Well, enough has been said on how new things are for me in the big city. Even after six months, I still have the thoughts of life back here.

The past few months has been a run run. Life was so fast. I got the job that I asked for – probably the best that I can ever have. Still, I realized how independence, good paying job and personal career rewards could not compensate for the absence of family and loved one.

I went embracing my new life with the faith that God has set this path for me. However, somewhere along the way, I lost my sight of the road. I started to get too absorbed on my job – meetings, deadlines, all went in a rumble. To me, the way to do this is keep myself as organized and as well-planned as possible.

Apparently, that was not what God planned for me. With that attitude inside me, I was bringing myself away from the life that I believe God was trying to lead me to. I was living my own life – I plan my itinerary, I see to it that things go my way. The reality is – it doesn’t always follow as you say so.

Yesterday, I was with my high school friends enjoying the day at the white sand beach. Later in the afternoon, I had an accident. I dived under a bamboo line when I hit my forehead with a sharp coral. My head was liked axed in the middle. For sure, the coral was sharp enough to cut me straight in the middle of my forehead and rough enough to scratch almost all the surface of my nose. Yikes!

I really didn’t see that coming. Inside my head, I was thinking “what a great ending for a well awaited vacation”. My heart was devastated, not to mention I am still aching from my girlfriend’s absence. I was about to fly back to Makati this afternoon but I have to go back to the doctor for the stitches to be removed five days after. I re-booked for January 10 then after my bosses’ approvals.

What I realized now is how one should be flexible in living one’s life. But above it, I as well saw again how humans tend to put in their on hand their lives, forgetting that they are simply beings created by someone much more Supreme than they.

It’s difficult to light a candle when everyone seem to blow the light off. Keeping it well lit always begins by going to church again. Then, keeping a candle lit requires everyday sacrifice, a daily renewal of self with your Creator.

This is not an easy task. Yet, no easy task rewards much. In here lies the meaning of life for me. In this thought, I see how God puzzles things – circumstances, conditions, environment all in fulfilling His great picture.

Living in the big city, I realized this is not always the case for people. To many, God is something revered by others. To some, God does not exist. This is how God works with people – he never forces anyone to believe in Him.

This may be what lies in front of me – keeping your candle lit in a cruel, Godless world. Sometimes, we are so tied up with the thought of offending others with our beliefs. So we succumb to the ways of the world to blend in. After a while, it feels good. You feel so normal and natural. Before you know it, you are headed for disaster. It hits you point blank, right between your eyes… very much like mine, only less literal .

A lot of things that happen in our lives, we do not understand. Sometimes, when we don’t get any explanation, we try to make our own. We rationalize things. We don’t wait for revelations to unfold, we create our own.

This is where I believe I have forgotten to keep in mind – to sometimes let things unfold. I was impatient and persistent. Behind that, I was afraid I do not like the outcome of things, so I do things my way. Little do I know that destruction lies ahead.

I often close my posts with a conclusion, to simply wrap things up before closing a post. This time, I guess leaving it hanging will be alright. Yep, wrapping up a post for me is part of trying to rationalize my thoughts when in fact, a lot of your thoughts are there for you to think over for a lifetime. Life is not black or white. It has colors in between. The more you try to place things as either black or white takes away the colors of life. I guess it’s a choice to see the colors in between…

I woke up this morning late. The night was something I have been longing for throughout the week. Thank God He made the weekends. A week’s worth of work is a Friday night’s worth of sleep.

Waking up, it’s another day in the big city. I have to get my clothes ready for the washing. I have to get myself eating brunch too. I’m starving.

It’s really funny what you get to think about during weekends. I went down from the room and turned on my laptop. Plugged in the speaker and put some Christmas music to fill the morning daze. Yes, Christmas is in the air, especially in the Philippines where Christmas is celebrated a thirds of a year.

I just remembered, I haven’t been writing lately. Well, the new job is getting more and more demanding by the day. The job is not the real challenge for me though. What I find challenging is how to balance my relationships, the roles I play. Juggling my roles as an employee, as a son, a brother, a boyfriend and a Christian is not an easy task. But then, that’s what makes it exciting right?  A few days back, I attended a training on thinking and acting decisively. The speaker mentioned that an average person can juggle at most five roles in a lifetime. The top five is manageable. The rest becomes a blur. There will be times that you would have to change a role for another. That would then depend on the priorities at the moment. For example, you used to not consider your role as a brother. Then, a sister had a baby and you would have to assist her in her new child. Or maybe, you decided to get married so you would need to do more of your role as a fiancée than your role as a son peer perhaps.

Through out the few months in this new life of mine in this big city, I have learned to let go of little worries and focus on what really counts in my life. It then brings you back to the things that are important to you, to the things that you value.

It is here in the big city that I learned how complicated people make of their lives. Why? Why can’t we just make each other’s lives easy? Why do we have to be rich? Why do we have to get better than others? Why do we have to compete for excellence?

I learned that here in the big city, a lot of things matter – for other person that is. What you wear, how you look, how much money you make. You get the point. I realized too that since I am here, I need to play the game in order to survive. The worst thing I could do is resent everything that happens in my life. Now that’s an easy exit. Another option though is to ask how do you make sense of everything that happens in your life? I am getting that idea that a lot of things that happen in one’s life begins in the mind.

I read in some book a phrase I find valuable to remember in life. I’d like to quote it and here it goes: “Watch your thoughts, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, they make up your life.” True to it, your life is moulded by how you perceive things. Do you look at a glass half empty or half full? A classic but never fails to make sense.

So there you go, my thoughts for the moment. The thinking plays a big role in defining a life. What you can or cannot do in life all begins with the mind. Other than that, all you need is a dash of blessing, and a lifetime of imagination!

I’m staying late tonight. I have a few international calls from my team across the globe. That’s what you get from a team of across timelines. Oh well.

A few hours ago, the rain was heavy outside. Working at a high rise building lets you hear thunder in threatening volume. The rain has now subsided. As for me, I’m sitting on this half-lit room waiting for my calls. I can see the city lights from here. Street lamps mark the way of the avenue just beside the building. Vehicles were lining up, most are probably heading home. I look at the evening sky and I guess it’s pretty much what it is – just another night in the big city. Where the sun sets and rises in the morning. Tomorrow, it will just be another day.

Across the office building is a hotel rising high. Some rooms are lit, fascinatingly displaying what transpires on those rooms. Honeymooners, travellers, or families, each with their lives spent on one of those hotel rooms. It amazes me how life goes on from corner to corner.

There may be times that one desires for the world to simply stop, to pause for awhile. What if that happens tomorrow. One wakes up to a world where nobody is there, where you still have cars on the streets, buildings lit up from last night’s use and where restaurants and bars still with their blinking lights. What if one morning, one wakes up to find out that all he has done for a lifetime are no longer worth a thing. The world becomes his, yet owns it alone, with no one else left in the world but himself. Will those things that used to be so valuable still be what they were? One can then have the finest cars and the most expensive jewelleries. One can travel the world and see the most wonderful places on earth with no one to stop him or her. Could those things by then still be as precious as what they are right now?

I guess you know the answer.

Moments like these are moments that bring me to deeper thoughts, things that one usually ignores at the height of the day when one is busy working or doing things in order to survive. A friend of mine told me that sometimes, we take these things as an excuse from doing the things that we need to do like work and earn money. That may be true to some extent but then, one could also not deny the fact that life is but a fleeting moment and that it is never impossible that in an instant, one’s death could come which makes all of these things that are necessities for our survival become worthless.

I guess the thing for this post is that, there are two timelines for our conscious mind – one is the immediate timeline that reminds us to work for food and for our daily survival. The other is the eternal timeline, the awareness that , when we die, life continues for others who are still living and what happens to us by then is quite unknown to us. These two timelines, though seemingly contradicting each other are actually working hand-in-hand. It reminds us that while we need to consider our immediate needs today, we must realize that there is another span of time that lasts long after we are gone. It challenges us to search for realities of that eternal timeline, a timeline that answers our questions about the meaning of our very existence.

Yep, I’m alone for the holy week. I really have to stay as I was expecting my uncle to come to continue with the house construction he’s been doing for more than a month now. Unfortunately, he had to cancel since it was raining since last evening. The rain isn’t really that hard but I guess he needs a break too. It was okay but that left me alone at home.

At first it was okay. I was even kidding my sister online about how I felt waking up alone in the house in a cold morning. I said I really felt how it is to live as an eligible bachelor. She told me to just savor the moment.

I had plenty of time throughout the day – something that I love to have. It just lets out my thoughts, whatever that’s left locked up in my mind. It’s a mental freedom I always cherish to have.

After lunch, I decided to plug-in a few movies, first of which was “The Myth” movie by Jackie Chan. My brother lend me a dvd compilation of a few Jackie Chan movies so I had a great time watching oriental action. When I have plenty of time (like today), I really like to internalize the messages in movies. A line from the movie struck me. It was from the princess who said “Why do we struggle so much to live, when we just become slaves of our destinies”. It was really beautiful (and the princess was pretty by the way). The princess was betrothed to a certain royalty but fell in love with the military general instead. For her, the rites and rituals of becoming a princess was too much. All the riches and status were hindrances to true freedom.

Aside from the impressive stunts that Jackie Chan pulled out that entertained me, the movie left me to thinking again about happiness and freedom and life. There is still that side of me that wants to dream again and again. I know much are entangled with my emotions but the mere presence of such in my heart, more than in my mind leaves me asking questions. Are there things higher than what meets my reality now? Are we set to each of our own higher purpose or am I simply a hallucinating guy disconnected from his immediate reality?

I guess what I am saying is, there are moments in our life that we pause for a minute and ask ourselves the meaning of our lives. I guess you have those moments too – a reflective, retrospective time that makes you ask the purpose for your very existence. Often times, we get too busy with work and daily tasks that we forget why we are doing such things in the first place.

After the movie, I watch another movie (still a Jackie Chan movie) and another and the last one is a movie by Nicholas Cage – The Weatherman. The latter was a story of a man who tried to refuse how the world sees him but then later on went in with the flow of life. The movie wasn’t asserting much of a point really but rather leaves the audience thinking for themselves on how they are going to make those things up in their own lives.

There was a part of the day that I felt alone. Tonight, I’ll be sleeping alone in this house in a cold bed, waiting for the sun to shine again the next day. Indeed, no man is an island. No matter how loner I thought I was before, a company would always lighten up the mood compared to being all alone. I might enjoy the view in our garden, the trees swaying softly in the breeze as drops of rain poured down every leaf. But having no one to share the moment, I only feel more and more sad by the minute. I dished out the idea immediately, preventing further damage but the thought was there already.

I decided to make the moment more productive – and decided to blog about it. So here I am.

If there is one thing I’ve learned today, here it goes: that life is full of seasons, a cold icy winter, a hot sunny summer, a lively spring and an melancholic fall, each play an important role in making us what we are – humans.

This chilly morning that I woke up to was just a morning amongst the mornings of my life. Though time seem to fly so fast throughout the day, it still had its part on making me appreciate the life I’m living.

Crossroads

Shall i follow the stream
or cross the sea
Strive for a dream
or let life be?

Shall it be on neon lights
that spell success?
Or flickering lamplight
for happiness?

Follow the thunder?
Follow the storm?
Follow the whisper
that breeze and leaves for?

Follow my heartbeat
Follow my head
What shall each bring me?
Where shall each lead?

I encountered this poem when I was in high school. It was in our English language class I believe. I was able to grasp the meaning before but it was not that real for me until recently in my life.

The poem really talks about choosing whether to take the road that leads one to a city life and corporate world or the one that leads you to live a simple life in the comforts of your home, your own small business or your farm. I guess it applies more to those who live in rural areas where the city seem to be an elusive corporate paradise where money and success is.

Still, I can relate to the poem. For those of you who know me, you know how I left my job to pursue a career in information technology. The decision wasn’t bad really. I learned so much more about the thing that just started as a hobby when I left than when I stayed. Later on, I realized that it was more than the choosing between my previous career and my current career. It was actually a difficulty in choosing whether to live a run-run, chasing-those-deadlines, keep-your-butt-moving life or live a simple, passionate, laid-back, slow-paced, calm life.

I believe many people feel this way at times. For me, I guess I easily burned out at that time. I realized now that I was just too hard on myself and my attitude towards my job took its toll on me. I was looking at my job as something that can be accomplished or finished one time through careful planning – much more like a project. I forgot the fact that a job is something that constantly tests your skill and your character day in and day out – more like life itself. It would only end if you decide to leave the job. Then you go find another, get disappointed and quit again. The loop will never end.

Being jobless and having time for yourself have benefits. You get to wake up in the early morning breeze, drink your favorite coffee while reading the latest in the newspaper. Better yet, look outside and rest your eyes in the garden for hours – a relaxing feeling that you seldom have when you are always in a hurry for work in the morning and fairly exhausted when you go home at night. When you’re jobless, you get to think of your life a lot. You get to think of finding purpose in the things that you do. However, you also get to think about your joblessness especially when your finances are drying out already. This is dangerous as this can lead to depression that lasts for months, even years.

All in all, my hopes are high. The world does not remain as it is. It is constantly changing. Thinking about the poem, maybe I don’t have to make a choice in the first place. Maybe creating a balance between the two is actually possible. Finding peace amidst chaos is a higher challenge for any of us. Finding success in flickering lamplights gives a deeper meaning to life. I shall not know the answer if it is really possible unless I go through it myself. Life is just like that.