In a few minutes, I’ll be turning 26. I am both amazed and thankful with how Time dealt with my life. I think Time had been a good thief in the night who robbed me of my silliness and immaturity. Looking back, nothing was quite unaltered. Everything transformed, if not all for the best, to something workable for me in the present.  

I have nothing but gratefulness to everything I had and experienced in the last 25years of living. My life is far from perfect, and I’m glad! Because it’s flawed, I have something to wake up for and work on and get busy with tomorrow.

I am happy. I have what I need—the people and things that matter. I am now down to my endeavors. Yes, I’m not contented with what I have achieved. I believe it’s possible to be joyful despite having an insatiable spirit to have more and be more. Contentment is different from gratitude. 

Recently, just days after Vday and while I was writing my post on love month, Mr. Uy and I had a major misunderstanding. I would not say it’s an argument because technically, he didn’t argue at all. He just kept silent and withdrew from it altogether.

One of the things I admire about him is that he barely gets angry. He’s kindhearted and at peace all the time. However, this time, instead of me appreciating him keeping calm, I felt more hurt. It felt that he’s too insensitive to even acknowledge my anger and frustration. For the first time in more than one year in the marriage, I felt my heart was broken.

Since I promised myself to never post anything negative on this happy blog (the world is already full of negativity that takes away energy and happiness like dementors), I decided to pull out from writing for a while. The lurking negative feeling didn’t subside though. To add insult to injury, Andres got sick for days and my mother and I had a fight. I felt I was doomed to suffer a depression.

What we fought about is actually a trivial one. I am even embarrassed to share it here because you might think I’m being so dramatic for bringing up as insignificant as it is.  But I think, there’s a history behind it that’s why it became big. It was like a supernova accumulating everyday small pressures of marriage life that suddenly burst into space. Moreover, months before, I was being bombarded with so much negativity about marriage all over media. I think it was on our wedding anniversary that what are on theaters were No Other Woman and My Neighbor’s Wife. And what’s on TV?—The Fierce Wife series which was also about infidelity, broken marriage and revenge. It was only now when I was physically and mentally weak that the lurking negativity emerged from concealment.

Fast forward to the day Mr. uy and I decided to confront our cold treatment with each other. I am not proud and will never be proud of the thoughts inside my head that day. And I still think now that I didn’t make sense at all.  Because of his long silence (and because I’m overacting like that), I was already expecting the worst. In my way of talking, I was already implicitly saying I wanted out. Don’t get me wrong, its not that I don’t love him anymore nor I am no longer happy in our marriage. Maybe I was just being selfish or maybe, acting like a human being. Inside my head, I was so terrified. I was so afraid that maybe, he’s the one who actually wants out. It was a defense mechanism at work because I felt vulnerable and defenseless and I don’t want to be in that position.

Fast forward again to the time we kissed and made up.  Of course, we forgave each other and put everything behind us. One thing I learned though is that LOVE is really not for the weak of heart. Love is won by those who are not afraid to get hurt and get bruised and get crushed. Love is so huge that there’s a possibility it can contain your heart to ruin. From this day, those brave lovers will be included in my life’s heroes—those who go out in the open to fight for love, hold on to love, forgive love incessantly despite all.

As for me, I think I need to learn and re learn more on marriage and commitment. The incident humbled me so much that I realized how weak I am. I promised to love my husband for life and there I was chickening out on the first difficulty in the marriage. But life is so generous in teaching us wonderful lessons to cope with everyday living and everyday loving. I think, it’s okay to make mistakes and act weird, stupid and all that. What matters most is that we always bow down to the wisdom of life itself that love and marriage should prevail all the time.

Happy Love Month everyone!

Today, I decided to take part on saving the earth.

I want the future generations, esp my future grand children to see and witness the beauty of nature.

With just 300php a month, you can make a big difference in protecting Mother Earth. That’s just equal to 2 Starbucks coffee or ticket/s to a movie. :)

To learn more on how to help, click on the photo :)

MAKE A DIFFERENCE. BE A FORCE FOR GOOD!

I saw this post from my old blog. And I believe this is really really worthy of repost.—

As a lover of films, I don’t just love the movies created, but also appreaciate the people behind the crafts. Let me share with you my fellow CAtizens, one great Oscars speech from the two-time Academy Award-winning American director, animator and screenwriter—Brad Bird. His best known works are Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007).

This is his acceptance speech when he won for the movie about the rat who dreams.

I want to thank the Academy and I also want to thank my junior high guidance counselor for a meeting we had where he asked me, “What do you want to do with your life?” And I said, “I want to make movies.” And he said, “What else do you want to do with your life?” And I said, “Make movies,” and he said, “What if you couldn’t make movies,” and I said, “I’d find a way that I could.” “What if movies didn’t exist?” “I’d have to invent them.” And it went on like this until we were sick of each other and I only realized just recently that he gave me the perfect training for the movie business.

How about you? What do you want to do in life? Are you willing to be unstoppable and to be unreasonable to realize your purpose? Are you willing to find ways and invent the ways (if the solutions are not yet available)? Do you have what it takes to be a winner and to be an inspiration to others? Or would you rather be a rat that just dreams?

Like? :D Goodnight everyone!

Yesterday, my hubby said goodbye to his long time companion through his long walks—his almost two year old Banana Peel Slippers. LOL.

Bumigay na daw and kasing nipis na ng papel. Ilakad ba kasi ng milya ng milya—all across Australia! Char.

Well, its something I admire about him—he is down to earth, practical and simple. Hanggat kaya pa ilakad, go! LOL.

I remember, before those Banana Peel slippers, his sister bought him slippers at Puregold. The name of the brand is SHUTA. From then on, that brand name had been a private joke. ‘O, san na shuta mo? Iniiwan mo kung saan saan!’. Or ‘Buti pa yung shuta mo, lagi mo kasama’ And we’ll go laughing with that. Yeah, we’re that BABAW.

Sabi nga, ang tunay na lalaki, hindi pa class! :D

So to you Banana Peel, thank you for your service and the hardwork you’ve put in. It was indeed a great journey together. -Mr Uy

And to you Sporty, we might have longer walks, more rigorous journey, and more tiring days. Whats important, we’ll always find our way home -Mr Uy

Meet sporty!

I attended a seminar this morning. One of the speakers shared a funny but enlightening anecdote. The story was not new to me. I think I read it somewhere but I saw it in a different light today.

The story is about a guy who complains about his usual packed lunch at work—rice and fried stuffs. Every day, he opens his lunch box, puckers his brow, and rants about how much he hates any fried ulam.

His concerned officemate eventually asked him, ‘Hey, why don’t you tell your cook? Who’s preparing your lunch anyway?’.   ‘Me.’ He casually answered.

We, the audience, laughed at the ending. 

‘Well’ said the speaker. ‘Laugh all you want. But you know what, change the name and the story is about you’.  

P.S. I had a long day, I’ll post my thoughts tomorrow. Enjoy the long weekend friends!

bookmania:

Henderson Books, Bellingham, Washington (photo by Kim Mason)

AWWW, this is HEAVEN!

This phrase #whatididfor trended for a time in twitter world. I pried on other people’s entries and read the whole thread. I was about to put something I did for love (it was the blockbuster entry btw), when the timid in me which I never thought existed, stopped me from having future embarrassment. So instead, I ended up just reminiscing all those SILLY things I did in the name of love.

Well, this entry is really not about love and my stupidity. This is something more important to me now—#whatididfor and #whati’lldofor my dreams.

Back in high school, I never wanted anything in the world but to become a broadcaster. And so I broadcasted to everyone that I’ll pursue broadcasting. College came about and I didn’t meet the broadcast communication grade cut off. I was accepted instead to my second choice—Speech Communication. ‘It’s okay,’ I told myself. I then planned to transfer after a year.

The gruesome waiting for the year to end, at last, came. I thought I already prayed and prepared enough to really get it right the second attempt, but I didn’t. I can still remember now how my face turned white when I can’t answer the first and the simplest question in the interview.

‘Why do you want to become a broadcaster?’ asked the interviewer.

Ironically, I practiced to answer that question a million times in my head the whole previous year. However, that moment, I can’t remember a thing. That’s the end of my dream to become a broadcaster. I still took some broadcasting subjects but I lost that insatiable spirit to pursue it.

But this is really not a sad story. Years after the incident, I realized that I want something else. I want freedom. I want to experience life in a different manner. I don’t want the chain of media job. I want a different path. That time when I didn’t pass the interview, I can’t understand why it happened. I wanted it so badly and I told everyone that I’ll get it no matter what. It really broke my heart and disappointed many. 

Only now that I understood why it happened. It’s really not what I wanted after all! It’s true what Steve Jobs said—you really cannot connect the dots looking forward. It has to be backwards. You can only trust and have faith that somehow, things that happen will lead you somewhere you belong. What’s important is that you leave dots. You do something fruitful in the present and let things be.

But still, there’s a lesson to be learned. Recently, I saw a familiar face on TV newscast. She was the girl I’ve met in line when I was applying to shift course. She was a Comparative Literature major and it was her second time to apply to broadcasting. She still didn’t pass the interview that second time. So she finished her Comparative Lit course and moved forward. Only now that I learned that she became a broadcaster after all. Bless her warrior spirit.

So I take an oath to myself now, that I will be the peaceful warrior that I have to be. I’ll never give up  and never lose hope. And someday, when I reach the peak of success, I can reminisce all those stupid, brave, courageous, reasonable and even the unreasonable things I did for my dreams. I’m sure the future ME will be proud of #whatidid to get what my heart really desires. After all, my dreams all worth the hardwork. :)

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. -T.S. Lawrence