i linger(ed).

i’ve been silent for a while. yeah, i know i may not have a lot of blog posts to begin with, so technically i was/have been/am silent. not that i ran out of topics to write about. truth is, i have a lot of “going-on” these days that i consider blog-worthy. like the time i left the company, for good.  (wow. i really breathe easy when i say that.) like how i appreciated and missed my workplace friends. like the highlights of my otherwise dull recent-work experience. like my thoughts about my current “crushing”. so much to write about, so little time to actually sit down and write about them.

but now that i have laffy (i’m bad at naming things, i know. so friends, i’m open to suggestions.) for four days now, i oblige myself to write as often as possible. 

and today, while taking a short break from one of my tutorial sessions, i read mitch albom’s have a little faith. here i found nice thoughts about religion, faith and God.  i think i’ve been so busy in making myself rich lately that i spend less and less time talking to Him or simply thinking about Him.

so yes. let’s talk about religion. or let me just relay albom’s and the rabbi’s wise words. they made me think, contemplate and eventually “renew” my faith.

albom: we live in a word where genes can be mapped, where your cells can be copied, where your face can be altered. heck, with surgery, you can go from being man into woman. we have science to tell us of the earth’s creation; rocket probes explore the universe. the sun is no longer a mystery. and the moon, which people used to worship? we brought some of it home in a pouch, right?

so why, in such a place, where the once-great mysteries have been solved, does anyone still believe in God or jesus or allah or a supreme being of any kind? haven’t we outgrown it? isn’t it like pinocchio, the puppet? when he found he could move without the strings, did he still look the same way at geppetto?

the rabbi: now. my turn. look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that i must differ. no matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can’t explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.

and no matter how far they try to go the other way—to extend life, play around with the genes, cone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty—at some point, life is over. and then what happens? when life comes to an end?

albom shrugged. the rabbi continued.

you see? when you come to an end, that’s where God begins.

now. that's some food for thought.

celebrating nanay

Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother.  ~Moorish Proverb

(i liked it obviously because of the mention of the gazelle, but moreso because i simply agree. 

moms exaggerate. moms overestimate.ü)

i thank God for mothers. 

just imagine how they consciously gave up their figures to bear a human life inside them. waistlines expand to i don’t know how much. the discomfort of carrying around a bulging stomach for 9 loooong months. the unimaginable labor pain they had to go through just so that cute little thing will be able to see the world, and later on experience it's beauty and madness. and the never-ending distinct role they play to their little ones' lives.

i thank God for nanay. 

at a tender age of 21, with ate, she marked her journey to motherhood. then i came around right before she mastered the motherhood tricks, sooner than she expected, sometime in her 22^{nd year}. 

i’ll be turning 24 this year, and it still blows my mind away everytime i think about how young nanay was when she had ate and me. she was at the prime of her youth when she had to learn what it is to become selfless, to have her life no longer her own, but a life owned by some little girls. in spite and despite of my oldtime “tampo” and a couple of stale “sama ng loob”, no matter how many sweet good moms i bump into, no matter how different our views, personalities and life strategies are, eventhough what i have is a love-hate relationship with her, i honestly say, cliché as it may be, i wouldn’t exchange her for anyone else.

i don't have a perfect mom, and it's just fit and fair because i'm not a perfect daughter either.

lucky for me though, i have the best! (even if i am not the best, myself.)

and today i celebrate her beauty and madness (just like the world she allowed me to see, experience and explore).

dreams, crystalized and revised.

to belong to the twenty-something crowd is crazy. not in a bad way though, i say a plesant crazy way. 

as john ryan recabar (one of the best and extinct men bloggers i follow) put it, “we are in such a perfect time to commit mistakes for we can always reason out “hey! i’m only twenty-something”. so why don’t we risk, commit mistake for we are in the best time of our lives to learn lessons from flops done and still get away with it with a smile.”

being twenty-something is equally the best time of dreaming tall dreams, having multiple plans, as many as we can, as much as our minds can conceive, and uncaring whether they are all parallel or not, doable or otherwise; for twenty-somethings don’t have a concept of impossible.

i had that realization since i started creating my dreams one after the other, scrapping off some later on, and making new ones over and over again. and it feels good doing that, dreaming, then planning the best course of action to take in achieving them.

on a superficial level, i dream of having my own macbook air laptop. i even promised myself that i won’t settle on anything else. but to have a laptop is an immediate necessity for me (i want to be able to blog often, and probably get an online-home-based job) and i still don’t have enough resources to acquire my dream one. so i concede, i consider getting a sony vaio netbook instead. my macbook dream will take a backseat for a while.

on a more serious and long-term note, i dream of enrolling in graduate school this year, get my master’s degree in language education, continue my tutorial job, eventually put up my own tutorial center, with ate and/or my friend joicee, save up, continue making mutual fund investments, drop off being an employee to any company, and become an entrepreneur.

until..

..recently there is an open opportunity and possibility of working in singapore. and i started reconsidering things and tweaking my dreams and plans this way and that. and i realized that the adjustments just fit. i’ll be able to save-up quicker, and aim for my original dreams in lesser time. 

so yes, i'll change course. 

and i'll celebrate my being twenty-something.

and i'll never get tired of dreaming and aiming.