Jandrea...so far

I have this crazy notion that the universe has determined that some days are perfect for important events. For a while now, i have noticed that on certain days, my appointment calendar is VERY full while on the spaces for other days, I have nothing written except my daily reminder to pray at a specific hour.  To illustrate, yesterday, June 28, I had two workshops going on at exactly the same time (Don't ask me how i managed to attend both!) and then another activity after dinner. Tomorrow, June 30, I have 2 deadlines for a paper and presentation (There was another one I managed to get out of). And then one meeting in the morning and another one in the afternoon. In the evening, i check in for another activity which starts morning of the next day!  Mind you, I do not set these deadlines and the dates for these activities. The universe hands them in, one by one, on my plate which is already full as it is! Maybe I should shout out  "No more!" to the Great Beyond when...

"You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings.  It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake,   to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."                                                                                                           ...

Image from a FB friend When I first set my eyes on Vigan, it was though I was still in a dream. Still groggy with sleep after an all-night land trip, I found myself as if transported to another time. In the awakening light and the clip-clopping of the horses on the cobblestone street, the first thoughts that came to my mind was, "Oh my, I could run into Rizal's Crisostomo Ibarra in these streets!" A little dramatic but what can you expect from a then college student with a student theater group visiting the place for performances in schools in that area. I was of course wrong about running into fictional characters but I was certainly not disappointed about encountering ghosts from the past. We were billeted in a hotel which was a renovated mansion from an earlier century, just what you would expect in a place like this. The girls were given a big room which helped us imagine that we were friends of Maria Clara after a party. In the early morning, I woke up with th...

This is so typical of the what goes on in my brain during most of my waking hours. Sometimes I wonder whether it is a gift or a curse that I can juggle a gazillion of things happening all at the same time. I can imagine the  countless neurons that are firing simultaneously so that I can think about how we can recycle left-overs for dinner while I rehearse in my mind the questions I intend to ask after my lecture in my next class.  How is it possible that I can draft an official sounding letter in the same mental slate where I create a picture of myself in the outfit I will wear to a project proposal presentation?  Should I consider myself fortunate that I can predict how my family's plans will turn out depending on whether they listened to my advice or not?  Should  I just shut up when I can clearly see that the purple throw pillows definitely don't go with those curtains' sickly shade of green and getting that new brand of shampoo, while giving you soft-to-t...

When I saw this, I couldn't help but laugh with the realization on how true it is! How many of us can't last a day without checking Facebook, sending out e-mail, playing online games, chatting with far-away friends, and browsing through the gazillion of websites available through the internet. Abraham Maslow said that one is not motivated to address higher-level needs without fulfilling, at least partially, the needs found at the lower portions of his or her pyramid. And that our whole life is a slow but definite journey to reach the peak of self-actualization! And so because the internet is constantly offering new things every single moment, things that I find hard to keep up with but try to anyway, I wonder now whether this need to be take it all in will ever be met. I question whether it can really take precedence over my need to eat, to feel safe, to be loved, to be held in high esteem by others, to be creative, etc. And because I spend a tremendous amount of time usi...

        We were going to talk about "Learning and Conditioning" in my General Psych class. As an introduction to the topic, I asked them to enumerate the things they have learned since childhood. As expected, they came up with answers like "reading, riding a bike, singing, cooking, writing a good paper, doing math, etc.".         I told them, "Good! But is that all? Are you sure you are not forgetting anything else?" I was hoping to get more answers that wouldn't fit into categories like abilities and skills and facts that they have learned from their more than ten years sitting inside a classroom. Silence.         And so I asked them, "Have you not learned other things from outside the classroom?" More Silence.  I proceeded to throw them a barrage of questions. How about the lessons you learned from your family - like loving and caring for others? From your mistakes, have you learned to rise above them so you ...

In this piece of heaven, I'm enjoying the solitude. I revel in this chance to talk to myself, laugh or cry whenever it suits me! Yes, we do need to cry once in a while. It keeps us in touch with our soul. It reminds us of what is important to us - especially our loved ones. I don't think we need to apologize for it. It does make us feel better afterwards. Maybe that's why I make it a point to cry out my heart at least once a year - like cleansing myself of hurts, pains, disappointments with myself, Making room for what will come my way in the year ahead!