back in college, my professor (and eventually became my mentor and friend) asked us to read 'sickness unto death' by soren kierkegaard. it is a discourse over the types of despair that people excruciatingly go through their lives. we took it for more than half a semester and to tell you honestly, i hated it at that time. and my mentor knows this. what can be borne out of studying despair? i thought nothing.

a few years down the road, with more experiences and remembering an event in childhood got me present to despair. i knew it was high time that i revisit kierkegaard. i wouldn't know what will come out of it but let's just see. reading the introduction, it was meant to be an edifying discourse (i just never realized that it was).

i remembered our talk about nostalgia, how it affects us. that when we immerse in it, there is homelessness. being a third year student, i couldn't accept it. i mean, all those fond memories, what could be more precious than being able to get it out of my bag from time to time and be able to relive wonderful experiences. but attaching myself to this, i failed to see something else. nostalgia is homelessness: by not living in the moment, i do ask myself the question 'where am i (going)?' and fail to see what the present can provide. finally, i saw the part of me that's being an escapist and fundamentally, that's not me. (amazing.)

there are many aspects of depair and this one is related to the despair of possibility where i am being dragged away from the concrete, my reality. when this happens, i do not budge from my spot, lose actualization and eventually, lose the spot that i am standing on (as opposed to respecting the integrity of the spot and working from there). there is a pointing to the self but it is dragged away by the lack of necessity. (there is also a despair of necessity, by the way). by engaging in nostalgia (especially in blaming where i tell others that 'it wasn't like this before. it was much better then'), i bring a possibility that is not of the present and i eventually lose the integrity of my spot. a slew of emotions may uncover like anger (i was never treated like this before), fustration (it was much better then) and the obvious, despair (my life was great then but not now). once i let go of that and engage in the moment, i reaiize that all those emotions fall on the wayside. i am not trapped, i just create the traps.

indeed, the mystery of life continues to unfold.

"the world is not
respectable; it is mortal,
tormented, confused,
deluded forever; but it is
shot through with beauty,
with love, with glints of
courage and laughter;
and in these, the spirit
blooms..."
- george santayana

seen posted in my girlfriend's office

how is it to really live a life fully every single day as if it were the last? to grant a dying person's wish all the time? i tackled this back in 2005 for apojim's class as an exercise. at that time, i set off on 48 hours of allowing the important things in my life: from eating green tea ice cream to giving my dad a letter that i wrote a few years back. it was an amazing experience, to say the least.

sometimes (make that a lot of the time!), i still fall out of it when i focus on my pride, on what other people think is important (and be affected by it!) and on my insecurities. i know that at one point in my life, i will die and yet, i don't seem to embrace it fully. i question myself for not being able to do so. i even posed a question once to apojim on how do we get the beginner's mind all the time?

randy pausch's last lecture punctuates this point. it's a perfect anwer to my question (and longing). after watching his video, i was very much humbled by how this man is living his life. here he is, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and yet he still looks so strong and energized. in his own words, this is the best example of cognitive dissonance.

actually, he isn't saying anything new but he breathes into it because he comes off as so authentic. a jolt every now and then is good. as the midnight oil burned last night, i got my eureka moment. how is it to live life authentically all the time? by allowing those little deaths to happen to me everyday, whether it be letting go of feelings of futility to 'growing up' to allowing that innate innocence and peace to be uncovered. only then i believe that we can achieve reaching our childhood dreams.


here's a report from the wall street journal on the lecture:

if you have a couple of hours, here's the full video:


so have you figured out the head fake?

by jack gilbert

how astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. love, we say,
god, we say, rome and michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. we say bread and it means according
to which nation. french has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. a people
in northern india is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. i dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. maybe the etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. and maybe not. when the thousands
of mysterious sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. but what if they
are poems or psalms? my joy is the same as twelve
ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
o lord, thou art slabs of salt and ignots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the winds labor.
her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered egyptian cotton. my love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. giraffes are this
desire in the dark. perhaps the spiral minoan script
is not a language but a map. what we feel most has
no name but ambers, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.

yesterday, after submitting the executive summary for an international social venture competition, i went around bonifacio high street and ended up at r.o.x., the largest store for outdoor items in the philippines. two out of the 3 floors were already open to customers.

being an outdoor enthusiast myself, i was salivating at the stuff i was seeing -- from surfing to muntain climbing to surfing to biking. what's more, they both had local and foreign brands! one of the brands they're carrying is 'life is good'. made me smile just looking at the stuff. i stayed there for quite a bit and ended up buying a waterproof pouch and a water bottle. upon reaching the counter,  all the store clerks and sales people started clapping.

i was bewildered as much as the next customer beside me. apparently, i was the customer that made them reach their php 1 million goal in sales since they opened last 9th of november. it was a happy bewilderment, then. if you think that they gave me anything -- no, i didn't get any additional item or a surprise (although i was surprised by the way they reacted to the news). i learned though that all the store personnel would be treated to a dinner that evening courtesy of the store.

that was enough to make my day -- i was happy with my purchase (i was literally one happy camper) and they were happy that they got to have a free dinner. i love stores that treat their people well. i think i'll be one of their regular patrons from now on.