in the gutter to give me money.  I need money to buy me food. I need food to give me energy.  I need energy for me to work in the gutter”.

Marx and the bible have one thing in common.  Both foresaw the destructive force of greed that is the prime motivation in the capitalist system.  Accordingly, for the Marx, greed which urges the capitalist to exploit labor is at the same time the reason for its growth and the seed of its destruction. 

Marx and the bible already predicted the collapse of capitalism.

 The present global financial crisis is rooted in greed.  Capital has been amassed and concentrated in the hands of the businessmen. This they achieved at the expense of the exploited labour.  This you saw in outsourced labor in China, Indonesia, India, and the poor countries in Asia, including the Philippines. In these countries, labor comes too cheap.

 Multi-nationals companies that amassed wealth through this scheme have to invest their wealth in the financial markets like the Wall street.  These investment houses in turn has to flood the market with excess cash by way of loans and mortgages. The financial schemes are designed in such a way as to rake more profits on the part of the capitalist, and squeeze the last drop of blood from the poor, and even the middle class.

 Overtime, the bubble collapses.

  In the scheme of things, this must be noted, the working class is never paid the true value of his labor.  Somehow, business takes away the large chunk of the fruits of his labor.  Business drinks the large volume of the workers’ blood, so to speak.  At end of the day, the working class is short-changed.

 In the exploitative relations of labor and capital, the working class wakes – up one day that he has no money to pay his gasoline, buy nutritious food, pay the medical bills, and pay the mortgages. 

 Without money, the working class defaults on obligations. At this stage in history, the capitalist class rattles and is shaken, terribly shaken, that among them they argue, and quarrel.  All that the capitalists have invested cannot be repaid. 

   Karl Marx, born two centuries ago, saw this collapse of the financial market coming. 

   The tension between labor and capital is only a part of the spectrum.  Labor produced the profits which capital enjoyed.  But when labor is pushed to penury, capital has to sink with the ship too.  Labor and capital must not be seen as opposing forces.  They compliment each other.

 Society must be organized based on the precept that labor and capital are only two sides of one reality, that the two are complimentary to each other, that too much exploitation of the working class would lead to the demise of capital.

  Karl Mar, two centuries ago, made a sound critique of capitalism.  Two centuries after, we saw the demise of communism which Karl Marx prescribed.

Two centuries hence, we need another intellectual giant to rescue us from the present collapse of the capitalist system.

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.

changing views

Fr. Montero, S.J., our professor in metaphysics, used to tell us before the start of the class: “Quid quid recipitur, recipitur secundum mudum recipiende”. Translated, “Everything is received according to the capacity of the receiver.” By way of an analogy, the one-liter bottle can never hold more than its capacity.

Then, Fr. Montero would proceed: “This is an immutable law of nature.” If you are dumb, you are bound to me one. If your I.Q. is that of a moron, then don’t aspire for post graduate studies.

May his soul rest, I indeed kept his maxim to the heart. No one from the class challenged his view. How can indeed a one-liter bottle hold two liters of water? From the classroom discussion, this seeming truism influence the way we relate to people. This child, given his I.Q., cannot take up law; that employee can never do this task.

Whilst science owes its framework from philosophy, the latter too has to bow to the superiority of the empirically demonstrated fact. The flat earth theory was a Mesopotamian thought that prevailed for many centuries, percolating in science, politics, and religion. Until Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the earth, the earth was then held not round. The whole system of knowledge had to be overhauled.

Then lately, contemporary medical findings have it that the neural networks that wire man’s brain can actually be stimulated by engaging the mind in both creative and analytical activities so the neurons multiply and create more linkages. The more linkages of the neurons, the more wired the brain is, and hence, the better I.Q and even E.Q a person have.

Science too may later on develop a bottle that even if it is designed to hold one liter of water, it may contain more compared to the present design because in the future, perhaps, even in between the molecules of the glass bottle, there may be nano particles that can hold up water. Now, you don’t measure intelligence by I.Q. The generally accepted norm today is multi-intelligences. The brightest of your kid, or employee, or you friend, may not necessarily be the best for the organization. The entire person is the package.

Are there really immutable laws of nature? The answer cannot be had in the near future. Philosophical theories are constantly being redefined by science, and the latter’s direction is being moulded by the contemporary thought.

Rigidity. Fundamentalism. Absolutism. These are anathema of the unfolding of human knowledge. Given the context, the right attitude is not dogmatism nor relativism. Dogmatism stifles the search for knowledge, and adaptation to something new. Relativism however leads to chaos. For sure, concepts and ideas may not be necessarily existentially true because one believes it to be so. The taking of soma plant during the Kali yoga ritual is not necessarily sound because they experience the 7^th heaven in their hallucinatory flight. There are certain universal virtues, not necessarily immutable truths that still keep humanity intact for millenniums now.

The attitude should be openness, the capacity to learn, listen, experiment, and adapt to new concepts. One does not have to die for a view which overtime have been proven false by verifiable phenomena. When the Oil Deregulation Law in the Philippines was enacted, consumers’ blood pressure shot up because that would mean pillage by the oil cartel in the Philippines comprising of Shell, Caltex, and Petron. That was in 1998. Ten years after, and after two months drinking with the top executives of the new oil player in the market, the new opinion has to be formed: the Oil Deregulation Law is good for the Philippine economy. The cartel of the Big Three is being slowly torn asunder by the many new players which roll back the pump prices ahead of the former. The hour per hour monitoring of the pump prices by this new player, JETTI Oil, is evidenced enough of the cut-throat competition going on. This is good for the consumers.

In human relations, openness is the key. One or two events do not a person make. Prejudgement, discrimination, bias, these three have no place in contemporary history that keeps on changing, and evolving. While as a human race, we evolve in knowledge; as a person, we are still in the life long search for identity, and in the process, revealing shades of the evolving persona.

How one wish Fr. Montero, S.J. is still alive, to tell him that his dictum does not hold now. But then he was a product of his time and place. No one should judge a person without judging the historical context he was in. And who are we to judge the historical context of the past which eventually, we the present, trace the long thread of the past, live the present, and project the future?

Had Fr. Montero been still alive today, the bet is for him to open up to the knowledge of the present, and adapt it. May be, even as he was still schooled in metaphysics and immutable truths, by now, he would live blogging his ideas into the virtual world.

Openness. How can you argue against?

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.