Today, I sprained my ankle while rushing down the stairs. I didn't feel bones crack, which is a good sign, but there's that urge to salve the pain with mefenamic acid. It's hurting, I can't place weight on my left foot, which makes me compensate by placing my weight on my right leg. In turn both sides hurt. It doesn't help that I need to hold a different angle to just have a semblance of comfort. 

Today too, we spend the evening with dinner and rounds of mahjong at a friend's house. My husband cooked tteokbokki - he loves to cook, and feeds on people's feedback. 

My husband parked the car on our friend's garden driveway which meant that there was about 10-15 meters walk. I waited for him to unload the food. I waited for him to settle inside - hoping that there was an instinct for him to come back for me, or even at the slight bit, check if I needed help. 

None came. 

It feels like grief. 

And when I aired out my frustration, he merely said "Eh hindi ka naman nagsabi. Dinala ko yung pagkain. Ang labo mo."

My husband and I are good on most days. But on days of crisis like this, the textures reveal on the surface. The rough ones, especially.

It's me after all. 

We feel the grief for what we thought or hoped they were, but are not. It is my fault that I expected my husband to be more sensitive and gentlemanly.

But it isn't a bad hope, isn't it? 

We are in pain when reality falsifies our humble and genuine hopes. When reality can't give us the inexpensive, but best experiences of our lives. 

Take it as it is. I need to hope less.

The Experience of Time

 Time is the absolute currency of life. How we perceive and measure quality of life isn't a variable to money, but rather is a function of how rich we experience time. This has been one of the most poignant lessons I had to take in and practise as I moved to Iloilo, and as I have resigned from my job. Both decisions, quite coincidentally, were made in the past year. 

The thought of how time is often undervalued, of how the experience of time is the quiet valuation of our lives is a superfluous thought that I will try to explain in the best way I can. 

You see, time is the absolute currency of our lives - it is finite, it cannot be multiplied. While money can afford us several possessions at once - we can only spend our time in one space, and in one manner, at a time. 

Whether we split our attention to several activities in an hour, we can only experience and expose our senses to one activity each time. While some may argue that they can multitask, we can never place 100% of ourselves everywhere. We just subconsciously shift microseconds of our lives, putting our fleeting attention to what is imminently important. Listen to music while reading a book? Giving attention to kids while working? Listening to a podcast while doing the dishes? 

How rich our experience of time is defines the genuine abundance of our lives. 

The past decade of my life, I've spent a good deal of my time working. Time cannot be invested, since it does not multiply. But while I've seemingly foolishly exchanged my time for money, I now spend money to make my experience of time richer. 

A rich experience of time for me, means being with my family, having a conversation with my child and husband, eating lunch with my family and being able to patiently wait for my husband to cook (without being agitated with work or an impending meeting), being able to spend time with friends, taking a leisurely vacation while being off the grid, learning a new skill... Come to think of it, the space I've made for these things used to be taken up by work. 

And how do we make our life feel richer and more abundant? 

If we enable ourselves to be the masters of our time. If we empower ourselves to decide how we will spend our time and what deserves our presence. After all, we can only be in one place at a time.

But abundance and richness doesn't have to sound hedonic. It's not always being at home playing with the kids, or always taking that vacation. Abundance is about being present and about the satisfaction of where we are.

It can be in a quiet little farm, or it can otherwise be in that office leading a team. These are both rich experiences, depending on who wants to live them.

Abundance is a full spectrum of how time is experienced. But what it is not, is the burden of the life we desire, but do not live. We are truly rich, if we find ourselves in the dimension we want to be in, and it could be anywhere. We have the same 60 seconds in a minute, 24 hours in a day. What we have differently, is how we experience time. Being filthy rich and spending time worrying about money and being in the hamster wheel of trying to make more is simply a poorer life, versus the next person who has spent time raising his family well, having had vacations in his life, and who has been present in celebrations and relationships that matter.

While we need time to earn money, money is best spent in shaping the way we want to experience time. How deliberate and masterful we spend the quiet currency is the only way we can be satisfied. 

Single, So What?

How many times have I encountered women dread the idea of singleness? How many times also have I encountered women think that I am dreadful of mine?

I have even encountered some people who think that being single means that you are flawed - that there must be something wrong with you.

Some mistake the idea that being lovable means you have to be beautiful, nice, mothering, accepting and warm. (I'm not saying that you shouldn't be either)

But it has been agreed (between me and a couple friends) that love strikes us in a fashion of helpless random.

Come to think of it...

How many not-so-pretty and average looking women have you seen in a relationship?
Have you also not seen bratty and spoiled women who are endured by their boyfriends?
How are there women with monstrous personalities, be pursued by men?
How come there are also beautiful women who are still single?

We all make standards which don't usually fulfill themselves.

We want the smart, attractive, and good provider...
Yet we end up falling in love with: someone average, slightly attractive, and broke.

I don't mean he's gonna be your boyfriend.

But it means that our personal standards aren't the basis of who is lovable.

So for all its worth...

Do not try to turn yourself into someone pretty - don't go under the knife to get a nose job or a face lift, don't lose the weight to make yourself curvy or skinny. Don't try to act nice, don't pretend to be mothering, and stop trying to cook food for him if you don't really mean to. Don't try to act a little less smart or cute as dumb to not intimidate him.

Because...

Nothing you do will make you be loved more because "falling in love" is random as it is...

In the same way that the people around us cannot do anything to make you fall in love with them.

Falling in love is not equal to loving.

No standards would ever tell you who is worthy of love.

You do not get to choose who is ever gonna love you, but you can choose who you will love.

Do not fret - loving someone is just as good as being loved, if not better.

Besides, who you love tells more about you, than who loves you.

Logically so, whoever loves you isn't who you are - it's about them.

Love though, unlike falling in love, is a choice.

You still have the choice over love.

You can choose to pursue the one you love;
and/or
You can choose to allow yourself to be loved.

Now enough with the self-pity women, and get on with life. :)

Split Christianity, Fundamentalism and "Practical Christianity"

Being born and raised as a Catholic, I've been widely exposed to the religious practices of the said religious sect. Baptism, Holy Communion, Sacrament of Marriage, Confirmation, Anointing of the sick.... name it, I probably have attended it.

I am a Christian, but I guess I'm not the "cultural Christian". I am not sheepishly obedient/observant of the culturally Christian practices, but I must say that I aim and try to be a "practical Christian." I do not want to moralise; I am here to let out my sentiments about the sometimes-tainted religion of people.

Hear me out:

Most wars have religious underpinnings in them. Most wars are rooted from the inability of people to be civil and accommodating of other people's beliefs. People want to insist that what they know is right and all else is evil and heretic.

Split-Christianity. I know a few people who are keen enough to enforce their religious system on others. Think about this:

If you were born as a muslim, say in another continent dominated by muslims and buddhists alone, and have never been told about the Holy Bible, or of Jesus Christ, would you "go to hell" or not meet salvation?

Yes, I understand that it is the goal of Christians/Catholics to evangelize, but my point is - what if hypothetically this really happened? Why should an individual suffer eternal damnation if a God beyond his knowing, exists?

Is it really about our creed, that we get to achieve salvation? Is it more about knowing by heart, "the Word of God" or through "the Acts of Man?"

Contrary to how the average mind might process this, I am not questioning the authenticity of the Bible. I am not attacking any religion. What I am saying is that there must be a greater measure for salvation, than how much we know about God.

Hence, the practical Christianity.

We are true Christians by action.

We cannot claim to be Christians, and yet be greedy. We cannot claim to know the Word of God, but be ignorant in our ways. We cannot say "God's will be done", while renouncing our responsibility over human actions.

We cannot be Christians, and yet accuse our neighbors of ill.
We cannot be Christians and have prejudices towards race and creed.

What was so great about Christianity is not that we have it set in the books. What makes Christ so great is not only because he is the Son of God, but because he wasn't discriminatory towards people, but He welcomed everyone - the whore, the sinner, the thief, the tax-collector, the crippled... How can we be Christians and not even share the same values?

Practical Christianity - that means I will stop talking. That means I will not say I am better than you are. That means I will not show people how good I am - I will just be.

On Hawking: God Did Not Create the Universe

Last September 2, 2010, Yahoo News pressed a feature on Stephen Hawking's upcoming book, The Grand Design and quoted Hawking in saying "God Did Not Create the Universe." (Read it here.)

What caused the universe has been a classic philosophical conundrum in the same way as trying to prove whether God, or a God, exists or not. Many physicalists subscribe to the idea that God does not exist, for He does not manifest himself in the material universe. Isn't it funny how we try to prove the existence of God, when we can't even figure out absolutely why we exist? I hope Hawking delves on that too.

I'll let those people debate on God if they like. Anything to keep boredom at bay. Anything to talk about at all.

Here's my word on it though.

It does not mean that if we cannot reason out the existence of something, it no longer exists. It does not mean that if we cannot prove a thing as true, it is ultimately false.

We always envision God as perfect, but God may not turn out to be the perfect we define. As my professor, Arthus Muega asked, "How can we define something as perfect as God, with something as imperfect as human language?" This is to say therefore, that God may not be what or who we perceive Him to be.

Faith and reason - many think that they just mix like oil and water.

But here's what my Theology professor told us, if you are sure about something, you don't call it faith; you call it common sense. God, for now, is not realizable through common sense, God is revealed through faith. Faith complements reason.

If all facets of life relied on logic, we have reduced our lives to something mechanical. We become no different from the computers which rely on algorithms.

Animals are proven to have intelligence too. I'm not sure if they have faith if to begin with, they are not conscious of their own existence. Faith therefore, is what sets us apart and above animals.

I did not create the universe, I only form conceptions of it - and I wont blame Stephen Hawking if he makes his own. If it were indeed gravity that caused the universe to exist, it is still of question what caused gravity.


I believe God created the universe. If not the universe itself, then he designed a system capable to evoke itself into existence.

What intrigues me most is if God indeed created the universe, why did He design the human mind to be capable of doubting His existence?