Making Women Cry

Last year, I made my mother cry.

It was after a Surigao trip with my office mates. I had a hard fall the previous day and the left part of my face was bloated and bleeding, with a bandage draped across the side of my forehead and stitches above my left eyebrow. My left eye was nearly shut. I came down from the stairs and when Mama saw me, she cried.

Earlier this year, I made an office mate cry. I had informed Rose that the titles for some clients were already under her custody and she began to look for it in earnest. I later saw the same titles still safe-kept in our vault and when I informed her, she cried (she was looking for those titles for over half an hour). I gave her a cake to assuage her and to absolve my guilt for the oversight.

Last month, I emailed something in the office. Ma'am Ye happened to read it and she confronted me. She was crying in the restroom and, standing there in front of me, she tried to stop the tears still forming in her eyes.

These are the instances when I'm not proud of myself. Whether I was right or wrong, it still cannot justify making a woman cry.

I like to say that I am not raised that way. Yet, it frustrates me even further knowing that these instances were not fully under my control: I couldn't stop myself from stumbling, I was acting in good faith when I spoke to Rose, Ma'am Ye should never have read that if someone did not snitch.

But the reality remains. The only thing left to do is wish I'll never do it again.

Erratum

It's belated but I owe an apology to Justice Del Castillo.

In an earlier post, I had voiced out my support to have the guy impeached for plagiarizing. Only later did I got to read the decision on the administrative case against Del Castillo and found out that I knew nothing after all. The case was simply a series of overlooked errors which, unfortunately, blew up to an impeachment complaint.

Here's the link to the Supreme Court decision on the matter.

In addition, one other thing I learned is that one cannot be a lawyer without going through law school. In other words, I have to pay my tuition fee.

A Mother's Letter To Her Beautiful Daughter

After reading this, the first thing that I thought about is: what's wrong with the guy? You cannot say you love someone without also saying that they're beautiful. That's just wrong. But I guess the guy doesn't get it.  

I'm digressing anyway. Here's a wonderful piece by Emma Johnson to her beautiful daughter. Yes, the girl is beautiful and, while reading this, I cannot help but recall a scene from the movie "The Bucket List" where Edward, played by Jack Nicholson, manages to cross off from the list the wish that he could "kiss the most beautiful girl in the world". Guess who he kissed?

Got this piece from Huffington Post:

Dear Helena,

One day when you were a baby, Aunt Tina and I were smooching all over you. After all, what's better than kissing a baby -- all that smooth, perfect skin, those rolls of fat, all that love that just oozes out of them? Kisses and kisses and kisses. "We're giving her extra kisses now so she can store them for times in her life when she might not have as many kisses," Tina said. That was exactly right.

Now you are nearly 5 and you rarely let me kiss you like that any more. But, as you know, I like to tell you every single day that you are beautiful -- for much of the same reason. Helena, I hope you read this when you are 14, and 24, and 44 and 84. I need you to know that you are beautiful. Because you are.

I was involved once with a man who let me know that he did not find me beautiful. When we first met he told me how it bothered his ex-wife that in the decades they were together, he never once told her she was beautiful. "She just wasn't to me," he said with a shrug. "Sure, she was cute. But not beautiful."

How strange, I thought. How absolutely cruel.

From then on I was acutely aware of his miserly use of that word. On the one hand, he used it freely when describing past lovers or starlets. Yet every single compliment about my appearance from this man became an insult. There were an abundance of words of admiration, yet every, "You're pretty today," and, "You look summery in that dress," became nasty, digging reminders that I was not, indeed, beautiful.

I see now that he was mistaken.

Helena, here is what I need you to know: To this day I carry a shame with me for two things related to that chapter:

1. I started to feel ugly. That was my choice. No one allowed this happen but me. But I did.
2. I stayed.

Helena, in your life you will meet many men, and some of them will not find you pretty at all. And maybe you aren't to them -- and that is totally fine! Who cares if they don't like your appearance? Such things are but a matter of taste. But let me tell you something -- you are so, so beautiful. It is not your big, curious brown eyes, those incredible eyes framed with magnificent brows and impossible lashes. You are not beautiful because of your dashing smile, the poreless olive skin or that elegant, mysterious triangle of small beauty marks that spot your face.

No, you are beautiful because of that thing -- that perfect thing inside of you. It is that same thing that is in your brother, and in snowflakes, and when you and your friends laugh on the playground, or when the morning is quiet for a moment and we see the pink and blue clouds above the city. It is inside of me, too. And it is something bigger than you and me. God? Love? The Universe? All of those things -- and other things. Things that do not have words.

And when some man lets you know that, no, sorry, you're really great and all, but you are not beautiful, you need to know that has nothing at all to do with you. Not one thing. It has something to do with that man because he cannot see. And because you are beautiful you will be kind to him -- because in all your beauty you will have that kindness and love to share.

And then you will go.

And you will find someone else, or you will be alone. But no matter what, I hope you know always -- effortlessly and unconsciously -- that you are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

All my beautiful love and more,

Mommy

It's More Fun In The Philippines

This is something I got from journalist Raissa Robles' website, who in turn got it from the Department of Tourism's most recent ad in YouTube. This is just a good ad.



Yep.

The Thesis Saga

I was unlucky that day.

Last January 5, Saturday, I finally set out to visit the library in Ateneo De Davao Jacinto campus. My goal was to finish what I set out to do last year, which was to re-encode our thesis  and place it in this blog for posterity's sake.

So I paid Php 80.00 for the entrance. I asked the guard if they had a photocopier; he said yes. I set out to look for my thesis. But guess what? It's missing! I tried again and again for naught.

Jeesh. So much for my eighty pesos. So I went to look for another book that I fancied and proceeded to the stairwell at the back to have it photocopied. But guess what? The photocopiers were missing!

According to the librarian I talked to thereafter, the photocopiers had been removed a few years ago. I asked if I were to photocopy a thesis, can I bring it outside? No, she replied, because it's reference; it cannot be borrowed let alone brought outside.

So that's my dilemma. Only when I went home did I remember that we have another copy of the thesis in the Humanities Division. Perhaps I could ask Mel for a favor someday...and the saga continues.

The Rabbit In The Year Of The Snake

My sister aroused my curiosity when she told me that I would be not so lucky this year. And she's right. According to the horoscope anyway.

Here's one site which predicted gloom and doom for me this 2013:

For everyone born in the sign of the Rabbit, 2013 is a tough, stressful and tiresome year for you. It is good that you know it now so that you are prepared to face them and will do the necessary feng shui updates to remedy them. Be positive and strengthen yourself! You need to stay strong and healthy this year to face the year’s challenges. Try not to overwork and get enough sleep.

Your spirit chi and vitality energy is lacking, a marked comedown from the highs of year 2012. You will not be enthusiastic as last year in your approach to work, or life. Success luck is rather poor. So it works better for you in 2013 to relax a bit, go with the flow and make it a year to upgrade yourself with knowledge and skills, and to strategize and consolidate your resources. Be patient and composed. Do not be hasty in taking risks, starting new ventures or expanding business or you will drown with troubles. Best to stay low key. Not a good year to change job or put money into an investment. The 26-year old Rabbit (That's me. I'm turning 26 this August.) will suffer very bad wealth and health luck.

Whoa. But I make my own luck. I'll be fine this year. I hope.

Reevaluating The Seven Sins

Eugene Rolfe, in his book, The Intelligent Agnostic's Introduction To Christianity, did a skillful assessment of the human tendencies we often derogate as sins. Far from being shut off from our lives, these instincts are the ones which give us our vitality and must be utilized; the only caveat herein would be that these be lifted up to God, to relate these instincts to the "center of our being." What at first glance are mere evils to be shunned are, in fact, the stirrings of the psyche to be complete, to be one with the Divine.

Eugene Rolfe sums it up as follows:

Pride: But the instinct behind pride is that magnificent affirmative thrust for living which will fight to the last for its place in the sun. Without this kind of primary egotism, death would very soon supervene. It is this force, too, which keeps alive in me that spark of distinctive individuality...

Envy: In its positive aspect of emulation, it is that outward-stretching power in me which appropriates the qualities I lack and so, by assimilating me to the characters of people whom I admire, and from whom, therefore, I can learn, helps me to fulfill my entelechy of wholeness.

Accidie (Sloth): Yet, idleness, as a necessary counterpoise to action, can lead us directly to the inner life and to the contemplation of the Highest

Eugene Rolfe doesn't elaborate on the other sins, suffice it to say that all these are desires. "Desire, as the Buddha saw, is the root of all evil. It is also the root of all good..."

One Idea

Every heard of the exercise where one picks out an object he sees in his room and proceeds to write using that object as his subject? It's a common exercise, they say, for budding writers who struggle with writer's block, that horrible mental hiccup where words don't come as easily as they should.

It's also a good way to make me accomplish my self-imposed requirement that I should have at least 144 blog posts for 2012.

But I wouldn't want to bore you on details concerning my bed, or my laptop, or my ironing board and so on.

And how about that? I've got another blog post. Hehe. I can be a cheater sometimes.