My frustrations... Again

I was browsing through the blogs of my friends when I realized how fun their life is. I mean Hannah talks about her showbiz career(kuno) and Jhett talks about her New York experience. Me on the other hand talks about my frustrations about my boring life as a cadet of the Philippine Military Academy. Well to a certain extent it is not really frustrations for I am definitely not frustrated with my being a cadet I just realized that my blog mostly contains the desires that I have, things that I can not do because I am stuck here and so much is expected of me. It kind of makes me feel bad about the adventures that I could have experienced if only I wasn't here. Thinking about it, I'm sure I'll still have a good life find some decent job and perhaps even have a love life of some sort. Here's the situation, my social is mostly limited to people I call "mistah" or "bok," there are others who I have to greet good morning or good afternoon everytime I meet them anywhere because it really is a minus to their humanity if some underclass ignore their being my senior. And then there are the plebes who continue to test my patience with every laxity they commit may it be in their uniforms or the compliances I order them to do. The yearlings (second year cadets) can be fun as they try to smile even if I know they are annoyed by my constant "pangungulit" simply because they can not do anything about it. On the other hand, my love life is comprised of letters that I write every week to some girl that I met in one of the conferences I attended last year, the life there is that I am just constantly hoping that she writes me back or at least send me a text message. My family who also live different lives text me every now and then about the fun that I am missing because I am here. Day in and day out, I am just wishing that something better will happen. I am wishing that the "routineness" of my life will just change and some excitement will happen. Of course, there are other people who try to cheer me up but after that I only end up wanting to be with them, missing them more and again wishing I was free.

But then there are other things that I can do. I remember our lesson in Ethics this morning about free will. My classmate said that as cadets we do not have free will because we are not able to choose the things that we want to do. Our lives are guided by a set of rules that govern us in exchange to our scholarship and all other perks of being PMA cadets. My professor (who is a Doctor of Philosophy, by the way) said that we actually have a choice only that we are not prepared to face the consequences so we do what we are supposed to. So I began thinking, he was right. I mean I do have a choice in all this. I can just decide right now to leave this place go home and just live a normal life. But that is not who I am. I mean the life that I live now is a result of the many choices I made. It was my choice to insist on going back to PMA. That choice has brought me to this very place where I feel the things that I have written about in my blog. Just like Jhett and Hannah, their lives are a result of the choices that they made. I remember Hannah saying that she once wished she had a career in creative media. I guess all of us do have our frustrations in the life we live. I bet even the richest man in the world can be frustrated over the fact that he just have so much money while we wonder why is that. In the same way, people who dream of going to PMA and be cadets may also wonder why I even think of leaving. The truth is the world we are living is not perfect. The life that we live is only as good as how we want it to be. Each of may sometimes feel bad over the things that we do. I feel bad why Hannah can go to Glorietta everytime she wants while it requires three days for me to even be allowed to go to SM Baguio and watch Superman. Well, this is life. As Desiderata would put it "... with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams it is still a beautiful world; Be careful strive to be happy"

Well happiness is something we strive for. Some people are lucky because they do not need to try hard enough but at the end of everything we determine our happiness. Well I hope people will try to make me happy so that I wouldn't have to try hard enough....

The Gift

I was greeted this morning by a text message from one of my "fans" she complimented my write-ups in the recent Corps Magazine, and although compliments on my writing is not really new, I was flattered because she herself is a writer. But the best compliment I received in writing is a compliment from the judge in the Feature Writing Contest of this year's Regional Press Conference. He was so pleased with my piece that he had it published in the local newspaper here in Baguio after that competition. Some of the people I know saw that piece but due to the scarcity of that local newspaper inside in the Academy I can just wonder how it was presented. But nonetheless, somehow, that compliment allowed me to think of the things I like about writing, why it gives me so much joy and why I can keep on doing it even if nobody is really reading.

Take this blog. I have been blogging for like five years of my life. The two years has been archived in this site in The Pen section and the rest is in this site. Blogging first came when I began to be fascinated with creating websites. I did not know that I would learn to love writing but when I created my first website, I figured I had to put some content, so I invented some. I then asked people to come to the site but they did not comment much in how I made the website, they simply asked me to write some more. So I wrote until finally I have poured all of my feelings in that website and I enjoyed it. Noone can really blame me, I was always the honest type when it comes to my feelings and at that time I was just full of anxieties. I wanted to go back to PMA, I hated my father, I did not know what to do with my life... I did not have a clue and all those feelings only came out the moment I sit in front of the computer and let my fingers play with the keyboard. When my website became third in the Most Informative Blogsite of the Pinoy Bloggies in 2003, I realized that there was something in the things that I write and with more and more compliments from people who have read me, I understood that I had a gift.

So what then? Why would people care if I have some gift to put so much emotion in the way I arrange words to come up with something? For most of us, there comes a time where we come to the realization that we are endowed with a gift. Some people can open their mouths and make the most beautiful music, others can hold a pen a create wonders on canvass. As for me, although I often tell myself that I could be some great singer, or desperately try to make art out of colors, mine is with the pen and paper. In each of us, we have been showered with some gift. Some of us know it while others still have to find out. I believe that these gifts are manifestations that there is some purpose in our life. Being good at something must really have some reason. I do not know how to reconcile being a writer and a soldier, what I do know is that I will have to use my gift to do something worthwhile, something noble. In each of us is this rare gift that we should treasure and use to do something that does not only make us better people but also creates something that allows the world to feel the blessing that God has given us. All of us have this some kind of a light, the light in Art, to music and to others and it is a betrayal of that light not to allow it to shine and be seen by the rest of the world around us.

Now, as for me I will continue to write, just write to my heart's content and in my own little way I am able to share my gift and not betray it. I hope that each of us will find our gift and that we learn to use it the way it was intended to be.

Personality Profile

Our lesson this morning in my Management class was about this five personality factor, then I saw this test in one of the blogs I visit so I tried it and here's the result

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have high extroversion. You are outgoing and engaging, with both strangers and friends. You truly enjoy being with people and bring energy into any situation. Enthusiastic and fun, you're the first to say "let's go!" Conscientiousness: You have medium conscientiousness. You're generally good at balancing work and play. When you need to buckle down, you can usually get tasks done. But you've been known to goof off when you know you can get away with it. Agreeableness: You have medium agreeableness. You're generally a friendly and trusting person. But you also have a healthy dose of cynicism. You get along well with others, as long as they play fair. Neuroticism: You have low neuroticism. You are very emotionally stable and mentally together. Only the greatest setbacks upset you, and you bounce back quickly. Overall, you are typically calm and relaxed - making others feel secure. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is medium. You are generally broad minded when it come to new things. But if something crosses a moral line, there's no way you'll approve of it. You are suspicious of anything too wacky, though you do still consider creativity a virtue.

The Five Factor Personality Test

Bothered conscience continued

Nothing changed much as of the last time I wrote about this thing that happened to me last weekend, the only difference now is that I am more determined to correct this rather than just run away.

My weakness has always been women. I mean no matter how good I am at telling people how to go about with their relationships I always mess up my own. At a point when I am just so confident that all is well, everything just comes crashing in and I then ask myself why was I so stupid. Yesterday, a parent of a plebe ask me if I had a girlfriend. From that question began my tale of how I see this phenomena. I told her that being a cadet, it is never easy to find someone who really likes me for who I am. I know I am not perfect, in fact I am very aware that I have so much flaws that people will totally hate me. But the uniform that I wear somehow hides all that. There are just some people who become so affected by all the glamour, prestige, popularity and all other good things associated with my alma mater that they forgot that deep inside the cadets are in fact human beings just like all the others who would want to be liked, loved or even hated for their true person. I hate it when people do not see me beyond my being a cadet. I hate it when all they see is that I belong to this institution as if I am not a real person. And so there goes my story to that plebe's mother. I told her that I was simply a young man who wanted the same things that most of my peers want but is confronted by circumstances that forces someone to live in constant misconception. It is a situation where the things that I want to be is hidden by the things that my institution has created for me.

And so here I am putting everything out in the open. I am doing this because to a certain extent I enjoy the attention that sometimes I forget who I really am. The thing that bothers me is that I have abused this attention only to realize that I have done irrepairable damage to another person. Its not as if this has not happened before, it has in fact, I felt so bad about it, but then again I failed into the same trap, almost the same situation and now I want to fix this once and for all. This is the contradiction. This is because no matter how good a person wants to become, at some point he will succumb to temptations; at some point he will become stupid; and at some point he will learn his lesson the hard way. I believe that through this expression I will learn. My road towards overcoming my weakness has opened up in front of me and I am taking that route in full speed. Well I guess that is just how it is.

A bothered conscience

I just came from church and felt really bad. I did not feel bad over what I did, I felt bad on myself, it was a case of a bothered conscience.

I would like to think that I was always a good person. Not that I haven't done anything that was bad but because there was never a time that I intentionally really wanted to hurt people. As much as possible I weighed things in a manner tha was fair according to my own perspective of what is fair. I despise people who take advantage of other people's weaknesses and always wanted to give people the real deal of the things that I want to do that involved them. But yesterday was different. As if in one swift motion,I found myself betraying the very things that I believe to be fair and just. I hate it but temptations are just everywhere and we only realize that it is leading us to something bad only after we have fallen into the trap. Now, as I write these thoughts, I wonder if will I ever go back or can I ever redeem myself to the person that I abused and taken advantaged of. I am now thinking of opening up to an older person that I truly admire but somehow I am still bothered by thie guilt feeling I have inside plus the things that the person might think of me once I bring it out. When one has already done the bad deed, it is easier to just forget about it and remind one's self not to do it again, but for my part I just can not ignore my conscience who keeps on telling me that I had to do something. My conscience tells me that I had to correct my mistake and now, I am beginning to understand that it will cost me more that I can think of. I'm sorry but I just do not want to go into the details. I am still not prepared to reveal everything, maybe in time or maybe I will just camouflage it in the other things that I write, I simply do not know. What I do know is I will have to deal with it and pray to God that He will see me through.