happy new year!

I was thinking something dramatic, as in sappy dramatic, to write. But, let's leave all that to the year that's passed. I'm hoping for a great year. More action less drama. Yeah, my problem for the last few years was that I spent most of my time thinking about things. Now that I've settled most of things that bug me, mentally that is, I'm prepared to take more action. I must take resolve in getting out of my psychical reality and really experience whatever the world has to offer. Ok, that's getting too emotional already. Hehe!

So, one of my major goals for the year is to get 2 jobs for my summer internship program. The other is to finally (hopefully) get my DS diploma. Then it's adventure again after that. I'm both afraid and excited. This is really positive considering that I was half-suicidal last year, minutes away from finishing my MIS undergrad career. I'm already thinking about employment this time. Hah! I've too much semi-long term plans! I haven't even started on a paper due this thursday and a book report this weekend. Career mode na dapat by 5pm today!

Here are some other things I'll do (not "try to do") this year (New Year's resolutions!): fulfill promises, do homeworks in advance, update my blog at least once a week, read more non-fic (hehe!), build lasting friendships (Uck! But really...), build independence, and save more. Sana talaga mangyari!

ako si kiray

Tonight, I'm TV's victim.

I am for the underdog. I've always been appalled by those kids who either have pretty faces or the super brains. I was less than the regular kid, I guess. I was never a super brain or the cutie pie. Neither was I the best runner nor jumper during my years in varsity in HS- I know I don't even look the part. Some people just have all the things to become. I felt I didn't. I was the underdog.

This is probably the reason why I'm most interested in kids who don't seem to have a lot of potential to become an Einstein, a dashing Hollywood actor- or anyone who is great at all. I'm interested in those kids who struggle just to have that sense of worth. I'm interested in kids who had to hate themselves- only to come out of that self-hating phase renewed and enlightened. Some were able to become through real hard work and some discovered their real strengths eventually. They're more inspiring than the gifted ones.

Then I grew up. I learned that worth is a thing the lazy mind is after- the mind that is too busy arranging the world, including itself. It's as if the struggle through puberty was worth nothing at all; as if the worth the regular kid was after constituted that vicious cycle he was supposed to get out of.

Yes we grew up, but most of us are still stuck in puberty. It's frustrating to see people who are still after recognition of their merits, those who seem to understand themselves based on some objective arrangement of reality. It is seldom that I see people motivated by a strong sense of action, of some weird desire to achieve something without bothering whether that would constitute his worth. Action in my generation means a way of becoming something else that would figure in the arrangement of reality. This arrangement becomes people's way of understanding themselves- make that "the only way to understand themselves". It may be both imposed and/or self-inflicted.

That didn't explain my point very well. I have this sense that real maturity means having that strong feeling that we should not be after what we are in the configuration of the cosmos (whatever that may mean)- primarily because that's illusion for me- but that we should be after something that lies outside that configuration and within our own sense of what is worthwhile to do. If that something is still the idea of the self then I guess people will always be frustrated.

A key to happiness, perhaps? More like hypocrisy on my part, actually. I notice that I am caught in the same hell from time to time. I'm too busy trying to be smart, look good (unsuccessfully)- or generally someone who is important. But I notice that I'm beginning to outgrew these concerns. I'm after something now- something aside from myself. Still, to be human may mean to be caught up. So I may not be pointing to something worthwhile after all.

spasmodic soliloquy

Why is it that every time we cry so hard, it’s always about self-pity, about maudlin thoughts on our lives- over some notion of worthlessness or the lack of something that would make us “complete”? I can barely come up with a decent number to account for the times I’ve cried earnestly for another person. It’s rather pathetic, but during the times you feel sorry about your situation, your life, or whatever, you sense the truth in it. You sense that the world, indeed, has been unfair.

Then, emotions began to change as you obsess in this idea of worthlessness or the lack of something that you assume unattainable. Emotions slowly gear towards how you can make sense out of your life; to be something of worth seems appealing. So you figure that’s where toward which your life is supposed to be geared. Because of this and some notion of capability to feel for others, you take a specific path.

It becomes confusing sooner or later. It seems mere vanity; it’s that nagging alter ego that strives for any notion of worth, any notion of being vital to the operation of the world. Then the confusion gets worse. It’s called Eros in the language of Philo- at least according to my teacher; that the only things you can feel are things that have direct implication to yourself; that selfless love can only be possible with the notion of being affected.

Do you love to feel ownership? Do you invest in caring because the action would make you someone who cares? What takes precedence?

This is not necessarily bad, of course. The self-reinforcing mechanism to secure an organism’s notion of worth can indeed be that organism’s motivation to persist. But it can also be a caveat, especially when the organism’s in its point in life where it wants action- not any kind of arrangement of the world that would suggest any notion of its worth. This becomes a problem because the primary motivation of the organism becomes this notion of arrangement not real action.

Why action? It seems to me the only thing that secures actual desire to live- to live not to arrange one’s life according to any notion of the cosmos’s configuration! It becomes more important to ask ourselves what we want to do more than “what” do we want to become.

The action becomes clear- but only sometimes. And the uncertainty remains.