We Are Listening, but Do We Act on It?

It is amazing, the things that come into your mind whenever you are doing something as simple as (or as complex as, depending on your personality) taking a bath. I take baths after going back from work (unlike some people I know), and since this is a fairly routine activity (thus leaving the mind free to think of other things), my mind usually wanders to the things that I've done the whole day long. Some form of recollection, I guess. Unfortunately, this is not applicable whenever I'm going through some sort of 'hormone overflow' situation...let your imagination take flight here...

Anyways,

A couple of days ago, my mind happened to rest on a subject regarding an e-mail I'd received from a good friend (and yes, it happened during shower), who happens to be the administrator and owner of this blog. The title of the e-mail was "FW: ARE YOU LISTENING?" (it seems that some people have flairs for the dramatic, or probably an elephant was sitting on his/her 'Caps Lock' button). In it, it tells a story about how a person, longing to find God, was inspired by an unusual event. Now, I don't know whether he found what he's looking for (which was probably God), but before we go any further, I think it would be appropriate if I would re-tell the story again here.

I just love copy-paste. Make life so much easier.

Anyways,

This is the excerpt:

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The Lord's voice

This will give you the chills........GOOD chills.(Blogger's note: I told you, flairs for the dramatic...)

A young man had been to Wednesday night Bible Study. The Pastor had shared about listening to God and obeying the Lord's
voice. The young man couldn't help but wonder, "Does God still speak to people?"

After service he went out with some friends for coffee and pie and
they discussed the message. Several different ones talked about how God had led them in different ways. It was about ten o'clock when the young man started driving home. Sitting in his car, he just began to pray, "God...If you still speak to people speak to me. I will listen. I will do my best to obey."

As he drove down the main street of his town, he had the strangest
thought to stop and buy a gallon of milk. He shook his head and said out loud, "God is that you?" He didn't get a reply and started on toward home. But again, the thought, buy a gallon of milk. The young man thought about Samuel and how he didn't recognize the
voice of God, and how little Samuel ran to Eli. "Okay, God, in case that is you, I will buy the milk." It didn't seem like too hard a test of obedience. He could always use the milk. He stopped and purchased the gallon of milk and started off toward home.

As he passed Seventh Street, he again felt the urge, "Turn Down that street." This is crazy he thought and drove on past the intersection. Again, he felt that he should turn down Seventh Street. At the next intersection, he turned back and headed down Seventh. Half jokingly, he said out loud, "Okay, God, I will".

He drove several blocks, when suddenly, he felt like he should stop. He pulled over to the curb and looked around. He was in semi commercial area of town. It wasn't the best but it wasn't the worst of neighborhoods either. The businesses were closed and most of the houses looked dark like the people were already in bed.

Again, he sensed something, "Go and give the milk to the people in the house across the street." The young man looked at the house. It was dark and it looked like the people were either gone or they were already asleep. He started to open the door and then sat back in the car seat.

"Lord, this is insane. Those people are asleep and if I wake them up, they are going to be mad and I will look stupid." Again, he felt like he should go and give the milk. Finally, he opened the door, "Okay God, if this is you, I will go to the door and I will give them the milk. If you want me to look like a crazy person, okay. I want to be obedient. I guess that will count for something
but if they don't answer right away, I am out of here."

He walked across the street and rang the bell. He could hear some
noise inside. A man's voice yelled out, "Who is it? What do you want?" Then the door opened before the young man could get away. The man was standing there in his jeans and T-shirt. He looked like he just got out of bed. He had a strange look on his face and he didn't seem too happy to have some stranger standing on his doorstep. "What is it?"

The young man thrust out the gallon of milk, "Here, I brought this to you." The man took the milk and rushed down a hallway. Then from down the hall came a woman carrying the milk toward the kitchen. The man was following her holding a baby. The baby was crying. The
man had tears streaming down his face.

The man began speaking and half crying, "We were just praying. We had some big bills this month and we ran out of money. We didn't have any milk for our baby. I was just praying and asking God to show me how to get some milk." His wife in the kitchen yelled out, "I ask him to send an Angel with some. Are you an Angel?"

The young man reached into his wallet and pulled out all the money he had on him and put in the man's hand. He turned and walked back toward his car and the tears were streaming down his face.

He knew that God still answers prayers.
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I always love tear-jerkers.

Anyways, the search for God, The Ultimate Truth, The Great Mystery, or such things, have always fascinated the human race. A friend once said to me that man back then created God when they went to the mountains and saw the sky, full of stars, full of infinite possibilities. And this immense realization made man feel so small...and scared. So God was created as some form a boundary between man and this infinite possibility. Probably that's where the association between God and the sky came from. Like, it's as if He (or She, depending on your sexual preference) resides up there. I've been through such experience, when I laid myself down on a hill in Puncak one fine Sunday not so long ago, looking at the sky and the clouds. Out of the blue, my imagination took me to a musing about what if gravity reversed itself and what if I'd find myself falling into the clouds, into the sky. When will the fall stop? When will it be the end? It was an immense experience, and I found myself weak in the knees after that.

Maybe it was just vertigo.

In any case, regarding the story, I presume that different people have different take on the story. Some might think that it was God speaking to the man's heart, and a lot of other maybes. I myself think that maybe it was telepathy. Having a mother who is telepathic to her former husband who is also my father, it's a no-brainer how I could come up with this (if she lied about this story then I'm so dead). In any case, if the story is true, and this is a big if since I wasn't there to witness it (I could only be a witness to my own life and nothing more), the important thing is that the baby's safe, the baby's parents are in peace, and the man (presumably) found what he was looking for.

Which is a good thing for him. And nothing more. If that was his understanding of God, and if he's comfortable with it, good for him. Very good. Unfortunately, this is not so for us. Because we are borrowing his understanding of God. We haven't come up with our own understanding of God. Each of us has our own experience of God. And I never let myself mistake religion with faith. Man may have the same religion, but each man's faith is his/her own and can never be the same as another. For each has his/her own life to lead.

Before I start wandering away from the subject (due to my nature of having a pretty big mouth, literally and figuratively speaking), I would just like to say that no man can ever be completely right or completely wrong. It's just is. But what I would like to bring into the spotlight is the man himself. To me, the 'star' of the story is not God or the voices/urgings inside the man's head, or the 'miracle' of hearing voices inside one's head (which some might interpret as signs of one's losing one's mind). He may have heard the voices, felt the urgings, but we must remember that in the end, it was the man's decision to do the things. Had the man decided to ignore them, this chain mail wouldn't even be here in the first place (by the way, this is the second time I got this e-mail...it's amazing how chain-mails could recycle themselves these days...the marvel of the e-mail forwarding technology)

Had the man decided to stay his hands, the baby would probably be dead by now, the parents miserable, the man never finding his answers. It is in our hands that the will and the capability to act rest. It was the man's will to finding the answers to his questions that drove him to act in such ways. It was his hands that carried the milk and the money to the baby. And don't forget that it was the parents' will (in the form of prayers) that brought the man to them. It might be only a simple, desperate act of 'prayer', of 'hope', of 'courage' and of 'love' that carried the message to the man, but it was an act nonetheless. These parents didn't have other means except for their strong will to give life to their baby, and their 'prayers'. But they have the will, and the capability to act (even if the act was only a prayer...or hidden telepathic potentials...sorry, can't help myself ha ha ha). So the fact remains, in the end, it is us humans that have the final say about how we want to use our potentials. Even if it's only in the form of buying a gallon of milk or wishing upon a star (or a gallon of milk ha ha ha).

So, in the end, I would like to say, maybe it's not such a hard thing to find God. All you have to do is look inside yourself, and I'm very sure that the potential is there. Not saying that we ARE God, but in each of us lies the seed, the potential, to be like God. To be godlike. All we have to do is to decide, to will ourselves, and finally, to act upon it. No matter how many miracles there are out there, in the end we are the one who decide what we would like to do about them. Thus goes the saying that man is created in the image of Him (or Her). I believe that this saying was not talking in physical sense of things.

This of course, comes also with the realization that other people beside ourselves also have the potentials to be godlike. I guess if you respect the inner strength that lies in you, you would also realize that it's only natural to respect other people since the potentials are also there. Then the world would be a much better place, ain't it?

We all know such is not the case.

Then again, I could be wrong. Who knows? Life has proven me wrong many times. Maybe the world is already a perfect place (with all its imperfections... hey, humans are always about contradictions). But I speak from the heart. At least I could admit that much.

So, in the end, I hope that you all like this entry. And Miss Administrator, I hope you like my first entry in your blog. Be waiting for yours.

How Cool is This?!?!

Okay,

First I thought it was just another extra feature that no one would really take advantage of.

I never even paid attention to this feature until today.

A friend of mine just told me that we can actually post out blogs in someone else’s blogs.

Hmm, interesting, huh? So, I asked him how it works.

And guess what? Not only did I make it into his blogs (as a contributor – thanks, Rie), I also came across a way to post your blogs without even logging in.

Gee, how convenient is that? Huh?

This is how.

You actually look like you’re writing an e-mail to a client, or a vendor, or whatever related to work, while you’re actually posting your blogs!

Wow, and on top of that, just in case your internet access got banned (again), you can still write away, my friend.

Whoever you are that invented this thing called Blogger.com, you’re so going to heaven, hahaha…

Viva Blogger.com!

Madagascar meets Shawshank Redemption

Madagascar (Ben Stiller/Alex the Lion, Chris Rock/Marty the Zebra, David Schwimmer/Melman the Giraffe, and Jada Pinket-Smith/Gloria the Hippopotamus)
Shawshank Redemption (Tim Robbins/Andi Dufresne, Morgan Freeman/Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding)


One is a fresh and funny Box Office animation, and the latter is a gloomy and serious Academy Award winning film.

So far different, yet both touch me in so many levels, in many different ways that I could possibly imagine.

The word “institutionalized” comes to mind.

Having lived in captivity for 10 years, growing up knowing no other but the comfortable life of New York Zoo, Marty got bored. He was tired of all the routine, and soon swayed by the smooth talk of the Penguins who wanted nothing but to escape from the zoo.
He ran. And his best friends went on a rescue mission to bring him but instead, these “New York Giants” were sent to a remote part of Madagascar, to live in the wilderness, where they met an entire community of Lemurs, with King Julien as their host.
Alex, almost failed to adapt. Being well-fed and groomed each and every day of his life in New York got him weak by the stomach, and he soon developed his natural instinct. To prey.
And hadn’t it been for Marty’s belief in him, Alex wouldn’t have made it. He would’ve lost his old self, the non dangerous, most popular show in town.

Red spent 40 years in prison, a hard lesson to learn for a crime he committed. The bars introduced him to Andy, a newcomer who was falsely accused of murdering his wife and her lover. Andy fought the hard life of the prison where you are not to make the wrong acquaintance if you want to keep your life, or at least, your dignity. The prison could not taint Andy’s hope of freedom and after less than 20 years he finally broke free.
Red got his parole after he giving up hope, and rejoined his best friend in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.
But not every men standing inside those high and thick walls could survive out there. Brooks Hatlen, who spent 50 years as an inmate, broke down when he finally got his parole. He simply could not handle the pressure of living in the real world. In the wild.

The New York City zoo may imprison the animals.
As it has locked down human beings as well, in Shawshank Prison.

Institutionalized.
That’s what happened to these animals, and humans.
The so called “institutions” serves a better purpose of slowly eating a man’s hope, slowly turning wild animals into “pansies”, and in the end, slowly turning these animals and human beings against their own nature: to live free, to live in the wild.


Life, unlike the Zoo and the Prison, it offers freedom.
But sometimes, we face biting reality that in so many ways, Life is a lot like those bars.

Sometimes, we may feel imprisoned, sitting in the same cubicle for tens of years, facing the same routine, the same problems to solve, entertaining the same sets of people, and having to cope with all the boredom that may come in the package of being born, of being delivered into this world.

Some made their peace– and die old behind the bars or inside the showcase, some simply cannot handle it – and choose to meet their makers, some strong enough to break free – and succeed in their own quest of adventure, their own battle against their ego.

Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria, the New York Giants, sailed back to New York, where they really belong. Red joined Andy in the Pacific, where they would face their whole life ahead of them, as free men.


We are granted a privilege of not living as animals inside the zoo, of having a full set of brain, a healthy one that deprived us from committing a crime to get us locked in. Yet sometimes, we’re forgetting that “time does fly”, even on the outside. Even as free human beings, we’re still trapped in “time prison”.
We’ll never go back.

Sometimes we make mistakes.
Sometimes we choose to ignore our yielding conscience, while it’s been screaming the whole time.
Sometimes we’re stuck and we give up. Forgetting that we do deserve to have our dreams.
Sometimes we forget that deep down inside our hearts, there’s a place called “hope” that no one can touch.


I gave up hope, a long time ago.
But once again, I learned from these characters.
Life, like the Time, IS precious.
We’ll never get back what we’ve lost.

The time is NOW.
Hopes will not fail us.
Only if we try hard enough.

Spongebob Squarepants

I wonder why this ugly cartoon character could stick in the Top 10 ratings in a specific TV station for more than half a year.
And after seeing the movie, I could understand why.
Damn, this movie is funny or what!

The program especially made for children served as a reminder to fulfill our inner child. To not forget our core, and to realize that being an underprivileged does not stop us from creating. From achieving. From winning the race, and ace every single thing we do.

The seemingly simple plot actually has a lot deeper meaning.
And after watching the movie (on pirated DVD, of course – what else…), I can safely say that I'm proud to be whatever I am today.

Well, hope to see more of the series in the Top Rating charts.
Hurray! to Spongebob Squarepants.
You blow me away, you yellow porous kid.

The jerk at work

(Article published in The Economist 4-10 June Edition, pg.60)

WISE ENOUGH TO PLAY THE FOOL?

In praise of lovable bunglers
It is a universal dilemma. What to do with the jerk at work, the person who is so disliked by their colleagues that no one wants to work with them? The traditional answer is to tolerate them if they are at least half-competent – on the grounds that competent jerks can be trained to be otherwise, while much-loved bunglers cannot.

An article in the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review suggests that such an approach seriously underestimates the value of being liked. In a study of over 10,000 work relationships at five very different organisations, Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo, academics at Harvard Business School and Fuqua School of Business respectively, found that (given the choice) people consistently and overwhelmingly prefer to work with a “lovable fool” than with a competent jerk.

The authors suggest that as well as training jerks to be more charming – although “sadly there are people who are disliked because they are socially incompetent, and probably never will be truly charming” – companies should also “leverage the likeable”. Amiable folk should be turned into “affective hubs”, people who can bridge gaps “between diverse groups that might not otherwise interact”.

Re-evaluating jolly types who spend long hours hanging round water-coolers is currently fashionable. Ronald Burt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and a leading proponent of “social capital” – an explanation of “how people do better connected with other people” – has written a book (“Brokerage and Closure”, to be published by the Oxford University Press later this summer) in which he describes the ”clusters” and “bridges” that are typical of organisations’ informal networks. Mr Burt calls the people who form bridges between clusters “brokers”; they resemble Ms Casiaro’s and Mr Sousa Lobo’s affective hubs. In practice, Mr Burt has found that brokers do better than people without the social skills to cross the spaces between clusters.

A book published in English this week, but already a cause cèlebré in France, portrays most employees as fools – lovable or otherwise. Corinne Maier’s “Bonjour Laziness” (Pantheon Books) is a worm’s-eye view of a corporate world where only three creatures exist: sheep (“weak and inoffensive”); pests (“poisoning the general atmosphere”); and loafers (“their only aim is to do as little as possible”). In the view of Ms Maier, a practicing psychoanalyst as well as a part-time employee of EDF, a French power firm, pests (ie, jerks) rule the corporate world. (So does being a jerk give you the skills needed to get to the top? And only in France?) The rest can only hope to lie low and await their pension. Les Misérables! But, assuming you are lovable, far better, surely, to follow the Burt route: head straight for the water-cooler.

*****

And so... That explains. I guess we're left with no choice than lie low.

Sigh...

AAARRGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

I hate being the stupid people's errand girl!

F*CK!!!!!

'Tis - Frank McCourt

The problem with reading a good book is that you will not be able to put it down. Sometimes you just speed through the whole pages, and even with the fingers all red from the paper cut, eyes almost pop out from moving too fast left and right, and head throbbing like mad in the morning from lack of sleep trying to finish the book the soonest as possible while all your other books are still lying helplessly in the shelf, still in its cover, waiting to be read.

And after that you begin to realize that good books are something you should savor to its last page, and not just flip flip flip without really getting a grasp of its real meaning, and then you suddenly stop, and go backwards, hoping you’d remember each and every characters in it. Trying so hard not to lose its plot.

‘Tis is definitely a good example of it.

Lord above knows just how many days I spent on that book, not because of I want to savor every little details in it, but simply because – forgive me, Mr. McCourt, I only got to read that book once the clock hits twelve at night, and I can only last 10 minutes of that book, for fear I will not be able to wake up the next morning to go to work.

But I spent the last 2 days finishing what I left off (about half of the whole book), and I wept my self to bed in the ending.

Damn it, Frank McCourt can write.
And damn it, he deserves the Pulitzer Prize. For all I know, he can bring home that bloody Nobel prize for Literature from Sweden, for he deserves it.

I know this is not much of a review.
But I tell you, I don’t need to give a review on ‘Tis and Angela’s Ashes. The books are simply must-reads.

Mr.McCourt, once again, hats off to you.
Wish I could meet you and tell you in person, just how much your writings have influenced me.
(Och, my bladder is near my eyes…)