2012

For the love of family, friends, and all the people I’ve met this year. For all the good and bad experiences that have made me a stronger, wiser, and better person. For all the opportunities to grow and to bless others. For good health. For my work. For my dreams, and every inspiration to pursue them. For all the blessings that I have received this year and in the past years. And for all those that I’ll receive next year. BIG THANKS!

Forgiving Others, Forgiving Ourselves

Forgiveness is one of the most holy values. And why not, it’s a value that is so hard to cultivate and to put in practice. Much has already been said about forgiving those people who have hurt us and offended us. Books have been published. Quotations on forgiveness have been circulating around the world. And self-development workshops focusing on forgiveness have already been conducted. It’s easy to say that there is already an information overload on the topic of forgiveness – but that doesn’t mean actually forgiving has become any easier because of all these. Forgiving is still difficult. It still involves pain. It still requires a denial of one’s self.

But to forgive, according to the mass homily this morning, is to liberate ourselves. To forgive is to set us free from the consuming anger and hatred that is bound to destroy us in the end. When we forgive, we actually do ourselves a favor. It is as if we proclaim, “I will not allow this person, or this incident, to disturb my inner peace – therefore I forgive.”

Aside from the difficulty to forgive others, it is also often a challenge to forgive ourselves – and many of us are not even aware that we are struggling with this dilemma. We sometimes think we are good, doing fine, no problem at all, until we are confronted with issues that force us to look deep within us and see – we have done something wrong in the past and we have not yet forgiven ourselves. The other person might have already forgiven us, but we could not forgive ourselves. Up to the present moment, we still harbor guilt, we are still ashamed of what we have done, and we still feel some degree of hatred directed towards us. This failure to forgive ourselves can be crippling. It can destroy us from within.

Forgiving ourselves might be difficult, but we have to remember that we are only human – we make mistakes from time to time. And from those mistakes, we grow. The mistakes we make are parts of the experience – we learn because of those mistakes. We should always remember that God loves us, that He will always forgive us, and so we must also learn to forgive ourselves, because we are worthy of forgiveness.

To Unleash the Child

It all begins by breaking the walls that we have built around us – the dictates of the society, telling us which is right or wrong, which is acceptable or unacceptable. Once the wall is broken down, we can begin again…

To see the world from a different light.

To give voice to the whispers of the heart,
Without fear of being wrong or being condemned.

To regain a curious mind,
More open to learning, more accepting of the world.

To start seeing the good in things.

To take risks without fear,
Ready to do whatever it takes,
Give whatever sacrifice is needed,
Just to follow the flight of the heart.

To fall madly in love,
No matter what the consequences –
Whether pain or despair or suffering.

To allow ourselves to be lost in our passion,
And in the process, find our true self.

To be brave enough
To venture into the unstable waters of love,
And experience its pure bliss –
Sharing without control,
No reservations and holding back.

To live only in the present,
Free from the shackles of the past and from the worry of the future.

To be free, and to be happy,
To live a life filled with faith, hope, and trust.

The child in us is always alive. Maybe it has been caged for a long time, but it’s just there – waiting for us to open the cage. Its voice may have been suppressed, but it still speaks in whispers, and we can hear it in the silence.

Let’s set it free and renew our existence. 

Repost: Negatron

negatron - an electron with a negative charge

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I call her Negatron, queen of all negative energies. She used to be my friend, but her negativity is just destroying everything around her - I decided to end the madness and save my sanity by keeping my distance. I can't help it, though, she still affects me because we're in the same circle of friends.

My feelings for her is alternating between pity and annoyance. Pity because I know she's never truly happy with the kind of mindset that she has. And annoyance because she makes everything oh-so-gloomy. She has a victim mentality - I don't know why she feels like the world is always plotting against her. She's always suspicious, always defensive, I wonder if  she even gets a night of peaceful sleep. I pity her because I see how her mentality is destroying her, and closing the doors to possible happiness. In the same way, I realized just recently that I can't stand her and her negative mindset anymore. In fact, there was a point when I just altogether stopped listening to her complaints - sometimes I hear them, but I don't take them seriously anymore, too much garbage and too much emotional baggage to handle.

Some of our friends have also taken notice of her attitude, and I guess they've learned how to put up with it. No one has the courage to confront her about the problem. Once in the past, I already hinted to her how I saw and felt about her attitude, but I'm not sure if she got my whole point. Now, though, I can't help it - I can't restrain myself any longer. I am unable to maintain a stoic and neutral face when she starts with her litany of negative ideas. All I do is automatically shut down, choose not to listen and then focus my attention on something else. Because if I don't do this, I'd explode. I can barely contain my irritation. Ugh!

I don't know what to do. I can't vent out to any of my friends without sounding negative myself. And I've never been someone to talk about another person behind her back, except during certain circumstances when I strongly feel and see the need to. I am seriously running out of options right now. God help me.

True Love Requires Will

It’s not solely based on emotions. The most genuine of love requires will. I’m not saying that love without will is not love. It is still love. But, this is not the strongest kind of love. If we want the strongest kind, we need to inject will into it.

It’s very easy to love someone based on emotions, but that love is limited. That kind of love is only capable of loving those that are worth loving – the people who are kind to us, those people who do us good, and those who love us back. That’s love, yes. But there is a stronger, a more beautiful kind of love – a love driven by will.

This kind of love can love even those who are not worth loving, even those who we do not feel like loving. It is will that enables us to love even those who are evil to us, those people who do us wrong, and those who hate us. Without will, we won’t be capable of loving these kinds of people.

It is will-driven love that enables us to forgive those who wrong us, the kind of love that enables us to accept the imperfections of the people around us, and the kind of love that gives us true peace of mind. Without will, we won’t be capable of forgiving, of accepting, and of being at peace with our own conscience.

With will, however, we can.

And isn’t that a show of strength? Isn’t this love more beautiful? Isn’t this more genuine? It is only in these instances when we can truly say – love triumphs.