A Note to Self

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may. – Vincent Van Gogh

     There will be days when things may seem very difficult. But all things are difficult before they are easy. And is not every elusive truth discovered more precious because of the time and love spent in the process?

     I know you are capable of achieving your goals – of seeking understanding and being able to contribute to knowledge.

     However, these will require concentration and hard work. Devote yourself to being better and doing things right. Do what you can, now, and do everything with ordered passion so you minimize your mistakes and regrets, and maximize the satisfaction and rewards in the future.

Offer everything to the Other who has given you so much.

Work hard, study well, and pray with true faith and conviction.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Goodbye, soldier.

When I heard that Lolo was gone, I kept silent and did not mention that I did not believe it. At the back of mind, perhaps, I was thinking that maybe all we needed to do was hold his hand again, or sing him another song and he’d come back to us again with another smile.

That did not happen and still I could not believe that he was gone. This was because I felt it unfair for him to go when we were just starting to get to know him. In fact, when we were choosing pictures for his memorial I felt quite envious of everyone else. Of cousins who got to spend time with him, hear his stories first hand, of cousins whose names he actually called and remembered.

But with what little time I had spent with him, I am thankful for he has given me an understanding of life, of a human condition that one gets not in the books but only through association, and relation with others: it is in the weakest state where one shows the most strength.

For someone like me who flinches at the sight of blood, it was painful  to see lolo undergo all the medical tests and procedures, but lolo endured and fought because life was always more important to him. I realized that this shouldn’t be surprising for a man who fought wars if only others get to experience peace. You were the bravest man I’ve known lolo, and I will miss you.

I will miss seeing him go up and smile at me at night, as I study, I will miss singing to him at night after work, as he goes to sleep, I will miss holding his hand, I will miss seeing him smile and laugh as others did and make jokes even in pain, and always offering others to join him as he eats. I will miss bragging about my Veteran war – hero lolo, my handsome lolo, my swimmer-lolo, my gentle lolo, to my friends. But I will remember lolo. When people talk about bravery, I will think of him. When people speak of fatherhood, I will remember him. I understand what people mean by “gentleness” because I met him. And as I read and hear stories about heroism, I will be ready with a story of my own.

Lolo once told me how lucky he felt, having so many loving children and people around him. I should have told you then, lolo, that we were the lucky ones  – for not everyone gets to live amidst a hero. Thank you very much lolo, I love you and I will miss you.

Removing religion from the RH question (Part 1)

Reblogged from The Idiot:

Last April 18, 2011, President Aquino published a five-point position on responsible parenthood.  I found this useful, mainly because of its brevity. This list can be found here. I plan to do a series commenting on each item.

My comments come from the perspective of someone who has serious reservations about the bill. Instead of simply re-stating the religious position, however, I would like to begin with a friendlier question, namely, “is the proposed solution truly human?”   My reason for asking this question is that it appeals to something universal, and therefore, a cause that is common to the pro-life and pro-RH camps: a desire to build a society that better promotes human dignity.

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Some thoughts on the battle of ideas

A debate on any future course of action is always necessarily a battle of ideas. Its outcome, independent of its gravity or size, is always important because it poses the possibility that the new ideas will someday be taken as natural truths by future generations.

This battle often revolves around practicality and idealism, the charge being that idealists are blind to the realities and are therefore always offering impractical solutions. But idealism does not mean denying all practicalities, but demanding, always, an evaluation of the ends of practicality. It is a fault not to see realities as they are, and idealists understand this; however they insist that we can improve.  Idealism cannot but stem from an understanding of reality which becomes the basis of the belief that we can be better – and thinking of ways to do that.

 

The danger in practicality is the adherence only to necessity. Not only can this limit our imagination, it can also define our attitude so that we may even forget that the useful is not always good, but the good is always useful. Today, many claim that the solutions to the problems of the poor are all practical, that there is no time to philosophize and conjure lofty visions. Many say this as if they didn’t know that while survival necessitates working with the bare minimum, living necessitates envisioning a better state to strive for. To deny these ideals they cling to a divide between the rich and the poor. But to say that ideals are not for everybody is pessimistic, an unfair decision – supposing those who are born into poverty cannot possibly have higher goals with which they plan to be better. Because the use of these ideals is harder to perceive than the need for food or clothing, many even say they can be done away with.

 

Thus, there is a common trend nowadays to define practicality as denial of all “old-fashioned” beliefs and traditions our society has held This is usually a product of a view of history that focuses only on politics and culture – the dangers we may encounter in the future forgetting to take into account man’s creativity and freedom which have allowed him to overcome.

Our times mirrors Jose Gasset’s description of the time he found himself in seven decades ago, that which considers itself ‘superior to other times, yet inferior to itself’. Ah, we vow to wreck all the past principles yet use this self-diagnosed inferiority and our constant fear of the future to demand that we limit ourselves to practicalities. We want to be free of the past, yet limited to a certain future.

It is akin to the man who has discovered his mortality. Will he strive to be a hero, or stay always in safety – limiting himself to ‘normal’ pursuits, abandoning his dreams and announce as futile any striving for great actions knowing his life will inevitably end?

Accelerating LEI indicates sustained growth – NSCB

The Philippine economy will sustain its growth momentum which will be robust in the second quarter of the year, according to the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB).

The latest data released by the NSCB showed that the composite leading economic indicator (LEI) accelerated from 0.064 in the first quarter to 0.125 for the second quarter of the year. The latest figure is also significantly higher than the 0.036 posted in the second quarter of 2011.

            The LEI has accelerated for three quarters in a row, indicating a continuing positive outlook for the Philippine economy. The positive contributors among the 11 indicators making up the composite LEI were visitor arrivals, number of new businesses, stock price index, money supply, wholesale price index, hotel occupancy rate and terms of trade index with money supply and terms of trade index shifting from the negative to the positive direction. Meanwhile, the consumer price index was largest negative contributor while foreign exchange rate, total merchandise imports and electric energy consumption also reported declines.

The LEI is the government’s key tool for short-term forecasting which was designed by the NSCB and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) to provide advance information on the direction of the country’s economic activity/performance in the short run.

The uprise of the LEI index is only one of the recent positive improvements in the economy. In May, the country’s balance of payments (BOP) reverted to a surplus after posting deficits for two consecutive months. The turnaround was attributed to the Central Bank’s inflows from its foreign exchange operations and investment income. The BoP surplus will provide a cushion against external volatilities, fears of which are still present due to the eurozone debt crisis and declining Chinese economic growth. Also, the economy posted 6.4% growth in the first quarter, mostly due to increased spending in the economy.

Because of the recent developments, economists, including UA&P’s Dr. Victor Abola and Dr. Bernardo Villegas, are optimistic about this year’s growth. In the recent Business Economics Club mid-year Economic Briefing held in the university, Dr. Abola said that the Philippine economy is expected to accelerate to a growth of seven percent in the second quarter of the year and hit a full-year growth about six percent to seven percent amidst the recovery of agriculture and industry sectors and the steady growth of services. Dr. Bernardo Villegas, however, gave his own projection of about seven to ten percent.

 

Love is life

Leo Tolstoy once wrote love is life. Here’s to celebrating both!

Today, we celebrate my Lolo Greg’s and Lola Pacing’s anniversary. Ah, what a moment it must have been, many years ago! Today we honor their love which remains a chief cause of my/our being here! And while lola Pacing has gone ahead of us, she remains in our memory and continues to inspire in us the sense of family and love she valued above everything else.  We continue to be grateful for being blessed to still enjoy the presence of our lolo Greg. Like Jose Rizal, whose birthday we celebrate today, this man has embodied courage, fortitude, strength, and love for his family and for his country. His words and stories tell tales of another world, another era. But in hearing all the stories, we are always seized with awe and pride and gratitude.  It is amazing how he braved the wars and still remained the gentle man that he is, emerging from them with his heart whole, intact.

We are very lucky to be living in the midst of  a hero.

 

Love stands in the way of death. Love is life. All, all that I understand, I understand solely because I love.  All is, all exists, simply and solely because I love.  All is summed up in this alone. 

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

All is Well

 

 

And don’t you want to be the kind of person people make movies about?

 

 

APEC Expects Slower Growth for Members this Year

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) expects the economic growth in the region to decelerate this year under pressure from the impact of the euro zone debt crisis, risks of global inflation as well as production and supply chain disruptions due to natural disasters. According to Economic Trends Analysis, the latest report from APEC economic expansion in emerging and developing countries will be slower this year though it will still outpace global growth. The good news for the Filipinos is that the negative impact is expected to be less in economies with strong domestic demand such as the Philippines.

According to the APEC report, which based its outlook on the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) projections, the Gross domestic product (GDP) growth in emerging and developing APEC economies is projected to decelerate to 6.3% this year but will rebound to its 2011 level of 6.9% next year. Although the growth rate will decelerate, it is expected to still be higher than the global GDP growth estimated at 3.5% this year, slowing from 3.9% in 2011.

Still, the sentiments of Filipinos who maintain a positive outlook on the economy seem not to be misplaced because the report said that among the 16 developing APEC economies, only the Philippines, Brunei (3.2% from 1.9%) and Thailand (5.5% from 0.1%) will see growth accelerate this year mainly because of growth by private consumption. According to the cited IMF forecast, the Philippines itself is expected to see growth pick up to 4.2% this year from 3.7% in 2011, and further to 4.7% in 2013.

Just before the turn

A double take: part doubt, part amazement, part the need to confirm sight — an attempt at capturing, remembering this scene framed by the unique overlapping of this hour and place.

I wonder, how could you have become the picture inside my head?

Words, ideas that took form and color – with solid clarity. An image far from perfect but removed from everything I so openly despise — the sophist projections of interests or of might or of affections. Of course, what else was to be done but to cherish the light, finally balanced, bold and revealing?

But anything is different until a certain level of familiarity is reached – when it becomes, sadly, like everything else. It’s like watching a favorite scene in a movie and realizing you’ve seen such a scene so many times before — a singular dilemma in its many forms. See, the confusion, the clash of vanities, the four stages of awkwardness, the multifaceted regrets, the avoided conversations, the imagined outcomes, the forced responses, the half-wishes to forget, the insistence on another start, the rehearsed goodbye, the final crazy, illogical remark. We’ve seen and heard all these before.

You are such a cliché.

Amis Perdus

I cannot find enough stars to dramatize the moment  - yet I’m stuck again in front of the analog clock, counting the seconds and consoling myself by thinking that there must be an imperative reason for this system’s refusal to be asleep.

What is this agitation? Can it possibly be a rebellion against my obsession with some imagined threshold – between the are and the should be?

Maybe reconstruction can be done in good faith, with surprising and comfortable lightness. Maybe the crossing does not have to begin with a violent push, but with the simple recognition of the questions that can no longer be safely ignored.

To begin: forgive me for my faults. I cannot dispense with the habit of recalling particular states of being.  Forgive the created spaces, the ones we found to be necessary, but which may actually no longer have a meaning. They were convenient; once I thought making and keeping them were somewhat courageous.

In truth, most of the time I prefer we don’t end up being strangers. Sometimes the distances become an unending regret. But that I am not good enough to figure out how these things should go is evidenced by how I am always at a loss for the proper gesture. Then I am always figuring out which lines to say — which words to give away, which ones to keep — when to pretend I do care, when to stop pretending that I don’t.  I despise too many things, as I love too many. Each small detail becomes a motive for mobility. I did not realize that each play runs the risk of turning into another inconclusive struggle. I realize how I’m very far from being perfect or even sufficiently stable for credible consistency. Look even my words are in fits of temper.  Sometimes I say one thing while meaning another, sometimes I mean things while pretending to mean some other. Small talks scare me, as do the big ones. I have a taste for both the obscure and the cerebral. I have the tendency towards simultaneous confession and resistance.

Sorry. 

See, here I am again: interrupting myself.