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.

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.

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.

of dying and thereafter

 

      Last December 2, 2006, we attended the burial of my wife’s auncle. He was suffering for almost two years of cancer of the tongue. One month before he finally succumbed, he suffered a severe bleeding due to a rupture of one of the veins  caused in turn by the spread of the cancer cells.  When I saw him, I immediately called his brother, my father-in-law, and told him that within twenty four hours, his brother could expire. Actually, the prognosis of the doctor was that he would last for not more than seventy two hours.  Amazingly, he survived for another month. Thanks to a sheer will to live, to hang-on to dear life.

       During his last days, he would let the windows of the hospital open so that he could see the trees outside.  He would talk of going to his farm, and of doing his other routinary activities.  He would walk us through his previous triumphs and pains, and he intended to do more. His body was so emaciated in contrast to his once athletic physique.  Anytime then, he would expire.  Once, his eldest son Reno , asked him, “Dad, are you afraid to die?”   His unmistakable reply was a curt, “Yes”.

 

        During his burial,  my son who is still six years old, kept on asking why his “Papa Remy” was sleeping in the coffin.  I said, he is already dead, and would have to be buried soon.  As usual to a precocious child, I was bombarded with follow-up questions, as if I were  under cross-examination.  But the question that jolted me was ” What would happen now that he is dead?”  I could not answer . Otherwise, I would have to go to a long and unending discourse of the afterlife, which until now, I too am still grappling and searching for answers.

 

 

       When the coffin was finally lowered to the ground of his final rest, I noticed that my son shed a tear or two.  Other grandchildren also were teary eyed.  During the vigil and the church ceremony, these children were still playing and frolicking around, seemingly unmindful of the solemnity of the occasion.  Yet, at the final moment when the coffin was lowered to the ground, the same children who were playing were sobbing.  I asked my son why he cried, he retorted, “Should we leave him alone?”

 

        As a child, I was wondering what would happen after death.  “Physically, death must be very painful that I may expire in the process, ” so went my chilhood musing of death.  Is the afterlife, too dark, cold, and lonely?   Obviously, my son, gragarious and playful as he is, is concern more of the dead being alone in a dark grave than of the beyond.  As a child then,  the answers given to me only  raised more questions.  

 

       I have always been reflecting on death.  Are we afraid to die because we leave love ones and memories behind or is it because, life after is uncertain? 

 

        When I was in college, I majored in Philippine Studies and Philosophy, a recipe of challenging beliefs.  I was so enamored with eastern philosophy that I almost went to India for further studies, if not for my mother who wanted me to become a lawyer.  But by then, I lost  my catholic faith.  At the age of nineteen, I became a non-believer of Christ although I still believed then on the Supreme Being. (or was it the Universal Principle? Or Nirvana? Or the Great Cosmos)   In times of doubt, one thing becomes certain, uncertainty.

 

        During the period of doubts, the most nagging idea to me was about the afterlife.  I held on to many possibilies, that I was not certain of what death would mean.  Lately however, when I regained my christian faith, death to me is a painful process, of leaving the loved ones and the memories with them, for something, as the Bible promises, eternal life.

 

        Yet, even as I cling to christian teaching of the afterlife, I could not erase in my mind the other possibilities.  Afterall, no one has come from the dead to tell the living.  Somehow, the christian belief of the afterlife eases the burdens, clarifies some doubts, and give the dying fortitude in spirit to face the great beyond.

      Recent events though show that people abandon the present in favor of the  promise of bliss in afterlife.  They live for the beyond, while  smothering the here and now reality.  Terrorists would kill innocent people in the pursuit of the jihad, whatever the word means.  They may die in the process but that is of no moment so long as they go directly to the promise of paradise where they live in abundance, and they are surrounded by virgins whose  only duty is to satiate their pleasures.  There is too the christian teaching that  it is better for the poor man because he can enter the kingdom than the rich man.  Forget poverty, hunger, and malnourished children; the poor are sure to enter heaven.  People cease to live in the present.

 

        In his last days, Auncle Remy received the final christian rite, the annointment of the sick. Gradually,  he accepted death.  When he expired, he had a smile of serenity in his face.  Rightly so.  He died, but left the tracks of having raised a good family, made a loyal circle of friends, and contributed to the community.  These are things we would reminisce of him.  In the end, he had no more problem accepting life after death for although the road ahead would be ancertain, he lived a meaningful life on earth.  Although he had sights of the beyond, he did not cease to live the moment.

       It is precisely the truth that the afterlife is uncertain that we try to make our lives meaningful.  A good singer should sing, a boxer should know how to punch hard and fast, a lawyer should articulate the laws.  And what about me? I blog now because so long as the internet is around, my thoughts are forever recorded, and could be retrieved in the generations to come.  After all, when I take my last breath, I am not a mere speck in the stream of time anymore.  I made a difference.

 

        But faith in the afterlife somehow makes dying not too difficult to accept.  And if is the only way to ease the anguish of death, then I better hold on to it.  The alternative would only be more morbid.

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when life begins at 40ish

        it was strange. usually, after three shots of brandy, i get usually sleepy. but not last night. i could not sleep, even if i tried to. i was told that when you get older, 41 to be exact, your sleep time diminishes: you sleep late but wake up early. father time, as it were, is taking its toll. the sleep hormone is fast depleting.

        is this more physiological than psychical? or is it more philosophical, a tectonic paradigm shift about life?

        when you reach forty-ish , the tell-tale signs are becoming, in the legal parlance, res ipsa loquitor – the thing speaks for itself: the hairline is fast receding, the knees start to wobble, the waistline turns immeasurable… ad infinitum. sleep problems come with the greying of the hair.

        but the physical signs are mere manifestations of the changes inside. chemically, at the age of forty, the estrogen re-asserts itself. the male libido suddenly surges back as in the youth of the past, save for the organic weapon, which, due to constricted blood vessels, needs the chinese prescription , the happy king potion.

        the hormonal changes necessarily trigger electro-physical reactions in the left hemisphere of the brain. at this stage, one becomes irritable, easily sex-cited with the twin peaks of the woman, and tends to go sporty in apparrel, in an attempt to hold back father time. the psychologist, if not psychiatrist, describes this as mid-life crisis, a wish to stay younger forever as against the lurking realities of aging, with all its pervasive signs.

        between a wish and a reality which seems irreconcialable at this point in life, the deep-seated frustrations inevitably appears by way of the beers, and women – as if to prove that one can still do it and nothing has changed. at the philosophical level, becoming forty-ish is being in the threshold of youth and of age, of the gnawing reality that deep inside is the realization that life , or rather living, is a process of dying: that no matter what the facade one projects, inside lurk the fears, or rather, anxieties of death that may just knock anytime. and because death, or aging, is now in the doorstep, one has to leave his tracks on earth, good or bad, for the living to relive.

        the focus to achieve for fame or infamy reaches its apex at this stage. normally, empires, a business or harem, take clear shape. the life project that would leave an indellible imprint is being realized, till the forty-ish marches towards his grave. But precisely due to the temporariness of life that we try to make it eternal, to live in the here and now, in a word, to be immortal by the seconds.

the itch to teach

    That man is multi-dimentional being is a given.  Our interests, concerns, hobbies are so varied that sometimes, we become jack of all trades without mastering any, so to speak.  In our thirst for something beyond the material, we try to search what makes us happy, until , if we are lucky, we do something that we love do, even if we  do it many times over.

    For nine years now, I have been teaching in at least two universities.  When I took up my law studies at  Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, I taught in another university,  handling philosophy and political subjects, the former being my major in the undergraduate and the latter, being relevant with my study of law.  That was for a period from 1988 to 1990.

    I took my oath as a lawyer in May 9, 1991.  Thereafter, I focused in the practice of law.  Aside from tennis games, my time then was consumed by lawyering, basically going to the court, writing legal briefs, arguing in court, and dealing with clients.  I had to learn the ropes of lawyering.

    Sometime in the year 2000, I decided to teach in my alma mater.  When I was asked by the vice-president why I would want to teach despite by busy schedule,  I readily answered , ” I just love to teach.”  Since 2000 up to now, I am still teaching law subjects.  Before the opening of this semester, I wanted to stop teaching considering my heavy workload.  But in the end, the itch to teach prevailed on me.

    Perhaps, teaching runs in my veins.  My parents are once teachers. My elder sister is still teaching now.  Our young sister used to teach also.  It’s a family affair.

    But as I examine now,  and reflect on this “itch to teach”, I realize  that teaching is a profession I may  have opted to do full time, and not lawyering, if not for financial consideration.  You see, teaching here in the Philippines is not well-compensated.  The salary I receive a month from my part-time teaching job is not even enough for the gas of my car. And yet, here I am, still teaching.

    I realize that aside from tennis and lawyering, it is in teaching that I find true satisfaction.  At the end of the lectures, the altruistic feeling that I have helped nourish young minds is enough compensation.  When you teach,  you can pour out not only your grey matter but also your heart.  The privilege of teaching is that you can share you knowledge on the subject  about virtually anything.  Teaching is therapeutic.  You nourish the mind of your students, but you also nourish your soul. 

    Besides, knowledge earned, if not shared, is knowledge unlearned.  I am a voracious reader.  I virtually read anything my eyes could lay on.  Then and now, I have not  ceased to read.  It was only during my law studies that I devoured law books.  But after passing the bar exams, I went back reading on varied topics.  What’s the use of my learning if I don’t share it with my students.  Of course, I write, just as I do blogging now.  But even before man could write, he would talk. 

     And once one’s the knowledge has been shared, the teacher actually sharpens his understanding of the topic he is teaching.  I have taught Law I which is Obligation and Contract for almost seven years now.  To my surprise, every  lecture session, I discover new angle of an an otherwise overrun topic, and new technique in imparting the same idea to students.

    Of course, teaching has its non-pecuniary rewards.  Often, when I go to banks and offices I see my former students.  As a sign of their gratitude, they take priority attention of my transaction in their offices.  I don’t fail to acknowledge this act of gratitude.  It is an affirmation, that my teachings have somehow touched their lives, and that is something no one can take away.  The bond between a teacher and student last for a lifetime.

    Sans the financial consideration, would I have forego lawyering for teaching?  Compared to lawyering, teaching is eons behind in terms of material rewards.  But without this consideration, would I have opted to be a teacher and not a lawyer?  Admittedly,  my teaching experiences have honed my lawyering skills.  As a teacher, you must have a mental endurance and focus for the entire lecture sessions which would normally total six hours daily.  That is the mental focus a lawyer, especially a bar examinee should have.  If I am doing okay in my lawyering, its thanks to my teaching.

    Yet, definitely, even without material considerations, I would not still forego lawyering for teaching.  I do find  gratification in teaching just I do  in playing tennis.   But lawyering too offers me a joy only I could measure. (or is it imeasurable?)

    Despite though of my tight schedule in lawyering, I don’t know if I would finally decide to stop teaching next school year.  The “itch to teach” is just too incessant to kick off the system.  Or may be, with my lawyering, I’ll just continue my other pursuits such as  teaching and tennis.  Afterall, as a multi-dimentional being, I too don’t exactly know what gratifies me the most.

trading off for a kind of life

The pace of modern life has been taking its toll. South Korea’s economy has zoomed to greater heights. Japan has always been a powerhouse economy. And yet, if the economy is doing extremely well, then why suicide rates are very high in these countries. Karl Marx once said, ” The economy determines consciousness”. We may hasten to ask, “What kind then of consciousness does affluence bring?”

 

T’was May 9, 1991 when I took my oath as a lawyer. In the afternoon, my lawyer-auncle invited me to join his law firm in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. He scheduled a party bash three days after my oath-taking. He intended to invite his clients and friends so that I would be formally introduced as a new member of the firm.

 

The invitation would have opened the doors of financial affluence on my part. Having been raised in a poor family, the chance to practice law big time and the perks that go with it, was so tempting for a poor fellow who could not by then even afford a motorcycle.

 

Yet, that night of the same day, I had to down beers so that I could sleep. The promise of financial affluence in the big league of law practice was hard to resist. It would mean opportunities for me and my siblings. I was dreaming of mansions and fast cars and the neon lights.

 

But the reality of life in Manila knocked me. I was imagining my life there. I could not imagine but the break-neck pace of daily, routinary life. To avoid the traffic, I would have to wake-up at 4 o’clock in the morning, and hope to be at the office by eight. But then , cases are heard in courts usually at nine in the morning when traffic is horrendous. I recall one time when due to traffic and flooding, it took me nine hours from the airport to the University of the Philippines when normally, the travel time was only thirty minutes. In the evening, I have to leave for home after six in the evening when traffic would not be a problem anymore. To cap it all, the smog and pollution in the city would mean I have to take my anti-allergies daily, for life.

 

The following day after my conversation with my auncle, I decided to go home in Cagayan de Oro City. When I arrived home, I immediately called my auncle, and told him my decision. As expected, I received a bashing from him. I understood him. He could not understand why I would have to trade-off sure affluence to a dull and uneventual rural life. So he thought.

 

The other day, I had a drink with a lawyer friend in Camiguin, a small province of only 60,000 population, with only one superior court. He graduated from Ateneo de Manila, the number one law school in the Philippines. Graduates of that school would become politicians, opinion-makers, and legal luminaries. Yet, he chose to practice law in the sleepy province of Camiguin. I asked him why , he replied,” because time stops in Camiguin“. He is in control of his time, and life.

 

Controlling ones time is what all along I have traded off from the sure affluence in Manila. In the province, you don’t have to rush anything. You control the pace of your life, you become, as in the famous poem entitled Invectus, ” I am the captain of my ship, I am the master of my soul”. You have sure footing on the ground and as you look up at the sky, you know your place on it.

 

Achievement takes its toll on ones life. You have to be ahead of the pack and that means every second of your life should be directed at reaching ahead of the others. The race for wealth will engulp a person soon. The race controls him. The concerns to play with family, to take a time-off, takes a back seat. Ironically, when one wins a race, he looks upon others who are in another race, in another league much bigger than his. He blindly embarks on a new race. In a sense, he loses his own life project. At the end of the road, people realize that the lives they have built are not theirs; instead, it is something set by the circumstances, and therefore a life they cannot claim to be theirs. The tragedy is one loses touch with his core. The race has determined ones life. There is here an alienation of oneself to himself. This is a paradox that explains why otherwise normal people take their lives.

 

What I actually traded off was affluence in favor of quality of life. I wish my auncle were still alive and realize what I traded off for. He would have understood why Jimmy Ongpin, his friend, a billionaire, a secretary of finance of the government, took his own life, at the pinnacle of material success.

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.