Are you living your life as an adventure?

I consider my life as a continuous adventure of risk-taking, contentment and successes. But it wasn’t always that way. During high school, I sensed that there was something bigger in life – something exciting and fulfilling – but I didn’t know how to go about getting it. Growing up in a small town in Occidental Mindoro where the norm was waiting for the day to be over, I strive to have a different way of life. I try my best to be an achiever – salutatorian of my high school class, a full government scholar during college and now striving to finish Graduate school. I’m not trying to brag here, it’s just that I thought that worldly success alone would bring me what I am searching for.

But after seven years of working as an employee, I have to face the hard truth that I am not on the journey I wished and planned. Though my work was sometimes exciting, I still wasn’t living life as an adventure. I always dreamed of being a professional mountaineer, a fiction book author, professional photographer and a teacher with a PhD. However, life doesn’t always go how we wanted it to be.

Sometimes, when I lazily wake up every morning, forcing myself to work, I had these funny thoughts, with a flash of miserable lucidity, that I was just fooling myself, but I did nothing. And for many years, I did nothing but drift. Like a driven leaf, I just do everything expected or demanded of me.

The deterioration of our ambitions

I remembered a phrase by a poet or maybe a Greek philosopher I read somewhere, something like “He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.” I was a mass of aspirations and dreams unacted on, of fantasies as unreal as those that awed me during childhood which was mostly spent in the farms. I always wanted to go somewhere, to travel the world perhaps, but suddenly I found myself paralyzed in a rut at the age of twenty-nine – making payments on an apartment room, receiving bonuses – (sometimes at the mercy of the management), going from my boarding house to office, to gym and back to house, going to occasional barkada out-of-town trip but mostly just imagining luxury vacations, daydreaming, escaping through books, blogging and surfing the net.

Working life itself was routine and habit: morning rush, breakfast at the office pantry, check e-mails, morning work routine, buying lunch at Lola Payat and Lola Simangot’s carinderia (that’s the name we gave to our nearby office carinderia), exchanging jokes about sex, clitorology and gossips at lunch, afternoon work routine and a quick barkada chismis before leaving office. Office friendships was surely based on that dismal reality which cost us nothing to share the workplace and life’s irony with which we viewed the mediocrity of our lives and the deterioration of our ambitions. In a company, where there is no such thing as internal career advancement but merely a training ground, we see in the other the mirror of our insufficiency. With identical correctness, we carried out our duties as employees, always voicing out the overwhelming sarcasm of our conversations - blaming HR, attacking Healthcare policies, complaining about unjustified salaries, etc. – but always never intended for a true complaint (maybe that’s how the corporate world works).

The curious case of Mang Frank

I remember Mang Frank (may he rest in peace). Funny old guy, started as a Recruitment Assistant, served a forced retirement (still in the same position) after serving almost half of his working years in this company and died broke the following year. I imagine him telling me, while sitting in front of his favorite old noisy typewriter: “Don’t get stuck in this rut, don’t let what happened to me happen to you, get out while you can – don’t cave in!”

I am hired in this company as his replacement but I actually avoided him on his last few weeks because I was so bored with the tedium of his increasingly disjointed stories, his detailed account of the intrigues and tricks he was victim of in the office and his very detailed sexual escapades. The years went by, I am just thankful I am not in that position anymore but still in the same group of companies. I go to work every morning, pay my monthly bills and trying to stretch the money till the end of every month, which is not always successful – life of a typical bachelor eh? So I was considering looking for a second job to have more savings. In this way I will not give up all the plans that seemed so courageous when I started working: preparing myself for a better career, say, university professor or researcher in some institute. But I didn’t have the time or the will, and my free evenings got away from me without me noticing.

I know what the ghost of Mang Frank would say: “What are you doing? Why haven’t you got out of here? How many more years are you going to take it?”

Once in a while I did go somewhere, but most of the time things doesn’t always go as planned. There are always set-backs and a lot of things to consider.

Life as an Adventure – One step at a time

Then it hit me. This is the adventure. This. This up and down, success and failure, back and forth – all of it is the adventure. All the time that I was looking for what I want, I was learning what it was to live a life of adventure. It wasn’t about being perfect, doing things right, receiving big salary, getting rich and having wild success with no downside. It was risking decisions, stumbling and falling short of my expectations as well as enjoying and building on my own successes.

As the famous Filipino salawikain said, “Habang maiksi ang kumot, matuto kang mamaluktot. Kung mahaba na at malapad saka na mag-unat unat” [Refers to situations when resources are scarce, one should learn to be thrift and adapt].  

My adventure was really just beginning – I’ll just have to take it, one step at a time.

 
P.S.
How about you, are you living your life as an adventure?
Are you satisfied and happy with your current situation?

Please share your personal thoughts on the Comments section below.                   

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Image credit: Desperation by Antonina

The Tyranny of My Second Mind

Looking at my feet, I walked, and did not notice the rain,
Till the gentle droplets reached my brows and fall like tears,
With clouded thoughts, I stride the deserted street,
The jeepneys were gone, and men also few.

Annoyed being ignored, the rain got furious,
I heard its million drops hit the battered asphalt,
Forming a king’s crown as its journey ends,
And in my hands I saw my dreams, abandoned like a child.



Yet blamed my other mind that fractured my resolve,
Than I reviled my existence and myself,
For subjecting my sacred vow,
Upon the tyranny of my second mind. ***

- random poem by Yodz -

[Reflections on losing discipline, indecision and losing focus. 

Written during during the typhoon "Karen"] 

20 August 2008, Mandaluyong City. 

Notes:__________________________

***Paulo Coelho, the famous author of “The Alchemist” said that we have two minds, first is the one we use in decision making and is used for logical thinking, the other one is the random thoughts and most of the time, uncontrolled. If you wake up with a song that just keeps playing in your mind, humming a melody without lyrics like a “ta-de-dum…la la la” thing, well that is your second mind doing its trick. In my case, I consider my second mind as my evil mind. Maybe that’s why Paulo Coelho strongly suggests controlling or in some instances, killing your second mind. [Notes from my post: Tomorrow I Will Kill My Second Thought]

I killed my guardian angel – is that OK?

“From being Lucifer, son of the morning, the lightbearer, the brilliant one, the shining one, he now became Satan, the adversary, the slanderer, the accuser, the archrebel, the archenemy, the devil, the destroyer…”

- Angels, we never walk alone, Walton John Brown-

I was born on a date when the feast of the holy guardian angel is being celebrated. My mother always believe that I was saved by an angel when I was six years old when I fall from the balcony of my grandmother’s old Spanish house. I am perfectly fine after the fall, because I landed on my father’s chicken pen, covered by fishing nets. Nevertheless, my mother insisted that I am totally unhurt because my guardian angel took hold of me – that is what they all insist.

Today, I am confronted by two forms of religious and maybe mythical consciousness. On the other hand, there is the form of consciousness that understands all human beliefs through freethinking and logic. And on the other hand, there is the form of consciousness that is inverted, which irresponsibly enslaves the minds through mysticism. Certainly, the intellect has both the authority and the power to follow or resist whichever it wishes to – and I chose to follow freethinking.

This is the point where I felt the need to reorient myself towards the self. I strongly believe that an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any church.

This is the point where I killed my guardian angel.

I couldn’t care less what happened billions of years ago and whether time began or not. I only care about this lifetime. Time alone is fair and just.

What difference does it make whether you believe in angels or not?

Maybe believing in it is just an opinion, like believing that Noynoy Aquino is the best next Philippine president; or a personal trust or reliance, like trusting a quack doctor; or it can mean part of faith, giving your whole heart, thus restricting the self to that belief because it requires adoration and submission.

As I observe among the faithful, possible reasons why they believe in angels are;

• They need to – it’s like believing in angels will save them when they walk through a dark Metro Manila alley.
• Believing makes them feel good and it’s fun.
• They believe in Angelology or the scientific study of angels, their hierarchy, etc.
• They believe those who tell stories about actually meeting an angel
• They believe they met one themselves.
• They believe it because it’s part of religion.

But I thanked my parents for teaching me to believe in angels when I was a child - like believing in Santa Claus, it gives me the feeling of wonder, fascination, curiosity and excitement. Like those stories about fairies and elves, angels still entertains me.

Do you believe in angels, or you killed it too?

Gluttony – My Holiday Sin

April 9-11, 2009 – Paluan, Occidental Mindoro, Philippines

"And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite."
Proverbs 23:2

Yes, I committed gluttony, one of the seven deadly sin of the Christian belief. The other six being lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. It is said that gluttony is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or intoxicants to the point of waste - in my case, I didn’t waste it, I ate it all.

But you can’t blame me, it’s my mom’s cooking, Jesus H. Christ! I goddamn missed those home recipes, which only my mother can cook. I’ve been eating oily fastfood crap and highly commercialized carinderia foods for almost two years now here in Manila, so my dear Heaven, please forgive my hungry soul.

Well let me see if I am really guilty of this sin.
St. Thomas Aquinas reiterated the list of six ways to commit gluttony:

• Praepropere - eating too soon. – Yes, I’m guilty of this. I ate before breakfast, during breakfast, after breakfast – same with lunch, merienda, and dinner last week.
  

• Laute - eating too expensively (wastedly). - Hmmm, No No No. I ate it all and didn’t waste a last drop of any of it, simut-sarap burp ! burp!. Tuyo (dried fish), sinigang sa kasoy (Filipino cashew fruit-based soup), sinigang na pusit (squid soup), ginataang langka (unripe jackfruit in coconut milk), lots of fresh seafoods, watermelon, mangoes, fresh buko juice – well McDo value meals are definitely more expensive than these foods!

• Nimis - eating too much. – Hmmm, how can I measure “too much?” I didn’t vomit after eating, so I guess I didn’t commit this.

• Ardenter - eating too eagerly (burningly) – Yes Yes Yes, Guilty as charge. I do ate burningly.

• Studiose - eating too daintily (keenly) – Also, yes to this

• Forente - eating wildly (crazily). – If eating while laughing with my family is considered “eating wildly,” well I guess I’m guilty of this and I prefer committing forente than to eat alone or with strangers in some fastfood chain.

OVER-ALL VERDICT : GUILTY! (But I don’t feel any remorse, burp burp burrrppp!!)

Maybe some of the Catholics (mostly self-righteous fanatics) will say this is a very shallow interpretation of this sin, but I don’t care.

St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote the following when explaining gluttony:

"Pope Innocent XI Odescalchi has condemned the proposition which asserts that it is not a sin to eat or to drink from the sole motive of satisfying the palate. However, it is not a fault to feel pleasure in eating: for it is, generally speaking, impossible to eat without experiencing the delight which food naturally produces. But it is a defect to eat, like beasts, through the sole motive of sensual gratification, and without any reasonable object. Hence, the most delicious meats may be eaten without sin, if the motive be good and worthy of a rational creature; and, in taking the coarsest food through attachment to pleasure, there may be a fault."

If, regardless of this explanation, I choose to make a beast of myself now, and over-eat and over-drink myself till I turn the good foods into poison, of course I am to blame. If, hereafter, I suffer the torments of my last week’s gluttony, I will gladly accept it, than missed the company of my family sitting down and enjoying each other’s company at that splendid food which I can seldom taste.

Power Shift – Forget Trying Hard

My insecurity activated my doubt and began to wonder why I was here. The internal dialogue kicked-in as I began to convinced myself I should stop being on this situation, on this battle against my own self and cut these series of wrong decisions.

I was listening to myself and realize the enormity of my faults.

I asked myself why I was here and what did I want to create or make happen. Am I on the wrong job, in wrong relationship, in a wrong track? As I wait for the answers, I felt tired.

I am riding the sick-cycle-carousel again – it is killing an important part of me, slowly… slowly, until all is gone, inflicting the terrible pain after the fun.

Luckily I got the answer – FORGET TRYING HARD : this will allow life to shift around me.

What I allow myself to focus on is what I tend to see transpire in my life. Therefore the question I must continuously ask myself is, "do I want more of this in my
life? -- if the answer which comes back to me is anything short of an resounding "YES!" then I need to shift my thinking to focus more on what I do want to see happen in my life.

Awareness and knowing when my thoughts are no longer serving to move me in the direction of the goals I have set for myself is an important part of getting back into alignment, back to the place & doing those ongoing actions which are required of me to see my dreams through to completion.

A Sigh for A Sigh

I want my coffee served black this time and that quaint coffee shop served it right – the waitress gracefully placing it in front of me wearing a cute smile, always fearsomely efficient.

I like it when they served it a few minutes late, on purpose: a little delay to smell the café’s air - rich with coffee aroma, study the animated crowd and feel the ambiance before you get that first sip. A craving-agony trick that works well with me.

“Since when you become a black coffee guy? Getting old and bored eh? ” he said to break my deep rumination.

“I don’t know, I seem to love bitter things nowadays.” I replied without thinking, hoping that he will not follow up on that remark. To cut it off I asked him “So, how’s Maya?”

“She’s fine. We’re having problems like normal couple but we’re good.” He said with finality, also hoping that I will not dig on that.

“So when are you planning to settle down? Not yet tired of that bachelor wandering of yours?”

“I’m still enjoying it, I guess.”

“I came across that bloody blog of yours. As usual you’re still fooling yourself. Forcing yourself to be in-love – that thing you don’t believe in. Where’s that philosophy of yours that love is just a state of mind? That “logic-based thinking” you’re always insisting? And for crying out loud bro, what’s that love-at-first-sight thank-you-for-the-smile telenovela of yours! It’s not you, and it’s horseshit bro!”

“Ahh, that damn blog. I should delete it I guess - catching lot of inquiries. Well, things change. I am still human you know, also entitled to those crazy torpe feelings, and bro, you know that if I don’t write, I will explode.”

“Yeah I know, so, have you started writing that book? That was since our college days pa di ba?”

“I got stuck on this I.T. thing you know – have to force myself to it. I’m one of those unlucky son of a farmer, who doesn’t have much choice in choosing their profession. You know I love social sciences or psych: well that’s a different story. About that book, hmm, well instead of doing my spiritual walk, I ride that sick-cycle carousel, I know you know what I mean. And that crazy blog, well yeah, maybe I’m just forcing myself to that “fucking love” thing.”

“Hey bro, haven’t you learn your lesson? Look what happened to you and P_ _?

“Ah, that’s a different set-up, and a totally different story. It left my senses bleeding but it ends well. Learned a lot of lesson you know. ”

“O, c’mmon, my friend, it’s the same with that Ms. Kulet. I’m telling you, everytime you do that, you lose some part of you. You should leave high school bro, this is now the real thing. Grow up! You cannot spread yourself too thin. If you open up your heart to somebody, you should face the consequences. If you really love that Lady Vader, be bold enough and say it, but be ready with the consequences because by doing that, you’re definitely disturbing the serenity of things, the balance of the force, as you may put it, - and search your heart deeply before doing that, because you might end up with a “Tin-Tin tragedy” again. Maybe it is just a feeling you created. Just don’t force yourself and your heart. Someday, your mind and your heart will speak to you as one – and that is love, whispering to you. And stop fooling around goddamn it! – it will only make your mind noisy.”

“Amen to that, Master Yoda,” I replied with a squeezed heart, hurting, coz I’m reminded of that Tin-tin affair again. I tried to hide it, which I know I failed.

“You’re right bud, maybe I’m just a little stressed, you know I’m having set-backs regarding my studies, but that is not an excuse for this confusion.” I gave a deep sigh after saying that.

“Have to go now, bro. Chill out. I hope next time you will talk about those grand dream of yours - those photography and yoga class and that goddamn book man.. start writing it you bastard!” he got up and pat my shoulder.

“Thanks for dropping by bro. I still owe you a couple of beer.”

I saw myself alone, holding my half-finished coffee, now cold and lifeless. I totally lose my interest on it but I kept holding it, catching my breath with lines of sadness, like a sad Enya song, where the refrain comes like a sigh at the end of a regret.

I stayed for a couple of minutes, wondering and contemplating on the infractions of hearts that always veiled its enormity to the eyes of those who seek it. I am inclined to think that my own disposition must be naturally bad, or I could be guilty of such an enormity at so matured an age.

I do not care by the blows of life’s fist at my heart, but I do weep at being torn into pieces by these knives held by my own hands.

I know their hearts is giving me sigh for a sigh.

The Road to My Personal Legend

The Road to My Personal Legend
Summoning the force of Sphyneckxzeus
The way of the Warrior of the Light

I am Yodz. I believe with all my heart that I am worthy of all the endeavors

I choose to pursue. I strongly believe that I can achieve all my dreams & goals in life. I believe that happiness is a choice, & I choose to be happy. I am happy & content with my life now. I know what I want to achieve & I know what I have to do to achieve it. I am making this day & everyday a masterpiece.

I am always taking care of my body, realizing the importance of moderation & balance, knowing that as I bring my flesh under control, it will be easy to control my will & actions. Everyday, I will eat more fruits & vegetables, drink lots of water & have sufficient sleep. I am avoiding unhealthy and junk foods. I am avoiding alcoholic drinks because it impairs my mental and physical faculties, which always leads to regretful mornings. Cleanliness is always my priority & I am always practicing good hygiene so that I can face the world with confidence.
In return for good health, I will treat everyone I meet everyday the way I want to be treated. I am beginning & ending each day with love in my heart. I am appreciating the life that I have, & very delighted in the reality of being alive. My past is forever gone, my future an uncertainty, so I will be happy & thankful for each moment.

I am spending my active income only for my needs, never for my wants. Everytime I will spend or disburse money, I will ask myself "Will this bring me closer to my financial goals?"
In return for this money, I will give the most efficient service of which I am capable, rendering the fullest possible quantity & the best possible quality of service. I believe that I will have this money in my possession. My faith is so strong that I can now see this money before my eyes. I can touch it with my hands. I am seeing myself rendering the best service in return for this money. I am awaiting a plan by which to accumulate this money, & I will follow that plan, when it is received.

I am spending time in study, learning how to better serve my fellowman. I know my growth in all areas is in direct proportion to the service I give to others. I will have my Masters Degree in 2010. I will do my best to finish my thesis. If they can do it, I know it is possible for me to do it. I am always finding time to improve my skills & knowledge in areas of Information Technology, Language & Writing. I am improving my writing skills by composing more blogs, poems & writing a book. I enjoy spending time reading books.

I am spending time for my family & friends. I am avoiding gossip, criticisms & negative thinking. I will not care about what others will say about me. This is my life & I am living it the way I wanted it to be. I know that if I am influenced by opinions of others, I have no desire of my own. The Warrior of the Light does not spend his days trying to play the role that others have chosen for him. It is not my responsibility to judge the dreams of others & I am not wasting time criticizing other people’s decisions.

I am getting everything done on time. When I see a new task, I plan it, schedule it, do it. My time is valuable & I treat it that way. I also understand that by being late, I am stealing other people’s precious time so I will arrive early on every appointment and every class. This is my way of valuing and respecting other people.

I am not committing the mistakes I made in the past. It is written that the true Warrior of the Light never commits the same mistake twice.

I see & feel myself doing it. I am very sure of myself that I can do it because I am always carrying with me - FAITH, HOPE & LOVE. I am doing all these with FAITH & strong DESIRE. I am doing all this with PERSISTENCE & DISCIPLINE And I am setting all this into ACTION, everyday & every minute of my life.
This is the road to my Personal Legend & no matter how long it takes or hard it is, I CAN DO IT!
I am Yodz, the force of Sphyneckxzeus is in me.
This is my sacred vow to become a true Warrior of the Light.

Signed:

Yodz De Veas y Insigne
Warrior of the Light
19th of June 2008