Socialist Philippines
What you see is not always what you get.
I have never really put much thought about our society. How could I when I can't even put much thought on anything less?
But Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy made me. Although I haven't really read until the last pages, its foreword had enlightened me about how we, Filipinos, can rise from the slums our ancestors left us in.
Edward Bellamy was a lawyer who gave up his practice to pursue his passion - writing. He became an editor in a newspaper but he knew that wasn't the kind of writing he wanted. He wanted to write about his thoughts. So when he fell sick, he retired from his newspaper job to write literature. That's when he wrote Looking Backward. Because he had witnessed the social and political ills and because he had always vied for reforms, he wrote Looking Backward.
Looking Backward calls for socialism. The much yearned utopia of the American people, he said, will be achieved if equality reigned. His descriptions were vivid. His analogies were convincing. He said that society could be imagined as a coach. The horses pulling the coach are the poor people and the wealthy are on top of it. The driver is hunger who does not let the working people rest. They're making their way to a bumpy road that can unseat even the rich.
The poor people are working their lives to death just to avoid suffering from hunger. The rich, meanwhile, are sitting there trying so hard to cling to the coach fearing they might fall. If they do, they would lose the benefits of being on top of the coach. They would become workers, themselves. And the workers pulling on the coach would try to take that fallen man's place. The ablest would win. At long last, he does not have to worry about hunger. The sad part is, he has forgotten about the other working men because he is so preoccupied with clinging to his seat.
He does not try to help them because he knows their isn't enough space for all of them in the coach and even if there were, who would keep them moving?
I can clearly see the Philippine society in this setting. I think socialism is very much appropriate for us. Imagine losing all the capitalists and following the middle way. Everyone will live as they were supposed to live - not as workers or as the elite but as a human beings able to appreciate life and all of its comforts.
Of course, our capitalists will oppose this but we have to sacrifice for the welfare of everyone. We have got to stop thinking only for ourselves but for our fellow Filipinos. We need to stop the tycoons from gobbling all the resources up.
Just think of what it will do. If we were to embrace socialism, the door of possibilities will open wide.
Labels: plan, truth
I am an OK-OK.^_^
What you see is not always what you get.
I'm releasing my inner 'awk-awk'.
At last, I have reverted back to the old me (at least the old me after high school). I am proud to release the INNER AWK-AWK in me! *big CLAP*
Awk-awk = ok-ok = oc-oc = Obsessive compulsiveness. Get it?
You all know the technical meaning of this, uh, disorder. OCD, as what the National Institute of Mental Health says, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, 'is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions).'
When I think of OCD, The Monk (among many) always comes into mind with his weird ways of going about his investigations.
That's the true OCD.
But I am using it in a different context. In UP context, ok-ok is the disposition of a student who seems to be caught up in detail. In a way, an ok-ok person is a perfectionist. He/She wants everything well laid out. It is as if he/she wants not only to excel academically but aesthetically as well.
I met a lot of people I consider ok-ok. I don't think it'd be taken as a compliment but I did learn a lot from them.
A good friend of mine had Arnis as her P.E. I was so impressed when I saw her Arnis bag intricately designed with circles with a gradient pink color. She said she made it with cross-stitch threads and glued them together string by string! I was so amazed that I blurted out 'Ang ok-ok!' She looked at me as if she was insulted. So, I don't really know.
Being ok-ok is fine with me. In fact, I am joyously bathing myself with the idea. I never once did anything creative or effort-oriented that I deemed unnecessary. When my classmates' books are covered with colorful papers, mine is bare. I never even had pity to cover it with plastic! Also, I'd only write my surname just to avoid losing it. IT saves time and effort. I never cared to write anything more.
Maybe because I learned more about myself, I learned how to accept who I am. I knew somewhere deep down that I am as ok-ok as anyone could be. So yes, I am a proud ok-ok. And I hope my creative juices will be sufficient for the whole college years.
Although my books are still not plastic covered, their original covers are still intact.^_^
Labels: funny, random, truth, wisdom
The Master of Nothing
What you see is not always what you get.
It has been a while since my last update. There were just too many things I needed to finish in school. The toxicity level almost went up as high as, uh, an overdose of an effective 'depressant'. It was like trying to keep my head afloat the fast current. But a big YAY! I survived.
First things first, my sister topped eight in the recent Pharmacy Licensure Exam. (Like, yeah so?) HAHA!
That's a 5-minute standing ovation for her! We were all so happy and so ecstatic. She was still so high on it when it started wearing off on me but it was her day so I was not going to kill her joy.^_^ My parents went to visit us that weekend (the results got out last Friday?).
We went to visit our mom's friend and our lola (actually our lolo's sister). Everywhere we'd go, my mom would always talk about how Ate Avi's topped the the boards and start sharing her story. Sometimes the story's all mixed up but that's just our mom. She has the tendency to do that. It adds to her charm!^_^
Maybe the only thing I don't like about the news is that now my mom's so fixed about me taking MedTech Boards! Argh. Now the pressure is on me.*_* I don't want to take that freaking exam. It's scary. (Yeah, so what if I'm a scare-dy cat?) And he's going to take that, too. I think.
Anyway, I still have 3 more years to work on that. So I'll be chilling for the meantime.
So there's something that's been bugging me for quite a while now - okay, so maybe 3 days.
The fact that I don't know which is better among the following gives me the creeps.
1. Being a jack of all trades yet a master of nothing or
2. To be a master of one thing but ignorant of anything else.
I once said in my previous post that I want to be the 'medieval' character or, as what Freddie Prince said in his show, a renaissance woman. I want to be good at everything. But I also said in my other posts, that I want to be known in a certain field. I want to be an instigator of something radical that will be my legacy.
I want to have the best of both worlds. I want to do those two in this lifetime. But I can't help thinking that successful people didn't really have the first. They were too absorbed with their only 'hobby' and didn't have time for others. And I think that is the reason why they are so darning successful.
I haven't had time to really ponder on this. But so far, I have yet to reconcile this with my plans and dreams.
Argh, I'm twisted. *At least I am not talking about him anymore, huh?*
Labels: fun, happy, mom, plan, random, truth, wisdom
The Truth About Caring
What you see is not always what you get.
I can't remember where or when I heard this but the frank and bare truth it revealed struck me so fast and hard.
"We care for people who care not because we are overflowing with noble intentions of attaining World Peace but because of the conscious or unconscious knowledge that they make our lives noticed."
We are living in a jampacked place with everyone having their own say and their own sense of importance. We are only an itsie bitsie part of a humongous puzzle and our significance is not readily seen much less appreciated.
Imagine what would happen if everyone could be just an island. What would happen if solitude was the better option for living?
We care for people who care because they make us feel important. They make us feel as if we are worth being noticed and that our lives can make a difference and leave a mark.
If you are able to live without interaction, then your life would not be remembered. Your will be erased from history. No one will ever know you existed. No one will learn from your mistakes. Your life would have then been useless. If this were the case, you should not have lived at all.
Like what my friend quoted from I'm-not-sure-where, "Six billion people in the world, six billion souls, and sometimes all you need is one."
There are times when one person is enough to make you feel you are worthy of living. That one person is your diary. That one person will remember your thoughts, opinions, ideals, and mere memories. You will not be forgotten. He/She will learn from your mistakes.
Amidst all the other people who don't know you and will never care about you is that one person willing to share your story to others who'd listen.
In the end, your life will outlive your body. The body will decay but your memories will be salvaged - kept safe by the persons who care.
Labels: mottos, truth, wisdom
Rantings
What you see is not always what you get.
Speaking one's mind is everybody's right. No one can and should tell you what and what not to say. This is the use of our free will and living would be completely insignificant if we deny ourselves the natural right to opinion.
We all have different points of view. All are equal and should be respected with the same degree.
This right, however, should always come in pair with a regulator. One should always examine the situation before actually commenting. This is where opinions differ. Some people just lash out without thoroughly thinking everything through. They just say what they want to say without realizing the consequences of their actions. They usually end up hurting not only the persons involved, but they themselves. They are too frank and too straightforward.
Others are too weak. These persons think. Yes, they can weigh the different sides of the story but they never really decide which side they are on. They'd rather agree on everything. They may point out and throw in a few points to further the cause but in the end, they really had no say. They just copied what others thought. I am not saying this is not a good thing. They might have been thinking of the same thing but has only actualized it after being exposed to others' ideas.
Others are perfect. I am not pertaining to never-wrong-always-right decision makers. I am speaking of the people who know how to decide all by themselves and are willing to make adjustments after a few effective outside influences. They may never be right, but at least they could be proud about being the one making the error and learning from it.
Nothing beats first-hand experience.
So who is who? I think I am a weak thinker. I usually agree on everything someone tells me. (Of course, only from those I look up to) I love establishing my beliefs based on what is effective for others. But then again, I still think I do have my own opinions for some things. So I could be a mix of the last two. I could also be too frank. That side of me, however, has been buried ages ago. She may haunt me once in a blue moon when I'm with my closest friends but that's the worst she can do.
I still think that the becoming of a young adult is the consequence of the parents' guidance - or lack thereof.
Ergo, I believe that a child's ability to establish his/her own beliefs is greatly, if not entirely, affected by how the parents brought him/her up.
I'm still confused. Did my parents do a good job?
Labels: life, mottos, random, truth, wisdom
Lipsticks for shallow people?
What you see is not always what you get.
An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who wasamong the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.
Source:
http://Banksy.co.uk
>
Imperial War museum
Labels: irony, truth
Misery and Company
What you see is not always what you get.
Misery loves company. I have been using this line for quite a while now and I realize that the meaning I used to associate with it is not what it really means.
I always thought that misery loves company in a sense that it wants others to feel miserable, too. They want someone to feel bad about something to make them feel normal and eventually accept that life really is like that.
That could be the meaning but I noticed that misery loves company still has a different meaning. Misery loves company does not necessarily mean that sorrow seeks for sorrow. It could mean the one gloomy person needs the company of others to heal the wounds. Letting the feelings run amok inside without the ability to speak out and show your real emotions is very stressful and could be fatal. That is why misery needs the company who can be all ears and sincerely, if not completely, understanding.
I guess both meanings can hold their ground. Misery loves company. But hey, so does everything else!^_^ Would you want to be happy alone?
Nah-uh. Not me.^_^
Labels: friends, happy, sad, truth
Crying Inside
What you see is not always what you get.
Thought for tonight: Happiness is fleeting. There will be times when your in ecstasy having the time of your life but these times always have, and will never be without, the opposite. Sadness sucks but like happiness, it is a crucial part of life.
But, of course, we all know this.
So what am I blabbing about again?
Tonight is one of those nights. I can't believe it was just yesterday when I was walking around in my new pair of 'flipflops' and bag. The grin on my lips and the sparkle on my eyes won't even go away. I thought it was okay to be happy that way (less than boisterous laughter but more than just a smile). I was wrong. This is my down night. It sucks.
I'm stressed. I learned in Psych10 that to fight stress, we have to
1. locate the stressor
2. try to avoid these thoughts/things
Stressors: I already lost two of my closest friends because of some stupid decisions and actions. I miss them so badly.
I still do not approve of smokers (especially if they're my friends). I just feel sad and disappointed.
I guess there are only two but they've affected me so much. I shouldn't have voiced out the story about my friend. I just made it more real. I just made it final. I just made it more painful for myself.
I just want to shout and curse and cry.
I can't shout. It's almost 12. I can't curse. I don't do that anymore. I can't cry. I have no tears.
Is this what they call crying inside?
I learned a lot from my mistakes. I don't regret anything. The only thing bugging me is the feeling. It won't go away.
Hurt, please go away.
Labels: kill me, life, love, pain, sad, truth
What you see is not always what you get.
What you see will never be what you'd truly get.
I have learned another sad truth about life. It will never go the way you planned it. NEVER. If IF you think you are so sure of what will happen, think again. There will always be turns and setbacks.
A song aptly 'metaphorizes' life as a road. Before travelling, you have planned where you're heading. You know your destination. So you get into your car and drive. However, there are signs that warn us of the turns and dead-ends.
Careful drivers would slow down or turn the other way around. Others may overlook the warning signs - the no left turns, no u turns, or one-way road. They might be so preoccupied with other things that they forget to see the environment outside the interior of their cars.
What, then, happens? They get stopped by the traffice enforcers. They get frustrated meeting the dead end realizing they have wasted precious time. Sometimes, they lose hope and return home wishing for a better day tomorrow.
That day sucked for the unnoticing drivers. This, however, does not mean armageddon. A character from A Lot Like Love said something about downfall not being your life but a part of it. Life continues even as you tumble, even as you meet an obstruction.
So what do we do? We make a u-turn and be conscious of the warning signs. Never lose hope. Always be positive.
Problems make you stronger, more independent individuals.
IT just takes time.
I guess my time is not yet up. *_*
Labels: goodbye, life, love, truth
Our kids.
What you see is not always what you get.
It's thursday! Only two more days left before I head home to Pangasinan. I can't wait (to kick that son of doctor's ass). Hahaha! Kidding.
I am a college student. I should know what I want to be. That's what college is for. So why am I still confused?
Because we were never raised to think of the future. We were never really trained to prepare ourselves for what awaits us.
In the old times, children as young as seven year olds are already sent away from home to be apprentices to working men. Little girls are made to learn how to sew and do household because that is what is expected of them. However, that should not be the case today.
The point is, they already know who they are even at those tender ages.
What about us? That's is why it is hard for us. We wasted our whole life thinking about everything but our future lives. We spent them doing things that would not lead us to what we are supposed to be.
Now, we are struggling to look for our niche in the society.
This should not have been the case.
*sigh*
Labels: kill me, life, plan, truth, wisdom
See Me?
What you see is not always what you get.
There is something satisfying in loving what you do. When others think of it as a burden, you think of it as a challenge. That is what I do.
I have gone past the stage of bitching about almost everything in life. Exams, curfews, lack of money - they're all pain in the butts.
Now I have realized that there's no point in sulking around and getting grumpy about things we can not avoid. We are going to take exams, miss curfews and lose money more than once in our lives. So what can we do? Since life is about living it optimally, then we should think of a better and more productive way of looking at things.
Before I entered college, I would have complained about how tedious and how tiring doing the yearbook is. I would have done it just because it is my responsibility to do so. But that was then. Now, I am even enjoying what I am doing. I like the responsibility. It makes me feel useful. It lets my creative flow juices. I am having fun keeping in touch with my batchmates. There are more to the yearbook than just mere layouts and edits. The by products are more than enough to keep me going.
There are two mottos I always keep in mind. These are mottos I have picked from reading through our materials in school.
1. Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
2. The thing that separates ordinary from extraordinary is that little extra.
These really applied to me and my lifestyle. I have always been an "okay na yan" person. Whenever we do projects, I always end the job saying "okay na yan". Contrary to what other people say, I was not a perfectionist. I guess now I am. Hehe! Now, I try to put everything in what I do. There will only be that one time to do that one thing. So why settle for anything less than the best?
I have only lived for seventeen years. (okay, almost 18 years. grr) But they always say I sound like "the old wise man/woman". I have always been like that. I guess that's what makes me different. Yes, I could be childish and hyper. But there is this side of me (apparently a little apparent) that analyzes almost anything and putting that wisdom into good use.
I am a youthful old person. That is who I am.
Labels: friends, life, me, mottos, truth, wisdom, yearbook
