JOE VIZCARRA — Maximize Your Potential

How to Build a Better World

2016-03-01T06:39:00.000+08:00

What if you have the power to change the world.. or even just make it a little better? Would you deny the world this gift?

This question may sound nice and naive and idealistic. But I am neither of the three.. or at least not anymore. Not after what life put me through. Not after what people pulled me through. I was ready to give up. And maybe I had. In a big way.

I was determined to just live for myself. Have it my way. Just focus on what I can do. For me. Just me. I will be kind to myself. For once. And forget about everyone else's opinions. I will forgive myself of my own mistakes. Give myself unlimited chances. To try again. And make more mistakes. And care not at all for what other people may think and say. Whoever the fuck they may be.

I never asked to be who I am. I never even asked to be born. What do I owe anyone?

I am me. And I would never apologize for being me. I am never gonna be a prisoner of anybody's expectations. No one will ever again dictate me on how to be.

I am me. Still just a frail, ageing and humbled human. Yet I am free.

I may not have much. But my God-given freedom is more than enough to dignify and give meaning to my existence. Therefore, never trust anyone who only has contempt for your freedom.

But freedom is useless.. If you won't use it.

You have to use it to help yourself. To be better. But don't try to be better by becoming someone you are not. Instead, be better at being yourself. Yes. Be better at being yourself. And that will lead you to become the best version of yourself. And don't be surprised one day when you look in the mirror, you'll see this amazing human being staring right back at you, saying "congratulations, you did your bit in building a better world!"

If you have any real sense of moral responsibility at all, let it be about achieving your own human potential. Let it be about taking care of your personal growth. Let it be about becoming a gift to yourself, and after that (by default), you shall have become a gift to the world. (Not that everyone will admire, agree or even acknowledge. You're not doing this for them, remember?)

Building a better world begins with building a better you, for you, by you. And contrary to what you might like to expect, it stops there. Never impose your gospel on others. This is not a social movement nor a religion but a call to a "personal revolution". It has to come organically from within, or else where is the efficacy in that?

Never impose on others your values and your visions -- your truths. People are smart. They will get it. Your good intentions are NOT moral justification for your dictatorial stance. If you really have good intentions, then all the more should you respect other people's process of growth. (Don't even compare your own growth). The process is NEVER the same for everyone. You are not helping if you are getting in the way of their process in any way. You're just delaying their growth. The most you can do is inspire them, in silence. Just be a shining beacon in your own humble corner.. where those of us in the dark can never miss your light. One more thing, just focus on your own continuing growth, because you still need it, (we all do) and so do the world.

BUT BEWARE...! Unfortunately, not all people will leave you alone. There are smart, talented and influential people out there who will actually trick you into investing your total dependence on them. Your frail and pavlovian human nature is no match for the force of their personality and sheer sense of superiority.

It's not enough to focus on self-improvement and allowing other's the same space. You have to arm yourself against the tricksters and manipulators, who consciously preys upon your kindness and trust --- and eat your very soul. Life is too short to waste on blood suckers. And never think it's any of your responsibility to "cure" them. As soon as they assume that responsibility for themselves, they will find cure.

So, if you still haven't got a clue, let me spell it for you.

+ One person has what it takes to build a better world.
+ And that person is You.
+ Good news, is if you are up for the challenge.
- But if you aren't yet tired of your excuses, that's bad news.

5 CORE SECRETS TO BECOMING DANGEROUSLY AWESOME (updated!)

2016-02-10T08:51:00.000+08:00

We all want absolute certainty that things will go as planned. And when it doesn't (as is usually the case), we blame everyone and everything. Our belief in the possibility of "perfection" is strong. Warriors and fighters, on the other hand, have developed a secret winning strategy that works 99% of the time. It is called, "being realistic". Apparently, having to put their lives on the line everyday - as part of doing their job - has opened their eyes to a drastically different way of seeing things. We should try that once in a while.

War strategist Carl von Clausewitz used the word "friction" to represent the difference between our plan and what actually happens The bigger the deviation from the plan, the bigger the "friction".

More "friction" translates to more "heat" --- more aptly known as "stress". And "stress" can warp our sense of proportion and wreaks havoc on our propensity for complexity --- which can then feed into itself, until you get overwhelmed, burned out, or break down.

"Friction" is unavoidable because nothing in life is ever the same. No amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the infinite possibilities of the present moment. Possibilities which you may take advantage of or fall victim to.

What would you give to become immune to friction?

Indeed, what would you give for the ability to feed on "friction" and convert stress into capacity for excellent performance? Of being able to be attuned to the FORCE of circumstances and master of the moment?

Being master of the moment is what I call being "dangerously awesome".

More than just being fully alive, being dangerously awesome means being fully awake. It means having tremendous fluency and fluidity in adapting to the unexpected. It means having the speed of mind to quickly see and use the potentialities of the unexpected as if you were counting on it to happen because you planned it that way.

At the root of this seemingly tremendous adaptive capacity is our basic set, standard issue, "human survival drive". We are familiar with this kind of strength, we hear inspiring stories and tall tales about it all the time. We admire people who seem to have it, even fictitious characters. But we don't know we have it within us until huge problems force us to be strong.

Philosophers and legendary warriors of old talk openly about this but they can't help but sound vague and mystical. How can they not? Wisdom gained in the face of death in the heat of the battlefield. Wisdom gained over a lifetime of meditations and discourses. They all speak of the same paradoxes to achieving personal excellence.

There are five core principles [and seven powerful ideas for unleashing them.]

When you realize their life-changing potential, you will understand why I call them dangerous.

THE 5 CORE SECRETS TO BECOMING DANGEROUSLY AWESOME!

1. ABSORB THE MOMENT
Maintain a constant "grasp" of the moment. Be at peace with chaos. Embrace uncertainty. Romance the unexpected. It takes a lot of will power to be always realistic and alert to the changing landscape. But REALITY does not really offer you any alternative. You have no choice in the matter. Surrender to the moment. But make the surrender, your choice. A decision you own. A realization that you are actually "connected" to the universe, so it's less a surrender and more of coming back home. Accept this moment. Love it. The chaos within and the chaos without is one and the same chaos that permeates the universe. Embrace the moment like there is no other reality, cause there really is none.

2. EXPLOIT THE MOMENT
Seize the moment. Instead of getting overwhelmed, use it's energy as incentive to be fully engaged with reality. Ride life's momentum. Life is a "happening", an event, a constant stream, a cosmic phenomenon. If you don't ride life's momentum, you'll get run over and over. And over.

3. ACT. GENEROUSLY
Life is a closed door. If you don't open it and get inside, it will forever be an enigma to you. Action is the key to getting inside. And when you act, act generously, not half-hearted. Give. Give back to life. Especially when it seems you have no more to give. Keep giving. Give generously of your self in whatever you are doing now. Invest yourself in the moment completely. If it's not worth doing well, its not worth doing at all. To be aimless is to be dead. Stop waiting for opportunities. Instead, just do something, practically anything of value. That will "attract" opportunities. Especially, do something that you love. Action invites opportunities.

4. JUST BELIEVE
Believe in your success. Especially when it's hard to believe. Keep believing. Hold on to your vision. Keep in mind that strategic vision is more important than specific strategies. That with a powerful vision, everything will fall into place. Focus on the vision and believe.

5. UNLEASH YOUR PERSONAL POWER
The power is within you. It's irrelevant to think whether you earned it, or deserving of it. You just happen to have the power by virtue of being alive. That's what you need to understand, believe and be thankful for. Your next concern is how to unleash it. And that's the topic for a sequel post.

COMING UP:

THE 7 REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES TO UNLEASHING YOUR PERSONAL POWER

RISK-PROOF YOUR LIFE

2016-02-08T09:26:00.000+08:00

"We associate the willingness to risk great failure – and the ability to climb back from catastrope – with courage. But in this we are wrong. That is the lesson of Nassim Taleb."
-- Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

An epistemologist of randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb was once described as "the hottest thinker in the world". Born in 1960, he is a Lebanese American essayist whose work focuses on problems of randomness and probability.

His book "The Black Swan" was described in a review by Sunday Times as one of the most influential books since World War 2. In it, he advocates for a society that can withstand "black swans" or difficult-to-predict events --- what he calls a "black swan robust" society. Taleb favors "stochastic tinkering" as a method of scientific discovery, by which he means experimentation and fact-collecting instead of top-down directed research.

According to Taleb, "we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen, the unknown, resolve the tension by scueezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas".. This, he said, makes us victims to the Ludic Fallacy, or the misuse of games and dice to model real-life randomness.

THE LUDIC FALLACY

Taleb detests the error of comparing real-world randomness with "structured randomness" in quantim physics /where probabilities are remarkably computable/ and games of chance like casinos where probabilities are artificially built.
He said, predicitive models /such as those based on Plato's Theory of Forms/, gravitate towards mathematical purity, thus fail to take some key ideas into account; such as:

1.That it is impossibile to possess all relevant information
2.That small unknown variations in the data can have a huge impact
3.That theories or models based on empirical data are flawed because they fail to account for events that have not yet taken place but could have taken place.

He claimed that the foundations of qualitative economics are faulty and highly self-referential. He states that statistics is fundamentally incomplete as a field as it cannot predict the risk of rare events.

TALEB'S CHALLENGE is how to live and act in a world we do not understand and build robustness to black swan events.

An application of his most effective, or least fragile, risk management approach is one in favor of linear combination of extremes. In other words, Taleb advocates a dualistic approach -- to be both hyper-conservative and hyper-aggressive at the same time, as these two extremes are more robust to estimation errors. This approach of avoiding the middle option is also known as The Barbell Strategy.

For example, an investor might put 80 to 90 percent of his money in extremely safe instruments, such as treasury bills, with the remainder going in to highly risky and diversified speculative bets.

Taleb believes The Barbell Strategy is applicable across all domains, from politics to economics and to one's personal life.

DISCOVER YOUR INNER ENTREPRENEUR

2016-01-11T10:24:00.000+08:00

Entrepreneurs, especially effective ones, possess a very specific type of mindset, attitudes and character traits. Now, aspiring entrepreneurs, especially those who do not possess the personality type most ideal to entrepreneurial pursuits, are the ones most eager to spend time and money learning all they could about entrepreneurship --- only to amass a lot of entrepreneurial knowledge that would be useless to them. Why? Because they would be hugely distracted in a carnival of interesting but irrelevant information and misplaced enthusiasm that they would very likely neglect the one thing they should be focusing on in the first place --- developing an entrepreneurial personality.

People who were born with the "right" entrepreneurial character set (or grew up in an environment where risk taking is encouraged) don't actually need entrep self-help resources. With a little misfortune and kick in the butt to prod them, they can rediscover the "secrets to wealth" on their own and invent their own money-making machine. You can say "entrepreneuring" is their unique inborn talent in much the same way that some people are just naturally good at athletics or music. Given enough time to hone this talent, they become well, as rich as they decide to be.

There's no way you could be master musician by reading up on the subject. You have to "practice", learn from great mentors, and when you are ready, break a few rules and then create your kind of Music, after your own image.

The same holds true to becoming an entrepreneur.

The problem, however, with entrepreneurship, is that there is often a big price tag, and social pressure, associated with the practice. It would seem that there is only one kind of valid "entrepreneur" that society would care to acknowledge --- the successful kind. This valuation is valid. At least on the surface. Until said successful entrep falls from grace and file for bankruptcy. Is he still a "valid" entrep by then? What if he ventured again and regained his former success or even surpass his former glory? Was his being an entrepreneur any less "valid" during this intermission into financial disaster? Clearly not. How about before he even started making any real money prior to even setting out into his first business? At what point did the dude started "entrepreneuring" in order to eventually build enough reasons to be regarded by others as an entrepreneur?

One of my core belief is that this idea of "the entrepreneur" is essentially different from that of "the business entrepreneur", although one can easily transition into the other.

My strategic assumption is that "entrepreneurship" is a character trait, which therefore, can be evoked, honed and strengthened --- that "becoming an entrepreneur" is a psychological journey which anyone can embark on, (maybe slowly at first, or even haphazardly or erratically ... it doesn't matter the quality).

What matters is that you are aware that you are on a special kind of journey (a practical and most realistic journey, actually); that you believe this journey is for you whatever the underlying reason; and that you have absolute indifference for whatever tags, put downs and flattery society wishes to infect you with by virtue of your entrepreneurial qualities and adventures.

Given a realistic map, the entrepreneurial road can be approached rationally and methodically such that anyone who is passionate enough, can elect entrepreneuring as their primary self-made "inborn talent".

[Posted in JOURNEYIST]

WHY REAL THINKING IS RISKY BUSINESS

2015-12-10T16:47:00.000+08:00

THINKING is a physically painful, energy depleting, calorie-demanding pursuit.

I don't mean the muscle-wrenching kind of pain but the very vaguely felt kind of pained drain when micro "blood" droplets drip out of the brain (as the synapses break down old connections and forcibly create new ones). Its an almost violent task that literally involves physical workout inside the brain, straining the cells, as you would strain your muscles in a physical workout.

Beyond just physically taxing, however, thinking is actually a morally demanding occupation requiring true courage.

I'm talking about independently thinking for yourself ---- understanding for yourself the facts, formulating your own opinions, and standing your ground amid a legion of loud mouthed fools who feel compelled that you should benefit from their "enlightened" opinion...

Having a brain does not necessarily guarantee intelligent life, in the same way that having vocal chords does not necessarily guarantee singing prowess. You have to really use your brain, hone it, train it, and prove its efficacy in your own life. But even that much work does not give you the right to force feed your infinite wisdom on unsuspecting victims. The only moral obligation you should feel is to enjoin others to think for themselves too.

Instead of getting adept at the supposedly primal ability to think, people take the lazy way out via the socially acceptable practice of subscribing to other people’s opinions, (although they feel and they will insist it’s their own self-evident opinion). Some people will even go the extra mile of shaming you for having the gall to disagree with popular opinion and conventional wisdom.

How dare you, freakazoid! They will say. Don't be surprised, and don't be bothered. They have nothing of substance to say beyond that. Let them aghast at your manly audacity to use your own God-given brain. They will brand you with many put downs, even insults. Not your business to get emotionally affected, give them a wide grin.

If they bother you so much, then INSIST that they explain their point logically, in detail. They will be cornered to explain what they assume all this time to be self-explanatory gospel truths and self-evident laws of physics. Or, more often than not, they will just babel out the same intellectual shit they have been force fed with.

The diplomatic thing to do, sometimes, is to gently say, “but I don’t give a stinking bird’s cute little poop, my dear.” Give them space to let out a nervous laugh then excuse your self. If they still can't take a hint despite your generous politeness, just go back to plan number one --- ignore the bastard.

In a world of giddy conformists, thinking is a dirty act of rebellion and no self-exile is more real or more immediate than the distance wrought on by your independent thought.

If you fear being alone, you will never know happiness. Ever.

Courage inspires intelligence. And that great courage makes possible the flight of genius... or better yet the heroic jailbreak of a toddler from his boring little crib.

The trouble with many adults today, is that they have learned to be perfectly contented inside the little crib they have been educated to accept. You bold opinions, plans, moves, ambitions and morality is a challenge for them to RETHINK their own entire lives. And since thinking requires courage... your success, happiness and very existence is a daring insult to who they are. Don't be surprised if they resort to verbal and non-verbal violence of any kind.

The reason why women instinctively find intelligent men sexy is because it takes courage to think, and women admire men with courage who can stand for their convictions. The reason why women abhor intelligent dweebs is because their supposed mental acuity is obviously a cover for their lack of functioning set of balls.

DON'T LET FAILURES BULLY YOU

2015-11-06T01:51:00.000+08:00

When you have successfully "killed" FEAR, it now becomes ultra possible to learn how to make friends with this bully called "failure", and recruit him into your team.

If you must ask "why", here's why you should be best friends forever with "failure":

"Failure" is the neighborhood toughie, better if he's on your side. Like a shadow, it shall always be close by whether you fear it or not. Unlike fear itself, this monster doesn't exactly feed on your fear, although your fear of it does give it super villain powers. Like the law of gravity, expect failure to come knocking on your door EACH time you fall, any time of day or night. If you're lucky like me, you get several visitations for every fall...
it's really below the belt sometimes, you'd swear life is unfair. I used to dread these visitations but recently they just became so frequent I don't even bother closing the door anymore. Failure is now my "little homie", as Tupac Shakur would call it; the dear friend you hate for always barging into your home unannounced, wiping the dinner plates clean, forcing you to strategize a way to get rid of him... if you can.

"Failure" is the most instructive fiend of a friend you could ever have who's sure to keep you company just when you really need one. Even in times of victory, the memory or specter of failure could help you maintain a balanced perspective on everything. Instead of the menacing character out to nag you in moments of distress, the better strategy is to learn respect for this merciless and soulless, agent of fate, and strive to earn back its respect by being the most gracious, and studious, big loser. As the saying goes, if you really must fail, go for GOLD!

Seriously now. I don't advocate celebrating your failures but a post mortem dinner would be nice. While you haven't acquired the taste yet, you can device a way to make failure palatable somehow (the desensitization strategy actually works here). These days though, a round of black coffee for two works fine enough by me and this great buddy, who has good sense of humor by the way!

"Failure" may be ruthless and all but has nothing personal against you, remember that.

While you may never lose your hunger for success no matter how many victories you enjoy, you would eventually realize that like failure, all success is temporary. In terms of net character growth, however, failure is the better investment. Eventually, you'll come to think of success as your little vacation away from life's failures.

This is not a defeatist attitude but a realist one. The state of failure really is the natural state of life; success is more like an artificial high. As a man, you must learn how NOT to be failure's whipping boy. Neither must you be chasing after success like a starry-eyed fan boy. Both are just two sides of the same coin, or better yet, two masks of the same clown. Your business is just to buckle down to work, get results, live a decent and happy life, grow in integrity, all while this clown try to distract you. And then when its time to die, you go die like a man, with dignity unscathed.

Now, to get back on the real topic...

What is it about "failure" itself that you can use to power your life and achieve the impossible?

In a word, NOTHING.

Like the great wizard of Oz, failure is really just a big nothing -- a bogeyman. Once you get to really know it personally, intimately, inside out, upside down --- once it loses its mystery for you, it also loses its hold on you, its magical spell over you.

It's easy to understand this on an intellectual level but it does take some time getting there psychologically. And when you do, you want to kick yourself in the butt for not taking the journey earlier.

And you know what? This grand realization is nothing very special at all. You didn't gain any special super power. Basically you are still left to your own devices. You remain hostage to time and chance. The only reason this translates to "increased" net personal power on your part is because you have overcome one of the biggest (and universal), emotional illusions of all time. You have removed from your person one childish weakness so many adults carry with them though old age and to the grave. They even bestow it to others like a family heirloom. It's pathetic, really. Folk wisdom and mass media make a big deal out of "failure" and "success" as if the two are some kind of opposites; when in truth they are a continuum. This "success" is really just the end goal while the "failure" is the means toward that end. There is no logical reason why you should want one and fear the other. You should just embrace both, enjoy the journey, then move on to something more important.

FAITH IS BASIC NECESSITY

2015-11-04T15:47:00.000+08:00

Would you rather cling to the promise of success or crave the assurance of security?

On the surface, the question is one of personal preference but upon closer scrutiny, the issue is a bit heavier, so allow me to delay the kill.

Choose your pick right now, nobody needs to know your answer anyway (but feel free to debate with me, if you wish).

Knowing what you want is a primary qualification for maximizing your human potential, so do not muddle your answer by saying you prefer a “mixture of both”. Just relax and let feelings be your guide.

Would you rather feel successful or secured?

Neither preference is ethically higher than the other, (although, as you may have guessed, habitual winners usually prefer one over the other.)

Okay, here’s the deal...

If you prefer getting rewarded for your efforts, instead of getting assured of benefits, then you are more of a natural entrepreneur and are likely to be more at home with "taking risks" than the average guy.

On the other hand, if like me, you are more “security-oriented”, then you have to actively tell yourself to dislike such a “preference” and instead train yourself to be more emotionally at home with feelings of uncertainty and with taking risks.

In the grand scheme of life, there is really nothing wrong with aiming for security. Securing your physical health, for instance, is a logically super sure way to survive. But the reality of living is that you don’t always see enough of the big picture to make truly informed decisions. We don’t know 100% of what constitutes “health”. Sometimes, to ensure our future physical survival, we must allow our body to be progressively exposed to harsh conditions right now. That’s the way to make the body stronger and increase its chances for survival. Indeed, people’s concept of what is healthy is different today than it was a hundred years ago.

Truth is, you are to live the present always at the mercy of uncertainty and at the luxury of memory (or expectations based on what worked in the past). This means, to live only rationally and without some kind of “faith” is to be blind to the unexpected, the sudden, the unprecedented, the truly life-threatening. A measure of “faith” is actually needed to survive the nasty realities of practical living, it’s a paradox indeed.

As an entrepreneur, you must realize that working towards security is sensible, worthwhile and ideal. But the way to achieve true security is NOT by pursuing security but by embracing uncertainty --- essentially “neutralizing” uncertainties by taking chances to try new things… sometimes risking possible death to achieve a healthier body, exposing your body to the elements in search for a more secure shelter.

Any sense of security, and by extension any sense of entitlement, is fiction --- a fairy tale invented to calm children and the childish. If you believe you are a child no more, get your shit together and act with some poise.

Getting rewarded for your effort is the only way reality operates. (This is the way entrepreneurs cash in on life big time. Employees are rewarded too, but in inverse proportion to the risk they are unwilling to take.)

There are times of course shit happens and the reward does not even come off, or it gets hijacked by others --- that’s all part of real life. Sometimes the hard work you render, the gifts you generously give gets rewarded with resentment. Other people’s sense of entitlement gets in the way of your happiness and reward. You get fucked up really good in life sometimes and the only sensible thing to do, despite you feel like you want to go crazy, is shrug off everything, smile and go on with life as if nothing happened. Sometimes, life smiles back. Sometimes, you’re just too tired to even care what happens next.

This is the very essence of the mysterious force in the universe, which Solomon called “time and chance” in Ecclesiastes --- a highly recommended reading for realist entrepreneurs by the way.

Like the insignificant speck of dirt that you are in the great landscape of the universe, you go on with life for as long as you can go on. Enjoy your little life to the fullest by indulging in as little drama as possible. Your drama won’t echo in eternity anyway. Well, even if it does, you won’t be here to know any better anyway, you won’t even earn a dime off it.

Vanity of vanities!

To desire security, even by honest means, is to desire an illusion, a lie. To desire and pursue honest and just rewards for your efforts is, by extension, a pursuit also towards personal integrity. If, by time and chance you did not get the reward you are worth, be thankful for also you get a measure of spiritual growth to recompense your little soul.

Pursuing your passion in life will not necessarily make you financially rich but it will give you an opportunity to enjoy fully the richness of being human.

TO KILL FEAR

2015-10-12T16:54:00.000+08:00

The fear of failure is probably the biggest psychological barrier ever known to personal growth. But know what? Just remove the “fear” part and what you have left is a most volatile fuel to fire up your personal revolution!

Curiously, failure is somewhat translated in the brain as a kind of “death experience”--- something to dread about...
This dread seems also to be quite more pronounced the more “social” the failure is --- or when the prospect exists that other people will know that you failed. This happens to be just as true even if no one actually witnessed the failure, like it's second nature for us to anticipate “damn, what will other people think!”

In effect, then, failure is a double whammy; Not only is failure a bitch; failure is also a wicked bitch, cutting you off --- on some emotional level --- with the rest of humanity. Irrational, I know but such is its power. Better not let it get the better of you.

Fear of failure, however, is just one of them bastards in the "fear" family. It is also the usual motive in many reported cases of senseless "crimes" committed by "dream killers" all over the world.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying all "fears" are bad. Some are legitimate and even desirable to have for they serve as warning signs for really bad things to come. Yet the truth remains, not all fears are created equal. Many are best discarded upon first sign that they are false alarms. If you insist on proving your fears to be valid, of course, you will end up finding supporting evidence to warrant belief: this is your crazy mind on self-defense mode against insanity. But if the truth is more important to you than proving you are right, simply remove the fear, your mind will likewise adjust and become open again.

Fear is only useful when true danger exists. And danger means "danger to you / your loved one's very existence" --- not any imaginary "danger". But you must master your fear such that it will not cause you to lose focus and rationality. The fear is supposed to signal the body to "get ready for action". That's why it's stressful. Thus when the danger is passed, or proven to be unreal, you must let go of fear and relax.

After letting go of "fear", you must let go of the "dread", that stinking "dread of death", that is. And no, they are not one and the same.

In my experience, at least, the battle gets a bit easier when you think of fear (especially "fear of failure"), as a two-headed monster. They take turns to grip you in suspended inhibition and inability to think and act --- sometimes for years on end!

There is, however, one simple remedy I found, and it's not even simple: just let go of the "fear of death".

Don't ask me how to do it. Just do it. Its more a decision actually than an act. Some would call it a "mental action" or even a "mental event". It can really be that epic, depending on your internal friction. But bottom line, it's really just a decision.

I used to think it has to be a "realization" of some sort, like an earth-shaking insight on the nature of life yadda yadda. In this case it's a cliche that saves the day --- "in order to really live, you must not fear death" But still, no amount of insight is more profound, and more effective, than that moment in eternity when you finally tell yourself "to live or to die... I don't give a damn! I won't settle for less!"

Basically, you are on your own. (and don't use my script!)

Mark this mental event in your calendar. Its a milestone deserving of a bronze monument, never ever, ever forget.

Killing fear can be achieved in a single blow but it's better if you can train hard prior to the occasion.

You may use some mental kung-fu like psychological scaffold or devise an artificial disability. Ultimately, however, you must deal the death blow by solving real-life disabilities or problems. Do not fuss over not doing it perfectly the first time. You would get better with practice.

Good thing about life is that it is always filled with problems, so if you should be a master "fear slayer" soon enough.

When you're ready, you shall know it's time for the kill.

---------------------------------------------------------
Okay, on to the next question, how do you harness failure to power your life?

START YOUR PERSONAL REVOLUTION

2015-05-06T03:55:00.000+08:00

Every propagandist worth his salt eventually discovers for himself the dark art of plagiaristic “scaffolding” as a practical tool for exorcising writers block. Here's the magic potion that will make your brain immune from zombification in the face of a looming deadline: “google-copy-paste-rewrite!”

The idea behind this deadline-centric brilliance is of course to jump-start the writer's depleted creative juices by leap-frogging directly to the rewriting stage --- (which is where your shameless retrofitting craftsmanship morphs into inspired creativity). Before you know it, you have an original masterpiece in your hands, or at least something decent. (It simply won't work though, if you do not actually know how to spot good material to bastardize or you do not know how to do an effective rewrite.)

Outside the creative field, however, I realized that “scaffolding” becomes a veritable scepter of power when waged in pursuit of a personal revolution...

Let's digress a little. "To scaffold" literally means "to support". In home construction, scaffolding are temporary, rudimentary support for the act of building. Crude, cheap and weak. From these seemingly lowly scaffolds towering structures several thousand times stronger get built. Afterwards, the ugly scaffolds themselves are discarded, sometimes even thrown away.

So, how does this translate to personal development?

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SCAFFOLD

The idea is that through seemingly small and mundane activities, we get to build bedrock personality traits that serve as solid base for a satisfying and productive life.

My favorite example is long-distance running. There's nothing esoteric about placing one foot in front of another in quick succession over a 3-kilometer run. No but the mental and physical challenge to train for the race and run to the finish are proven psychological scaffolding you can use to firm up you perseverance. If you haven't done so already, you should try it at least once. Best result if you have at least a month of consistent physical conditioning.

When you passed your 3-kilometer test of endurance , you begin to accept that you can make it another 3 kilometers --- mentally at least, you just know this is an ultra-realistic possibility. Because mentally, the barrier you conquered is not a physical barrier nor even a mental-barrier but a faith-barrier, which is what your emotionally-charged disbelief really was. Having thus achieved a kind of spiritual triumph, on a subconscious level, your confidence for perseverance in other challenging areas of your life also gets a boost.

With that 3-kilometer physical barrier conquered, you now have "physical proof" that you too can conquer other challenges!

Suddenly, that new job you wanted feels not too far off, its only a matter of time and perseverance. That problem at the office no longer feels as stressful. That weight loss goal somehow feels more achievable. You just know it in your gut.

In having tasted your capacity for endurance, you begin to wonder "what else can I not endure?" That attitude is your ticket to an epic journey of personal revolution. It doesn't matter anymore WHY you fucked up in life before. From here on forward, you can rewrite your life's story the way you want it.

And whatever you do, don't loose that ticket, that psychological trophy of yours. Keep the internal pep talk burning. If you must, keep achieving little trophies in between major life victories just to tide you over; then somewhere along life's uphill highway, you will realize that unshakable confidence has become your habit . It has become a habit so hard to break, no amount of defeat can quash it.

But the journey doesn't end there. This unshakable kind of confidence will then become your new scaffold. With it you will scale mountains, conquer armies, build empires and generally make your life simply spectacular.

TO LIVE IS TO BELIEVE

2015-02-08T17:11:00.000+08:00

Every living organism is transitory yet all life is locked in a state of struggle to the death.

Every day, to be alive means to fight for survival, for victory, for domination, for retaliation, for self-preservation and self-mastery. You either fight to live, or you live to fight – until the day you die. This is the inescapable warrior’s journey.

To the degree that you embrace this reality, you grow in strength, character, confidence, respect and nobility of spirit. To the degree that you are steadfast in the journey, you are a journeyist.

Then finally, or suddenly, comes time to die...

Being the seasoned fighter and wise warrior, however, not even the abominable venom of death can poison a journeyist's spirit. And so, with one final breath of self-satisfaction, he finds it amusing, to celebrate his greatest moral victory.

The journey is finished.

The naked reality of death, however, is veiled in denial these days. Although death happens daily everywhere, people relish the illusion that death is a far away country. They party in the delusion that death is something that only happens to other people. Instead of facing the reality of death in courage and humility, death is pedestalized in dread -- a holy status it does not deserve.

For all this denial and mental evasion, people end up becoming a ball of emotions who are virtually susceptible to every imaginable lie: such as Hollywood propaganda, consumerist fears and fantasies passed off as news, promiscuous ethics of celebrities, down to the ruses of seductive predators whose desire is to turn them into their dastardly drugged bastard love slave.

Rather than manning up like upright warrior-kings of old, many men chose instead to go fashionably pathetic and live a life of glamorous fakery, seemingly addicted to insecurity, self-doubts and anxieties. Whoring their soul just to earn crumbs of approval from practically everyone, their sense of pride sunk so low a stinking maggot could sneer and pee at them.

Psychologically emasculated since grade school, they are simply unable to wrestle their way through their self-made emotional holocaust. All they could do was curse the high heavens for their miserable, shitty existence.

This blog is predicated on the proposition that the elegant way of the journey-warrior is the more sensible way to live – at least, compared to any of the sick modern lifestyle artificialities people are brainwashed with. Retrofitted to contemporary urban context, where the daily battleground is invisible, or drastically shifted inward; a warrior of a man must consciously do battle as a journeyist, a master of the inner game; or else drift through life disoriented, a victim of imaginary circumstances.

While anyone can nurture a warrior mindset, I believe the journeyist streak is more particularly coded in the masculine instinct. Every man who has ever manned up to any significant real-world challenge knows this, if vaguely. Especially true in extreme emergencies when death suddenly loses its meaning. In the ensuing calmness of your being you begin to hear an inner warrior roaring inside, screaming a primal battle song you never thought was in you all along.

There and then, in the microseconds when the stench of death envelops your very skin, you finally learn what fits of moral strength you are made of. Suddenly you are unafraid and you very clearly know why. Surviving the episode, you vowed that this strength shall survive too in you for the rest of your life.

(Well, of course some "men" chicken out or fake out big time but this post is no place to talk of cry babies and sissy boys. Maybe they'll man up someday, maybe never.. the f... do I care!)

Depending on the intensity of their experience, some men actually forget their battle song just as soon as the smoke of emergency is gone. Others remember but inevitably forget under duress of their soul-stealing workaday world, woe to them. Then there are the strong minded ones, who simply refuse to let the song fade; the proverbial assholes who would rather raise hell than forget.

And then there’s me, adamant pathfinder, trapped in the quagmire for years in search of a no-nonsense escape route only to jailbreak accidentally, in desperation, through the very backdoor "they' made you dread about.

This blog is dedicated to those who might still be in that place, trying to get out.

My Days of Thunder, November 2013

2013-11-03T13:41:00.000+08:00

Following a constellation of bad circumstances and the compounding liabilities from bad decisions made, I am now once again in what I call "Days of Thunder" (DoT). Really, it's just my fancy way of telling myself I am in really deep shit, and therefore I need to do things extremely differently to extricate my limbs ASAP. Plus, of course, I get to fancy re-imagining myself in the image of the character Tom Cruise played in the movie of the same title. Who says personal development need be uber boring?

The theory behind my DoT is Einsteins opt quoted observation which says "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting a different result". To escape from insanity, simply force yourself to do old things differently, and try as many new and different things and approaches as you can.

This is not about jump-starting your creativity per se but about window-shopping for different results, different possibilities.

The last time I really went extremely in full throttle mode of days-of-thundering was beginning around September of last year. It was literally the nadir of my existence --- allow me to call it My Super September. That's the time I lost 10 pounds in 1 week, (using haphazard tricks I've subconsciously synthesized over the Internet). Completely surprised myself of the crazily fast result --- had I known in advance it would work so well, my natural inhibition against change would have kicked in halfway and I would have gone on a self-sabotage mode already. I of course, became determined to go on and on and on in pursuit of self-development.. in a sense my DoT never really stopped since then.

I had tried doing DoT before to change my life but last year was really unprecedented in the sense that it actually worked, albeit accidentally or haphazardly, ala Peter Parker!

I have actually gained so much understanding out of the "accident" that up now I am still mining the experience for insight, and it still overwhelms me at times. I was determined to write everything in this blog since day one, so I won't forget. But I never got around to it fast enough. One reason was because there was too much information to digest and too many questions and ideas to explore and search an explanation to. I was like Gollum, screaming "it burns!"

Like I said, my DoT in a sense, never stopped. But actually I some laziness got into my system, and I started to relax a bit the last two months. Financial resources also thinned out on me lately, and it nipped at some of my support system. My idea today is to re-kick-start the internal engine, but this time on a still higher gear, and on an even meager budget.

I don't know how exactly I will proceed this time. I have a few ideas but I smell danger. That has to mean I'm on the right track, just like before.

THE REALITY-MANIPULATING POWER OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

2013-02-27T16:13:00.001+08:00

To be on the receiving end of acknowledgement on a daily basis can be life-changing or life-wrecking, depending on the quality of acknowledgment. This is how we create or destroy our children's self-esteem and later chances in adult life.

Acknowledging someone for doing something good, however, is not just good leadership or an act of kindness. Depending on your level of sincerity, it can boomerang and be an exercise in positive self-affirmation. If the acknowledgement is made public, it can even flat out be a political statement --- something that inspires an entire community to hold up to a notable standard. Incidentally, this is how we elevate or debase our communities and workplaces, depending on the kinds of behavior we reward.

This we shall call "social acknowledgment".

There is, however, a second aspect to acknowledgement that is invisible but more permanent. It is the kind acknowledgment that "echoes" into the soul of the individual like a recurring song...

I am talking about the conscious (and non-conscious) act of acknowledgement that you confer or commemorate inside your mind with every little personal triumph or tragedy that you experience or imagine through each waking moment...

Let's call it "intra-personal acknowledgment". Here's an illustration:

Just by walking towards the elevator, anxiety filled your mind. You thought about the expected promotion you are likely to get on the job. Suddenly, you are reminded of a childhood episode when the teacher failed on her promised reward. Well, you never deserved it anyway... Snapping back, you realized it's only three weeks to go before that expensive family vacation you have committed to your disenchanted wife and kids, and you haven’t booked anything yet. And yes, there’s that pesky, make-or-break office presentation in four weeks --- right after the potentially disastrous vacation. Suddenly, you notice an eerie physical sensation of "falling" as you ride up the elevator.

That's gravity bending in action! Welcome to the Matrix.

If you think that your life is headed to a disaster and you deserve every ounce of it, what else would be the outcome? The quality of the dreadful thoughts you relish as you drag yourself through a stressful day is directly proportional to the quality of your results in real-life (citation not needed). Should you need any proof, try it out with caution in your daily life, and come back to share what happened.

But wait, there's more!

Indeed, everything I have said so far was just introductory. There is yet a third bullet point to this "power of acknowledgment", even more "arcane" and powerful --- it cuts through the first and second aspects.

Acknowledgment Power: The 3rd Bullet

What I am talking about here is a simpler kind of "acknowledgment", so utterly innocent and basic I am tempted to call it the very building block of the soul!

I dare say knowledge of this kind literally hurls us on the brink of the proverbial point blank zone, enabling us to willfully execute whatever kind of positive revolutions we want in our personal lives. If that doesn't excite you, I don't know what will.

Are you ready to learn about it? Anxiously excited? A bit scaring, isn't it?

Okay, tell you later friends!

For Later:

THE BUILDING BLOCK OF THE SOUL

[Posted in JOURNEYIST]

The Unavoidable Epistemology Of Blog Writing

2013-02-20T15:41:00.000+08:00

To write perfectly, or at least with perfect certainty, is a blog writer's hopeless hubris. This I have come to learn the slow, hard, painful, messy way.

Truth to tell, nobody's writing is perfect and blog writing is several notches on a baser category. The only honest, and hottest, best I can do here is to approach blogging on a 'journalism of ideas' basis.

I am not saying this of course just to enjoy blanket deniability, although I confess that would be convenient. What I actually am after is a full-blown attack on my own irrational fear of making irresponsible statements. Not that I relish making irresponsible statements but if it so happens -- as it invariably will in the hot pursuit of knowledge --- then I can at least rest easy in my sleep knowing that epistemology is on my side.

With the unreasonable burden of 'responsibility' now out of the window, let me rephrase my point lest I surely be misunderstood.

What I am simply saying is that I am not, and will never claim absolute truth, although I may sound otherwise sometimes.

To my knowledge, no human can claim infallibility --- false messiahs aside.

But I will wear my license proud as a blog writer, a.k.a. my justified true belief (JTB) --- not that I'm a fan of Plato but the guy rocks, and what's more, he's practical like me.

Okay, for the technically inclined, here's the lowdown on JBT. In reality, truth does exist outside of JTB but such truth would serve only as the theoretical, postulated, unknown (even possibly unknowable) destination in the philosopher's uncertain journey and therefore, technically irrelevant in the current, real-life, psychological process of getting "there" --- whatever and wherever "there" actually means, or if it even exists. At least that is my take, or my very own justified true belief about JTB.

See, personally, I have long ago given up on the practical relevance of philosophy other than that of a working tool not very different from a painter's canvass. It can capture and examine aspects of the truth but never the entire whole. I make exception, however, to the more technical branches of philosophy such as logic and epistemology. More than mere intellectual entertainment, they command study and I so highly endorse them in almost nearly the same vein that I endorse the Bible.

In the theater of epistemology, humanity is all at once on the verge of real, sophisticated wisdom as well as on the reckless edge of desperate humility. And that's the nearest thing to an elegant depiction of the true human condition as I can hope to imagine. In the pantheon of human philosophies, that's a rock star among mere posers!

Yet, epistemology, however sexy, remains a province of the intellect. Blogging or writing publicly, on the other hand, is an act that is unavoidably political, and therefore, crazy. And not even JTB can protect me.

To paraphrase Descartes:

I think, therefore I am. I publish what I think, therefore I am in trouble.

So why write and trouble trouble?

Maybe, someday, I will have, an answer.

Is Reality Not Just a Figment of the Imagination?

2013-02-03T22:57:00.000+08:00

Have you ever wondered whether this thing we call physical reality is not actually nothing more than just a dream or in today's parlance, virtual?

Young kids supposedly have this illusion that the universe revolves around them... until they realize that no, they are not that lucky. As they grow older and become more pessimists and isolated they began to entertain a similar thought... what if the the reality they experience is essentially illusory? --- what if the whole universe conspired to confine their consciousness in a prison of mental contexts and sub-contexts we call human existence...!

Okay, think of Matrix or A Scanner Darkly and you get the point.

Are we prisoners of our own freakin little world,
inside our own little mind?

If so, then an outsider, a messiah figure, becomes
our only way of escape?

Even if that messiah, should we say, is false?

[Posted in JOURNEYIST]

IS RELIGION NOTHING MORE THAN VIRTUAL REALITY?

2013-01-08T16:46:00.000+08:00

If you were hypnotized into believing and experiencing "God", or if you were given a pill that induces mystical feelings of intimacy with a supreme being, could such experience or feeling be equated with God? Most probably your answer would be a resounding 'NO!'

But what if it's our own human brain that makes us naturally prone into believing in the existence of a supreme being and "tricks" us into experiencing "God"? Would religion, in this case, be valid?

This question would have been preposterous if not for the findings of brain scientists who can now probe the links of the brain with religious experiences using brain imaging technology and other advanced bio-feedback machines.

For instance scientists now have a catalogue of brain regions that turn 'on' or 'off' during people's religious experiences such as feelings of being outside time and space, blurring of boundaries between self and others, as well as neural condition seems to trigger vivid, Joan of Arc-type religious visions and voices. The findings had some believers and atheists alike exclaim humans are 'hardwired into believing in God!'

The nagging thought that neurotheology offers is that religious experience is nothing more than virtual reality, making it a repeatable, controllable mental activity that someone with sufficiently advanced know-how could reproduce it synthetically for recreation and entertainment purposes (in lieu of hallucigenic drugs). Indeed, scientists already have a prototype device like this called the God Helmet. And you thought technology was getting smarter?

Needless to say, this technology would work wonders in the hands of evil dictators. Actually, forget evil dictators for now, professional religious cultists and sales evangelists would definitely say 'amen!' to this.

On the other hand, the prospect of the human brain being 'hardwired' to believe in God, could be offered as a kind of proof that God himself did the hardwiring.

This God's-fingerprint-in-the-brain argument is especially attractive because the apparent hardwiring is incomplete leaving enough space for free will and the existence of atheists.

Things like these give me sleepless nights.

Being open minded, I personally regard scientific probes on religion a great service to truth. I specifically would recommend neurotheology to open-minded people, especially the religious ones.

Neurotheological arguments could potentially invalidate, if not cheapen, religion and our idea of God (i.e., did God create us or did we create the illusion of God as an evolutionary tactic for survival?). On the other hand it could challenge us to elevate our religious standards.

Personally I believe religious experiences should never be the basis for considering the validity and purity of a religion.

For me, in so far as something amounts to a bio-chemical processes in the brain, that something is strictly physical and not spiritual.

Incidentally, the religion I adhere to today in the Church of God does not at all give any emphasis on religious experiences. Unlike preachers who induce their members to conjure feel-good religious sensations through hypnotic music and repetitive voice intonations, brother Eli Soriano perpetually point to doctrine found in the biblical texts, tediously read aloud for open analysis. Curiously, I heard Soriano once talk about how saint Paul specifically asks christians during his time to refrain from practicing speaking in tongues, miraculous healing, and others like it which I would presume produce significant amounts of religious sensations.

Does this mean we should distrust religious experiences?

[Posted in JOURNEYIST]

IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT THINKS

2013-01-02T19:09:00.000+08:00

Sometimes we get lost in the inner ramblings of our minds... just so much thoughts all "thinking" at once.

The worse part is, they're mostly other people's thoughts, "thinking in us"... like work deadlines, grocery list, career goals and other such useless details... that we lose touch with what we really want our life to be.

So, what do you think you think?

HOW TO DO SURGICAL AIRSTRIKES OVER GAZA WITHOUT REALLY TRYING?

2012-11-20T11:12:00.000+08:00

So, how do you do a "surgical" airstrike in Gaza Strip and do it very surgically efficient?

First off, what is Israel's idea of surgical ? As news stories like this and this illustrate, a surgical thingy by Israeli standards is in the vicinity of 300 airstrikes in one day.

To be surgically precise, arithmetically speaking, that's 300 airstrikes within a 24-hour period, in a 360 square kilometer area, which is home to some 1.5 million people.

In other words, that's 1 airstrike every 4.8 minutes.
or .. 1 airstrike every 1.2 kilometers (or two airstrikes per square mile)
or .. 1 airstrike for every vicinity with 5,000 Palestinians

So a "surgical airstrike" is just another way of saying "all over the place".

The Israeli government calls that "surgical" anyway, and standard news outlets of repute parrots the lie, and they call it "news".

Israeli authorities of course would say their brand of airstrikes, even of this magnitude, were done as surgical as humanly possible (because they have specific human targets on the ground) but of course they have a soft spot for these innocent civilians that's why they practically imprison them, then do airstrikes over them if and when they deem it absolutely necessary, but they will do so with reluctant, heavy hearts because they are such nice guys who definitely know better for they were victims of Hitler's Holocaust.

Here, for instance, is a standard news fare from CNN, encrypted in poetry:

Gaza City (CNN) -- As international pressure mounted Monday for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian violence that has left dozens dead and hundreds wounded, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was flying to the region to personally appeal for a cease-fire.

Read again: it says "Israeli-Palestinian violence.. has left dozens dead.. hundreds wounded.. and the UN Sec-Gen will appeal for a ceasefire.." So, instead of people killing people, (or to be surgically exact -- uniformed Israeli men spraying air assaults on mostly civilian Palestinians) they conveniently repackaged the carnage into an abstract concept called "violence" then went on to say that this cold abstract monstrosity has "left" the scene with dozens of dead body in its trail -- very much like how they would write a news story about a deadly impersonal force like a typhoon or hurricane.

What's so wrong with, for instance, hypothetically saying, " Israeli airstrike men left the Gaza following 300 assaults, leaving dozens of dead Palestinians with hundreds wounded .."? Well, it would disrupt the poetic flow and the philosophical tone.

In wars past, the air assaults of Hitler's Luftwaffe over Poland won't ever translate to "surgical airstrikes", would they? They would call them "murderous atrocities" or even "crimes against humanity".

These days, isolated bombings over a small geographical area, by relatively small shadowy group, are called acts of terror.

In politically correct times, however, enforcing a daily, formal military air assault by a first-world nation (whose weapons industry is a major economic engine) against a walled-in, poverty-stricken population, is heralded by global corporate media as surgical airstrikes.

RIZAL TWICE MURDERED

2011-12-30T13:12:00.001+08:00

The worst violation you can do to a murdered man is to murder his memory in the minds of those he died for.

And that's just what they did to Jose Rizal beginning right after his martyrdom on December 30, 1896, by announcing the supposed retraction of his anti-Catholic ideas. The announcement was published in Madrid the following day without proof, only saying that the "document" of his retraction was given to Archbishop Bernardino Nozaleda of Manila for his keeping. That "document' only surfaced for public viewing on May 13, 1935. A veritable forgery, says Peter Jaynul Uckung of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines.

It's been 115 years and the bigger tragedy is that some Filipinos still choose to believe the people whose very hands are stained with Rizal's blood.

For more on the supposed retraction, read this.
For a blow by blow tweet of his martyrdom follow tweetnirizal

For your delectation, here's one of Rizal's telling lines in Mi Ultimo Adios..

"I go where... faith does not kill."
-Dr. Jose P. Rizal

TRADITIONS: A HARMLESS BIT OF FUN?

2011-12-28T15:44:00.006+08:00

Evil Grin Santa Claus

The last time I heard Santa Claus is possibly real was in kindergarten, upon seeing my Christmas eve stockings filled with shiny coins, with gifts to boot just a foot beneath.

I must have been quite pragmatic even then but this physical "evidence" was all I needed to restore my swiveling faith to steadfast stillness. At least for another year.

Reality have a way of catching up, thank goodness, and soon enough you slowly grow apart from every white lie people told you in the name of fun and games...

Probably, in the same vein, spirit or excuse, some news bosses, in cahoots with NORAD, have found it in their heart to think it timely to glaze these commercial holidays with white lies by tracking and reporting the supposed whereabouts of the fabled fat old man on a 24-hour flying sleigh ride across the globe. Since NORAD apparently can't track the flesh of a flying reindeer, kids were supposed to call in and report their first hand shadowy encounters. And oh, they have been doing this since 1955, and people are playing along year after year. Well, not everybody plays along. But the brave few who would criticize the tradition are branded a "Scrooge" and ostracized.

I can't help but quote Proverbs 22: 6 (from NIV)

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."

People who grew up indoctrinated in the tradition unspurprisingly ended up playing along as an adult. And the doctrine I'm talking about is not even about the bearded Santa, (which most adults would dismiss as fantasy anyway, assuming they reached psychological adulthood.). I'm talking about the doctrine of letting your kids believe a stupid white lie for as long as they are capable and willing to believe.

And we wonder why we lost parental credibility with our own kids when they reached puberty?

THE UNBEARABLE SMALLNESS OF BEING

2011-03-21T15:32:00.014+08:00

In a world filled with big problems, people feel small, insignificant, helpless.

To break away from the gravity of anxiety and powerlessness, many have gone into escapism --- which, today is more than socially acceptable, it's fashionable and therefore, empowering! The meaning of life is hardly relevant. What's crucial is a solid sense of identity with which to conquer the world or toy with the world how ever which way one fancies.

“Living in the present” has also become the conventional wisdom to allay “needless” worries of what the future might bring --- which is beyond our control anyway --- and which, scientists contend, does not even really exist yet. To live in the present is to control the future and correct the past. That's power! By fashioning our beliefs, we became giants of existence, and nothing, not even life itself could bully us anymore.

But like a bad recurring dream, the phantom of our smallness brutally confronts us in times of wars, calamities and tragedies of biblical proportions.

We believe, with lazy lusty arrogance, that we're in control of the world and our circumstances, then reality slaps us in the face. For a moment, we see how truly we are no bigger than the multitude of ants in a great, wasted landscape.

Speaking of ants, the bible say they are “not a people strong” (Proverbs 30:25), yet they “provide their food in the summer” – or in other words prepare for the future according to their needs (which is purely physical). In Proverbs 6:6-8, the bible admonish us to learn from the lowly ants, which means we too must prepare.

But we know too well that no one can really prepare enough for the sudden onslaught of a speeding tsunami such as what hit Japan recently following a monster earthquake. Arguably, no country on earth is more prepared than Japan for a huge earthquake – yet tragedy still caught them unprepared.

If we are to consider the wisdom of ants in a realistic sense; maybe its time we look beyond physical survival as object of preparation.

We are, after all, more than flesh and bones.

[Posted in JOURNEYIST]

THE PROPHECY ACCORDING TO HOLLYWOOD

2011-03-12T18:06:00.006+08:00

No. It's not the end of the world. It’s only 2011 anyways!

Watching this video of the deadly tsunami spawned by a magnitude-9.0 quake in Japan yesterday.. I just can’t help but remember 2012 -- the movie.

Maybe the world won’t end exactly like Hollywood say but seems like the world will indeed end anyway with epic special effects to boot except that you know it’s not just effects and you don’t feel it as anything special.

While searching fresh videos at Youtube, I happen to come across interesting comments ranging from “what does this make of God?”... to “real life sucks, I’m going back to playing games at Facebook..”

Frankly I kinda “like” the former comment than the latter (even if it implies God is a murderer -- an idea I find disgusting, to say the least). At least it’s better than sinking your head in the sand and cling harder to deeply cherished fantasies.

But back to the question... “Is the world coming to an end?”

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN

2010-04-23T17:00:00.000+08:00

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Counter Melody To Above Verse:
Can you hear and do you care and
Cant you see we must be free to
Teach your children what you believe in.
Make a world that we can live in.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

REVENGE OF THE MAMA'S BOYS!!!

2009-08-16T04:05:00.009+08:00

I was sure he was clueless at the time but my high school best friend Moses (not his real name!) taught me a great lesson in coolness when he kissed his mom in public one fateful afternoon. He was so casual about it and couldn’t care less who was looking that I actually felt embarrassed to be even there.

Minutes later, after we board the vehicle en route back to school, I asked him what has just happened in front of mine eyes hoping I could endlessly tease him about it. I was dumbstruck when he flashed a big smile and with a solemn masculine confidence confessed, “I’m a mama’s boy”. I tell you, that simple declaration created a minuscule crack in my juvenile universe that triggered an infinite crisis.

Who says it’s unmanly to express affection for your mom in the first place? And why deny mothers everywhere the affection they deserve from their male children just because of their gender? How on earth can boys develop a healthy respect for women if they can’t even appreciate their mothers who truly love them on a deeper, spiritual level?

I was thinking, “here, before me is a rare creature.. a mama’s boy with an attitude!” A rebel of sorts in fact against all the cheesy put downs by social conspirators who can’t stand anyone violating the feisty protocols of manliness.

I realized too that only a stupid stupid girl would find it uncool to love a warm-blooded real mama’s boy who’s capacity for love transcends his erotic, nature.

With my new-found political cause, I dared go radical and started kissing my mommy on the cheeks publicly… for all her friends and my friends to see. It works like a charm. Everyone blushed every time but me. Pure magic.

Unconvinced still?

Try it with your mom today and be part of a revolution!

LIFE IS A DECISION

2009-08-14T13:25:00.008+08:00

Image by * Photos by Chris M * via Flickr

Would you trade a life of security for a life of adventure?

DB's Adventuresome Advice had me painfully reminded about my own dilemma of the last few years. He narrated

"...how I left a secure and lucrative job as a radio announcer, which I had held for a couple of years, to go back into theatre. The life of an actor, for most of us, is about as secure as being out on the ocean in a row boat with no compass or chart and not knowing where the nearest land is. Nevertheless, that lack of security is the price paid for doing the work we love."

His actor friend on the other hand, took the road more traveled by of full-time job in a law firm and pursuing theatre only part-time, thereby missing a lifelong chance of building his dream career.

I thought its easy enough, to intellectualize this insight.. but I wonder what keeps people from jumping off into the unknown.. when that unknown represents the possibility of soaring beyond the clouds.

Is it lack of belief in the promises of life? Lack of self confidence? That all-too-human inertia? Lack of passion? Inhibition?

Or is it simply a value judgment, one that gives more weight to security than to possibility.

If this were so, then clearly no one choice is better than another. I can choose a secured life while you pursue an exciting life, and we'd both be equally right, so long as we are happy with our respective choices.

But then again, i would only be rationalizing. Deep inside, i still want to live my adventure. Deep inside i want to live beyond the limits of my own preconceived notions about life and about myself. I tell myself, I'm getting there but not yet.

In the meantime, I comfort myself in the thought that life is a question each of us struggle with. By living the question one day at a time, we journey towards an answer. An answer that makes sense to us. An answer that we ourselves distilled from the wine press of our personal doubts, dilemmas and experiences.

We may be influenced by society, religion, philosophy, and our own personal defects and weaknesses. In the end, however, the answer is ours to make or to choose. In this sense, I guess, life is a decision. A decision subject to revision as we go along but a decision nonetheless, out of our inviolable free will.

LEAVE COMMENT ►

THE STATE OF BEASTS

2009-07-15T17:55:00.012+08:00

Man is basically a good and noble being generally, at least in my opinion and only under agreeable circumstances. Under extreme pressures, however, most people will crack, if not go temporarily insane, for such is the frailty that is human nature.

In the context of comfortable offices, lovely homes, promising careers and hilarious parties… talks about man’s innate goodness or tendency for evil is brushed aside as a mood spoiler. If I could have my way, I’d place this famous etching where the in-crowd can always see them…

Mealtime in the trenches In this ultra realistic etching by German artist Otto Dix, a lone soldier gulps down a hasty meal apparently indifferent to the human skeleton trapped in the frozen landscape beside him.

The work portrays not only the suffering that soldiers had to endure but also the ominous effect such conditions could have on a person's dignity. It springs from Dix’s intimate, if not carnal, knowledge of war and its dehumanizing effects.

In the 1960s Dix said, 'War reduces mankind to the state of beasts, with its hunger, vermin, mud and insane noises'. Who can argue with experience?

In his book “The Tipping Point”, Malcolm Gladwell explores how this human frailty operates even in less extreme situations. Calling it “the power of context”, Gladwell depicts how human behavior is strongly influenced by environment. How even little things, like the prevalence of broken windows in New York, could rouse an epidemic of petty crimes and general disorder.

In a world going crazier by the day, how humanity will fare?

The Bible speaks of darker times ahead; “tribulation such as has not been nor ever shall be” . Scientists likewise warn us that, one way or another, the world will someday end; i.e, through a lethal flu pandemic, global warming, a comet hitting Earth, the big crunch, black hole, or the explosion of our own sun. The possibilities for the end, it seems, are endless!

Now would you rather forget all these and party while you still can? Or would you rather search life’s meaning and make peace with God while you still have your dignity intact?