The Quest

For four years, I have been in a quest. A quest of finding something, that would give meaning and purpose to my life. A justification to my existence. A reason for living. So I set on the different experiences  greatly hoping  that I would find that very thing that is missing.

Profession. I set out and left my little city in the hopes of pursuing my profession in another place, would be the answer. Never dreaming of coming back and settling in a stagnant place such as what I have. I battled in that big city in trying to live a decent respected life. Sought for employment and once I find a good company to submit my papers, I end up asking myself, is this what I want for the rest of my life? Will this employment make me happy? No. So I ended that search by coming back to my hometown with a song in my heart "I'm coming home, to a place where I belong".  And so I went home, excited for I know that my happiness is just there waiting to be recognized by me.

Coming back home was a shattering and painful experience. I did not know that there would no longer be a home I could go back to. My already lost self just got lost deeper. I tried battling it. Tried to live an ordinary life. Found an employment, actively joined in my Christian community, went out and partied with friends, read books, found crushes, but then again at the end of the day, same questions rush through my mind. So, I gave up the pretence and followed what my heart is telling me to do.

Do nothing. For ten months, I made my world stop. I eat, sleep and watch tv. I lavished in what Italians call The sweetness of doing nothing. The only thing left that I do, is the service I give to my community. Another experience I embarked believing that in it I would be able to end my search because I know that in this, I am good, excellent. Through this experience, I met a lot of friends, listened to their problems, listened to mine. Found new adventures, found new learning.  Yet, none of those, took me closer to my search. None of them knew what it is I have been missing . They know me for sure, they know what other people know about me, and they know me for what I was willing to show them and what I was willing to share to them. None recognized the internal battle I was going through for the struggles had been successfully masked by what people easily recognize as a reason for happiness, the successes, the upbringing, the character, the friends, the status, the family. All of these had been effective facades.

Then came Someone. An experience of love which I embarked believing that maybe a relationship is what's missing. I loved this experience. The many first times, the rush of emotion, the smile it brings to my lips, the hugs and kisses that warms my heart. A new experience of being able to think and care for someone other than yourself.  An experience with the hopes that could lead me to the end of my search. I failed to realized at the beginning, that it is love that had brought me to this search. Failing to do that, I  failed to acknowledge that it is love that has brought me to loosing myself, a common characteristic of a person in love. So , instead of getting closer to the answer, the more I got lost. For one characteristic of love is loosing your balance. I got lost and this time I brought someone with me. We both got lost.

Everybody needs affection. It makes people do funny things. Everyone gets like that at beginning of a  relationship. Want too much happiness, too much pleasure. Until you make yourself sick. And we were truly like that in our relationship. At the time when we were sick, we were living in misery but we are so afraid to let go because of the emotions we felt and the closeness to finding and ending our quest. It was love that led me to this quest, only to find out that at the end, it would also love that would help me identify the road I should take on to find the answers to my quest.

As I watched Eat.Pray.Love of Julia Roberts, I finally found that road. It is not Profession, Family, Friends, Service nor Love. But all in one package. A Balanced Life. That is what I have been searching for. I never thought that only in a movie will I be able to put into words that of which took me years to identify.

Now I would truly be able to have one direction in this quest to find that balanced life of mine. And like Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) I would try to live in the Physics of the Quest that:

If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting

Which can be anything, from your house to old bitter resentments

And set out on a truth seeking journey either externally or internally

And if your are truly willing to regard everything

That happens to you on that journey as a clue

And if you accept everyone you meet along the way  as a teacher

And if you are prepared most of all

To face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself

Then the truth will not be withheld from you.

For now, I would continue on with my internal journey to finding the truth, the balance life, I so dream about. Hopeful that along this quest I will find many teachers to help me face the realities about life, and about myself.

 Publish Post

Worth

In our society we put on value on things stating how much it cost. Deciding upon what is cheap, costly, and priceless. Being oriented to such, it had come naturally for us to also place value not only on things but also on people, experiences and relationships.

We often say "it's not worth it" especially on times when we are already hurting. "He is not worth it"; "You deserve someone else"; etc. But how do we know what is worth and what's not on experiences and relationships?

The past few days I have been wondering about that question. One time, a friend of mine and I were talking about it. She told me that "she was willing to cry for someone as long as he is worth it." But again, what's worth and what's not?

Recently, I have made a decision which challenged my views on what is worth it and what's not.

Life involves risk. Every decision we make has an equal reaction. We never know what the consequence of the decision would be until we have already made and acted on that decision. It is later then that we realize that that decision was either bad or good, when it made us happy or sad.

I asked that friend of mine how she will know if the guy would be worth it. Is it, when at the end, they end  up being together, happy and loving each other? How about if it turned out the other way around? When at the end, even if how much she loved that person it did not turn that way she wanted it to be, would it then devalue the experience she had with that person, and that person itself?

It is this part now that I want to challenge.

 We experience things in life that at the start made us madly, truly and deeply happy yet ending up in bitterness and pain.  And we end up saying, "it's not worth it!" If it will not end, we'll never hear the words not worth it being uttered.

Pain is part of the risks in things that we do and I believe that whatever we do has its own value regardless of what the outcome maybe.  In every experience it is not focus on one emotion alone. It is  a series of emotion  varying from happiness, excitement, joy, pain, suffering, loss and tears. Every experience of that emotion has its worth and ought to be judge separately. The same way that every experience that we have, has a lesson that is worth keeping.

I would only consider something not worth it if and only if that person and the experience is brutal and abusive.  Physical pain that is inflicted to someone with conscious knowledge on the severity of the pain to be inflicted  is really a thing that should not be experienced by anyone. For only sadist people relish this kind of activity. That, is not worth it.

Apart from that, in my opinion, every experience has its value.

That it is worth fighting for something you believe in even if you’re the only person fighting for it; to be working tirelessly for the family you love even if it is the only thing you have been doing;  to experience mistakes  even if at the start you already know it's going to hurt badly; to keep dreaming even if you have failed a million times; and to be loving someone even if it is just you doing the loving ;even if that  person have kept putting your hopes down; even if loving has made of you a stupid person;  even if it kept you awake late at night crying;  or even if risking in a relationship knowing that more of the risks are on you.

These experiences ought to be treated as priceless. However painful it may be it has a worth. This worth lies in the lessons that we gain enabling us to grow and mature in life.  To continue with life's daily battles. It is in these "not worth it" stuffs that we keep breathing. It gives us hope to go on believing even if there is nothing left to believe; for hope is the fuel that keeps man running in life.

So the next time I get to choose between what is ' worth it and what is not', I would first consult my heart then my mind for those that are not worth it for other people may be the only thing that would give worth to my life.

Heart and Mind

Mind: You know that he is your friend and it is hard to love a friend…

Heart: Yet i love him much more than a friend, is it so wrong to love a friend?

Mind: No it isn't, but loving a friend involves a lot of risk…

Heart: What are they? will they be worth avoiding?

Mind: For you, it is…that is if you don’t want to suffer the pain of unrequited love…

Heart: This feeling i have, i don’t want to keep. i want it known to him…

Mind: Then risk your friendship?

Heart: Which is harder, sitting beside him hiding my love, or him avoiding me and knowing where i stand?

Mind: whichever you prefer….

Heart: you are the mind… you ought to think….

Mind: I may rationalize to you the pros and cons. Yet in the end it is still You who decides what to do

Heart: But i am irrational, i don't think of the consequences of my decisions. I just do whatever it feels like doing…. that is why I’ve had a lot of pains already….

Mind: Pains and sufferings, they are part of loving…

Heart: I don’t think I can take more suffering…. I have been broken already…

Mind: But you also heal… then love again…. it is through You that I learn about life…

Heart: So what am i going to do, Mind?

Mind: Pray…. pray…pray… and ask God to help both of us…. cause when you are troubled… i could not think…. Ask him to help us see…

Heart: And to help us accept the faith that lies ahead of us…..For where your heart is, happiness follows… is that it?….

Mind: Yes, and wherever you are, troubled and calm, i am there, to balance

things. So Heart, always talk to me….

Heart: And Mind, help me think things through….

Falling In Love

The most common thing that happens between the friendship of a guy and a girl is one of them falling in love with the other. Then one faces the question: “will I tell him/her about my feelings? What if our friendship would be ruined?”
 
I have been asking that for two years now. Will I tell him?
 
My decision came about because I have been battling with that question of telling him or not, it’s all the same anyway. It’s a damn if I do and damn if I don’t situation.
 
If I don’t tell him, I would continue hiding these feelings, continue communicating with him, continue being just the friend whom he can depend on, continue to pretend to myself that I can get over the feeling of falling in love with my best friend. But can I really?
 
If I do tell him, I would risk our friendship. Am I ready for that? I would risk the time that I could have spent just being with him. But I could also set my love free and maybe, just maybe he return that feelings (1% hope), if not, at least, I could crush that hope and start moving on. I could stop pretending and denying to myself, and I would not have ‘what ifs’ in my life.
 
So the decision came. I will tell him.
 
But lacking a man’s courage, I ended up writing him instead. I gave him a selfish letter telling him how I thank him for all the friendship that he has given me, for being the best person that has been for me, and for allowing me to learn and experience things through him. Selfish in the sense that my primary objective in writing the letter is to end our friendship, so we could stop communicating, then I would start to move on, because I have always had that feeling, that he does not return my love, so I have been set on moving on. Yet, I could not move on because there is still a hope left inside that maybe just maybe he return the feelings and just trying to hide it as well.
 
Writing the letter and giving him the letter was the easiest part.

Friendship or Love?

After deleting and burning all the memories of the person that I used to love, I have come to the biggest realizations of my entire life… So I am entitling this…
 
Friendship or love: Which would you prefer?
 
 
Five months ago, I left a letter to a friend, telling him that I like him. After that, the last five months of my life seem to be unreal. The friend that I am talking about is not just any kind of friend. He is the closest that I got, he is the person whom I usually depended on some things, the kind of person I could talk to about anything. Even before I have given that letter I have been battling over and over whether to let him know that I love him. I thought, I have to risk, because I do not want to have what ifs in my life. And I said, once I will give him this letter no regrets on all the consequences that will happen. Hence, I gave the letter.
 
I have always known even from the start that he does not feel the same way that I did knowing he has a girlfriend of say more than four years now? But I still risked. Because I had hoped that maybe just maybe, he might actually feel the same way that I did.
 
When the confrontation happened about my feelings for him, yes, I said to my self there is no reason I am regretting any of these. He told me he also loves me and it’s just that ‘we will not meet in the end’. Up to now, I still don’t know if the ‘I love you’ part is true or just a lie. I do not know the reasons why he said it and I don’t want to know. I told him not worry about me because I know I would be able to move on past the feelings that I have. For the last 2 months or so, that is what I have been just doing. Being a million miles away from him now, had given me the opportunity to really forget that love. But inspite of that distance, our communication continued. Times would come that I feel I really missed him so much. I never fail to tell him I love him. In fact, I have left no room for pride in allowing him to know how much I love him. And because of that, I loose my friend.
 
I did not lose him in a way that he stopped communicating with me. It is more of I loose the person whom I have come to know as my friend. The biggest realization that I actually just had is that: I have already started moving on from the love. The times that I miss him, does not necessarily mean I love him still. I could not stop missing him, now I know why. I have lost my friend. That is whom I missed so much and I could not find him anymore in the person that I claimed to love. That was because I changed and that change forced me to loose one great person in my life.
 
Now, I actually do not know what I am going to do. Just thinking about it makes me miss my friend so much. I choose to stop communicating with him inspite of his constant messages because I am so ashamed of everything that has happened. Of everything that I did. Of all the proclamations of love I said. Yes, I have the biggest regret in my entire life.
 
If given a chance to undo everything, I would take the letter back. I would never give it to him. Because losing a great friend is much worse than an unrequited love.
 
If he comes to get a hold of this blog, I just want him to know that:
 
My friend, I am sorry for everything that has happened and everything that I did. After reading everything, every single letter I wrote, it means I have said goodbye to the love that I felt for you. Yes it may not be easy and it is the most painful thing to do but the greater pain is losing you, the friend that I used to talk to so much about anything, from simple topics to worse. Now, I do not have the courage to face you anymore. Maybe I can only start communicating with you once you tell me:
 
“Gang, this is me your old friend I hope you still remember me.”

Learnings on Love (2/x)

May 9, 2010

After proving to myself that proximity and nearness really is true, I am now faced with a big question that I know many of us have also asked once in our life. Would telling the person how I feel for him or her be worth it? Have you not? My learning lead me to believe that..
 
LOVE is worth telling
 
When I realized that the feelings I have for this person are real and true, I hid it for the fear that others might know, then he will know, then I would lose him for good. I tried my very best in hiding it from him. It never was easy. To be able to hide it, I have to pretend to be okay when he and his many crushes are texting each other. To endure the pain that he wanted to spend time with his crushes and he wanted me to accompany him. To be happy for him when one of his crushes actually says its ok that they would dine together and to listen to his excited narration of how happy he is with the turnout of the dinner.
 
I have kept my emotions always in check. An excerpt from my diary says:
 
As for today, it is enough that I did not declare to him my undying love and devotion.
(May 10)

(Come to think about that, I would soon be celebrating an anniversary for those words).
 
Keeping my emotions in check means, controlling the desire of wanting to hug him while he is driving, of wanting to lay back at him while I am driving, of just staring at him while he is talking, of wanting to show him how much I love him. I was able to control them all. Though there had been a million times that I have been tempted to tell him all about it. For 2 years, I was able to hide it. As I mastered the art of hiding, the feeling grew even stronger and the desire to let him know and to take the chance on the possibility of love, grew with it.
 
After a year of friendship, he left the city for work, to a profession which I thought best suits him. His work demanded him to cut communication for at least 3 months. The distance and not hearing from him gave me a chance to forget him, or so I thought. One morning he called, it was February 14, and greeted me Happy Valentine's Day. The chance of forgetting him flew out the window.
 
A year have followed. With his distance, we grew closer as he kept calling, updating me on the training that he is undergoing. The more my feelings for him grew. It soon went from tolerable to explosive. I feared it. Then a chance came. A chance to leave the city for good, to turn back from him, to turn my back on a love that have enslaved me. I grabbed it hoping that it would take me 5 years before I see him again. By that time, I was sure as hell that all the love I have for him would all be gone. Cowardice. I know.
 
Before I left, I got the chance to visit him where he was training. I left a letter telling him how happy I was to know him, to be able to grow in Christian faith with his inspiration. The letter basically applauded him for being a great guy. But it could never be missed that I said I have strong feelings for him and was happy to get the chance to experience that kind of feeling for him.

The decision whether to tell him or not was not easy. It took me two years before I could muster the courage to do it. And two write ups to be able to decide on it. A part of my write up says:

I have been asking that for two years now. Will I tell him?
 
My decision came about because I have been battling with that question of telling him or not, it’s all the same anyway. It’s a damn if I do and damn if I don’t situation.
 
If I don’t tell him, I would continue hiding these feelings, continue communicating with him, continue being just the friend whom he can depend on, continue to pretend to myself that I can get over the feeling of falling in love with my best friend. But can I really?
 
If I do tell him, I would risk our friendship. Am I ready for that? I would risk the time that I could have spent just being with him. But I could also set my love free and maybe, just maybe he return that feelings (1% hope), if not, at least, I could crush that hope and start moving on. I could stop pretending and denying to myself, and I would not have ‘what ifs’ in my life.
(Excerpt from Falling In Love With Your Best Friend.)

So you see, I ended up telling him. It was there that I learned that LOVE is worth telling, not only for the men but even for the women. Love is meant to be given and not hidden. Love is meant to be shared and not kept.
 
In this Christian culture that we have, society dictates us that women should wait until a man courts her, only then would she have the chance to choose among these suitors whom she likes best. It is prudence.
 
In my experience, I was glad I told him. I was glad to be given the chance to love him and to let him know that I do. It allowed me the freedom to express to him how I value him as a person. And most importantly, it stopped me thinking on the 'what ifs'. What are those?
 
Those are the things that keep you awake late at night thinking. What if he really loves me? What if there really is a chance? What if I try to risk? What if there really could be a future for us both? What if I could really be happy? Haven't you had any of those?
 
The ordeal though after he learned about how I feel was not easy. That even up to now, I am still experiencing the consequences of that action. I may say that love is worth telling, because the moment, that very moment that he knew, it was the happiest I have ever been. But on an afterthought, the action is worth doing only for those people who have the courage to face what life may throw at them.
 
As the days continued along with the feelings, I soon realized that, telling someone you love him is not for the faint of heart.
 
 

Learnings on Love (1/x)

This has been over due. But it is better to start it now; the end though would surely be a lifelong one…

Three years ago, I learned to love someone. It was then the start of my education on the course called LOVE. The past three years of my life had been spent on love. I loved. I got hurt. I learned. I want to remember all of those I have learned to keep me running in life and be reminded that I have been through a lot but I made it. May these learning as I share it, help others overcome their problems on the matters of the heart..

Theory of Proximity and Nearness

This person that I love was the person closest to me. We get to spend a lot of time together. Do things together. He was my confidant and I was his. We were seldom away from each other. We go out together in many occasions. We worked together as partner brother and sister in a Christian renewal community. He had helped me a lot in my Christian growth. Because of the times and the occasions that we had been together, I did not notice, that love for him was slowly creeping into my heart without my knowledge.

When I discovered that his work is putting him in a dangerous situation, it was then that I came face to face with my feelings and painfully admitted that I don't want to lose this person. Not in anyway, all because I love him. It came as a slap. It was all so wrong. The person whom I love is in a relationship with someone else.

At first, having a guy friend who is attached gives me the freedom to treat the person naturally, without the fear of him ever falling for me or me ever falling for him. The plan backfired. I totally forgot the theory of proximity and nearness. I thought that befriending someone who is currently attached would exempt me from that theory. It didn't. I only proved one thing.

It is a theory. As defined by Encarta,

the·o·ry [th əree, three]

(plural the·o·ries) noun

rules and techniques: the body of rules, ideas, principles, and techniques that applies to a subject, especially when seen as distinct from actual practice 

               

speculation: abstract thought or contemplation


idea formed by speculation: an idea of or belief about something arrived at through speculation or conjecture.


hypothetical circumstances: a set of circumstances or principles that is hypothetical.


 scientific principle to explain phenomena: a set of facts, propositions, or principles analyzed in their    relation to one another and used, especially in science, to explain phenomena

Microsoft® Encarta® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

A theory is a set of facts. It has been tried and tested to be true for it to merit the word theory. It applies to everyone without exemption.

So what really is this theory? The theory states that, the more you are spending time with that person the more you are going to fall for each other. I forgot that! Without my knowledge, I learned to love my closest friend that led to more learnings on love….