how true, how true

this is from the artcle "Why Are Americans So Unhappy When They Have It So Good?" by the writer Peggy Noonan, originally published in Reader's Digest (September 1993):



"Somewhere in the '60s and '70s we started expecting to be happy, and changed our lives - left town, left families, switched jobs - if we were not. And society strained and cracked in the storm.

"Why? We have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated - that, in a way, life is overrated. We have lost, somehow, a sense of mystery about us, our purpose, our meaning, our role. Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" one. We are among the first generations of man that actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such - unhappiness. The reason: you do not believe in another, higher world, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness, then if the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you despair."

one of the reasons why i like reading is because i get to hear what other people has to say. i guess that is the key to understanding: hearing out. (if only we try to hear each other out, i'm sure it'd be a cinch to undersand people and be understood.) more often than not, what people say could be too uniquely intense to ignore. this particular essay that i qouted above speaks so much truth that i would like to share it with anyone who cares to read. see, i didn't realize this until i read it. i was stunned by its veracity, i hope you were, too.

the cult of the realist

in my almost four years stay here in UP, i have come to realize that one can divide the school into two: not the poor and the rich, not the blues and the reds, not even dean's-listers and the, well, iskolars ng bayan. the two fundamental divisions are the IDEALISTS and the REALISTS.



i belong to the former. i am most definitely not a realist. i might not be sure about many things about me, but i am with this one. i am a true-blooded idealist. i am not sure if there are many of us in UP, but with the few people i know who are like me, one can construct a prototype of a typical idealist: he is usually immersed in his books, he seldom goes out to rallies and demonstrations and he is a dreamer. it's not that my ilk and i are apathetic, God knows we are not. it's just that the noise and aggression commonly associated with the UP-type activism are not exactly the soil and sunshine our ideas thrive in. we dream of peace, understanding, respect and holy silence. as Gandhi once said, "you cannot shake hands with a clenched fist."

over time the realists have been subtly changing the mindset of the university. as new iskolars enter the school, they are bluntly bombarded with the revolutionary ideas poised as answers to the social realities of poverty, injustice, oppression, ad nauseum. (true these are in fact realities, but are they all that is REAL in today's society?) realists go around demanding, shouting in the streets, exposing injustices and demanding justice.

as an idealist, i am not sheltered from these truths. i do believe in the reality of these things. one need not shun the real world to be an idealist. the main difference, i think, lies in how people think these problems must be solved. in this aspect, the realists become divided further into two subgroups.

the realists-slackers believe there is nothing much to be done. they accept the situation and, well, slack off. they feel action is futile -- nothing will change anyway.

the realist-radicals believe that in order for all these problems to stop, there has to be a radical change in the society. many propose communism, some propose a change of leadership, i know of one who continually pushes for monarchy (who will be king?). what ever the solution is, there has got to be a BIG change.



we idealists believe in little changes. we believe in lending out a helping hand. we believe in creating a change in people. we cannot change the world by changing the order of things, we change it by changing the people who make up the world. and soon enough, the people will change the order of things around them. better said than done, yes. but we can at least try. we are not idealists for nothing.

and so my ilk and i go around orphanages and feeding undernourished kids. we go around underprivileged schools and offer a book or two. we go around drug rehabs and talk to people about their problems. we go to church and pray to God for help and assistance. we go everywhere, but not in rallies and demonstrations. there where noise and aggression reign.

i once told a friend about the Galing Pilipino Movement (The Philippine Ability Movement). It is an organization which aims to uncover what is it about the Filipinos that make us great (now let's talk about idealism!) and then honoring those who have done great deeds in the community. i told her that every month during the GPM's meetings, they start with a prayer and then ushers hand out newspapers for everyone. and then one by one, the members are asked to read aloud a good news from the paper. isn't that great! she scoffed at what i told her and said in a most realist-slacker air: "Too idealist for me. Binayot man na! (It's too dandy!)"

i looked at her and smiled. we belong to the same political party in school, but she is from a different cult.

reader's digest

question: what are two things that Reader's Digest is best known for?
answer: make people laugh and cry

so i was sitting around my bro's new rented house one afternoon, when i beheld a vision. it was a sight too good to be true: hidden inside an obscure book shelf are stacks and stacks of RD issues some dating as far back as 1981! can you say, "hours and hours of reading time over the sem break?"

how cool is that?

i'm sure all of us still remember RD. in the age of webzines, blogging, and e-books, RDs are a welcome change. and nobody does inspirational stories better than the people who contribute to RD. i know the stigma of a grown man crying is still pretty hard to swallow these days, but what the hey. i cry everytime i read one of those "rekindling the human spirit" mushy stories, it's my achilles' heel. and my, were there many in RDs.

and check out the joke departments! hehehe.

here's one really funny joke from Virtual Hilarity:

Little Girl to Friend: "I'm never going to have babies."
Friend: "Why is that?"
Little Girl: "I hear they take nine months to download."

hahaha.

great words

"You may give children your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."
-- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

bossa nova

i recently bought an mp3 cd with the title Bossa Nova: An Introduction to Brazilian Music. it was a pirated copy of course but who can resist a cd like that?

here's a description of the genre: "bossa nova compositions often spoke of love, the beach, and beautiful women and seemed to be a depiction of the author’s bohemian life rather than a tale of Brazilians’ daily struggles as usually happened with samba, a music genre popular among the working class (Isabel Viana)." it's absolutely beautiful. of course i didn't understand most of the songs in the cd but the rhythm spoke more than just lyrics.

listening to bossa nova gives you a natural high. it gives you the allusion that you are in a cafe somewhere sunny, drinking coffee while the locals pass you by. like you just woke up from an afternoon siesta and are on your way to the beach to meet friends. it's so weird! it ought to be lumped with weed and cocaine as a prohibited substance.

Peer to peer schizophrenia

sem break officially started at the point when the file "send.txt" was transmitted from one computer of rm 244 to another with an IP address of 10.48.1.26 through server socket port number 5793. when our datacom instrutor saw for himsel that my group and I successfully implemented peer to peer file transfer my fourth year first sem college life ended. at that point, i was officially rid of any anxieties and nervousness that accompanied the finals week.

let me tell you something about the finals week. it is an evil week. a week you will perpetually hate for all your life. you look at the kids suffering in Africa and you will know exactly what they feel after going through the finals week, after having subsisted on nothing but water and ngohiong just because a decent meal takes way too long. you hear some of your psych major friends talk about abnormal psychology and get surprised why you have some symptoms of "accute schizophrenia," only to realize that you haven't slept for four days straight.

but now we're good. we're holding up. the week is over and we have a full threeweeks ahead of us. weeks without deadlines, functional requirements, System.out's, and overnight stays. it's about time.

crying baby

wacky left home. in case you forgot, wacky is my lactose-free baby nephew. he finally left home bacause my pop can't take his crying spells anymore. to say that he is one loud baby is an understatement. he just keeps on crying. and he never stops! my mom doesn't know what to do with him. his mom, too. one time, his mom cried because he won't stop crying. imagine that!

so he left. my brother took his baby bag (the one with all his baby stuff), sterilizer and all things baby from our house and left for their house. now our house is de-babified. i won't be missing wacky though, they just live a block from our house.

now there are only three people living in our house: mom, pop and me. i have a whole room to myself and i don't know what to do with it. banne suggested i decorate it 70's style. yeah right.

hagbong sa softeng

hahay. so it came to pass that THE wade had a Quiz Bowl type exam in Soft Eng. right, like that would make a huge difference! as for me and my group, we were the victims of the culmination of three plus nights with no sleep - sleep. hence, no serious studying took place.

but i am already resolved that i won't castigate myself for sleeping when i should have studied. heck, i was sleeping! i wasn't doing drugs. sleeping is a basic human necessity. i won't apologize for being human.

guess we'll just do really good in the project.

study sa ko

its 950pm, and i still have to study for the Soft Eng finals tomorow. i like this time, all's dark and quiet.

study sa ko.

lactose intolerance

tsk tsk tsk. we just found out my nephew is lactose intolerant. that's the reason why he kept on crying for two weeks straight - the first two weeks of his stay here on earth. we recently got him some lactose-free milk, and i think it'll be more peaceful nights ahead from now on.

this isn't much of an issue really, except that he probably got his lactose intolerance from me - the proverbial uncle. my mom never believed in this condition - she would accuse me of faking it just so i could pass on milk. she laughed at me when i said my tummy hurts like hell every time i drink the pesky white stuff. this time, though, she takes me seriously. us - if you count my nephew.

down with dairy products.

a first time for everything

this is my first post for this blog. been thinking of making one in a loong time, but i just can't find time. weird though, this is the busiest week this semester, and yet i have chosen tonight to make this blog.

hope this works. i've never been a fan of diaries. makes you feel like you have to beat a deadline everyday or week. but i do like to write. so spare me the deadlines and just give me a clean text area to write on. anytime.

see you around, whoever you are.