Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Beyond the fear that we have
I realized that the entrance exam is fast coming up and have not written anything to entice people to take the exam. I'm doing that now.
There are so many things people want with their life. I mean, like me, its not like I went here to fulfill some nationalistic sentiment that is within me. To be honest, I came here just to have a life. I think most of us here do. But then life in the Academy changes the person and for most of us, it has defined the kind of people we are and hope to become.
Earlier today, I asked two of my underclass to go to my room and discuss something that I have observed in the way they are doing their duties. It was not some violent discussion but it was more of a scolding. I was telling them that what we are doing here is more than just getting through each day to graduate but we are doing something that is beyond graduation, in fact beyond than our dreams. I told them that we are establishing a foundation that maybe this country can make use of when the time comes.
I am saying this in the light of the recent deaths of our graduates in a war that not so many of our country men agree. I am saying this because I know parents will dissuade their children from taking the PMA Entrance Exam because they are afraid that some general will send them to a war-torn area to die when they graduate. I have talked to people who actually are afraid of what will happen once I graduate in seven months time. I, myself, am afraid to the future that lies ahead of me with many of my upperclassmen making the ultimate sacrifice, wondering if I, too, am prepared to do the same.
I will not lie to people and say that the death is not as real as how it is portrayed in the media. I will not be a hypocrite that all of the fears that most people have about the war that is happening down south is just a stage and will pass in due time. What I will say is that like all of those people who are afraid of sending their children to become cadets, I too am afraid. Like those students who now do not want to go through with their wanting to become cadets because of graduates dying in quick succession, I, too am afraid of dying. But the truth of the matter is we are all afraid everyday of our lives. We are afraid that when we sleep tonight we may not wake up tomorrow morning and see the light of day. We are afraid that our loved ones, although within our reach may meet some crazy accident that will make us lose them. The truth is fear is what makes us humans yet it is not the thing that defines us. To allow it to define us is not being human.
I was watching Brothers and Sisters earlier and related so much to the anguish of the characters who was so afraid of their youngest going to Iraq to join the war. The truth is it was the closest portrayal of how it is with most of my family and the family of the other cadets here. On the day that we learned about the death of our upperclassmen, we huddled up in silence both afraid and sad. But despite that, I look forward to the day when I graduate and join them out there, not because I also want to die, but because by understanding the fear that I have, I learned that there are more reasons to be proud of what I do. I learned that there are more reasons to stop all those violence because the fear has to stop and the job fell on my lap.
I guess, I am not the best person to really entice people to take the PMA exam on Sunday. I am no good at trying to glamorize things especially in the light of what is happening to our country. But my call is not just to take that exam but rather it is not to allow fear to define the kind of person that we are, or rather the kind of people that we are. I am afraid but I will not allow it to define me.
The PMA Entrance exam will be held on the 26th of August in all major cities across the country.
There are so many things people want with their life. I mean, like me, its not like I went here to fulfill some nationalistic sentiment that is within me. To be honest, I came here just to have a life. I think most of us here do. But then life in the Academy changes the person and for most of us, it has defined the kind of people we are and hope to become.
Earlier today, I asked two of my underclass to go to my room and discuss something that I have observed in the way they are doing their duties. It was not some violent discussion but it was more of a scolding. I was telling them that what we are doing here is more than just getting through each day to graduate but we are doing something that is beyond graduation, in fact beyond than our dreams. I told them that we are establishing a foundation that maybe this country can make use of when the time comes.
I am saying this in the light of the recent deaths of our graduates in a war that not so many of our country men agree. I am saying this because I know parents will dissuade their children from taking the PMA Entrance Exam because they are afraid that some general will send them to a war-torn area to die when they graduate. I have talked to people who actually are afraid of what will happen once I graduate in seven months time. I, myself, am afraid to the future that lies ahead of me with many of my upperclassmen making the ultimate sacrifice, wondering if I, too, am prepared to do the same.
I will not lie to people and say that the death is not as real as how it is portrayed in the media. I will not be a hypocrite that all of the fears that most people have about the war that is happening down south is just a stage and will pass in due time. What I will say is that like all of those people who are afraid of sending their children to become cadets, I too am afraid. Like those students who now do not want to go through with their wanting to become cadets because of graduates dying in quick succession, I, too am afraid of dying. But the truth of the matter is we are all afraid everyday of our lives. We are afraid that when we sleep tonight we may not wake up tomorrow morning and see the light of day. We are afraid that our loved ones, although within our reach may meet some crazy accident that will make us lose them. The truth is fear is what makes us humans yet it is not the thing that defines us. To allow it to define us is not being human.
I was watching Brothers and Sisters earlier and related so much to the anguish of the characters who was so afraid of their youngest going to Iraq to join the war. The truth is it was the closest portrayal of how it is with most of my family and the family of the other cadets here. On the day that we learned about the death of our upperclassmen, we huddled up in silence both afraid and sad. But despite that, I look forward to the day when I graduate and join them out there, not because I also want to die, but because by understanding the fear that I have, I learned that there are more reasons to be proud of what I do. I learned that there are more reasons to stop all those violence because the fear has to stop and the job fell on my lap.
I guess, I am not the best person to really entice people to take the PMA exam on Sunday. I am no good at trying to glamorize things especially in the light of what is happening to our country. But my call is not just to take that exam but rather it is not to allow fear to define the kind of person that we are, or rather the kind of people that we are. I am afraid but I will not allow it to define me.
The PMA Entrance exam will be held on the 26th of August in all major cities across the country.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Just one wish
"There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries"
I spent most of the day watching the last 6 episodes of season 4 of One Tree Hill and it ended with this quote reverberating inside my head. For some reason, the things that are happening in my life seem to reflect the words of Shakespeare.
There have been a lot of times in my life that has made me afraid of what the future holds. In most cases, it is my undying hope that give me the boldness to face it and just take the plunge to believe on whatever good it might lead me. To be honest, my moments of boldness are actually at the same time my moment of being the most afraid yet choosing to be bold and allow things to come.
It was the same boldness that fought hard to put me back in this Academy. A period of not really knowing what to do but just doing what is immediate at that point of time. Eventually finding myself at the doorsteps of my dreams. It was also that boldness that fought hard against Calculus wanting to stay alive despite my classmates falling one by one in my midst. This time it is also the same boldness that I look forward to the day when I finally pass my Physical Fitness Test even as I dread the time when all I can think of is the possibility of not meeting the minimum requirement of that test. I am really just doing everything that I can believing that just like always it will turn out fine.
But the thing that I am most afraid of right now yet I face with boldness are the things that are going on inside me. The so many emotion that seems so much for me to process yet I have to deal with everyday. I am beginning to think that the world revolves around me in a manner that blurs so many of the things that I want for my life. Sometimes, I wonder if the things that are in me are still ME.
I have learned from experience that when everything seems to be so confusing the best decision is always to believe on love. So in all of it I tried to find the love out of it and then just believe it regardless of how I feel. The choice becomes harder when it does not boil down to me but on other people and all I have to do is have faith. I may say a lot that I have faith on things but saying is very much different from what is happening inside of me. The anguish that I try to live each day constantly wondering if what I have been doing will lead to what my life is for. With loving, I have to allow people to be themselves and tell myself everytime that love does wonders that I do not understand. Its like waiting for a miracle to happen, hoping that things will fall amazingly in my favor but still trying to get in terms that if it does not happen then God did not want it to happen that way.
I know that after sometime, I will look back at this entry and say to myself how stupid I was to doubt my faith or how insane I was to think that what I am thinking is even remotely possible. Either way I will have to deal with what is it that will happen. But for now, the feeling inside me frightens me. It frightens me not because I am afraid of how things are to end but because for quite sometime I realized that I never wished for something as badly as I am wishing for right now. I realized that what I am wishing for will actually define the life that I will lead.
I spent most of the day watching the last 6 episodes of season 4 of One Tree Hill and it ended with this quote reverberating inside my head. For some reason, the things that are happening in my life seem to reflect the words of Shakespeare.
There have been a lot of times in my life that has made me afraid of what the future holds. In most cases, it is my undying hope that give me the boldness to face it and just take the plunge to believe on whatever good it might lead me. To be honest, my moments of boldness are actually at the same time my moment of being the most afraid yet choosing to be bold and allow things to come.
It was the same boldness that fought hard to put me back in this Academy. A period of not really knowing what to do but just doing what is immediate at that point of time. Eventually finding myself at the doorsteps of my dreams. It was also that boldness that fought hard against Calculus wanting to stay alive despite my classmates falling one by one in my midst. This time it is also the same boldness that I look forward to the day when I finally pass my Physical Fitness Test even as I dread the time when all I can think of is the possibility of not meeting the minimum requirement of that test. I am really just doing everything that I can believing that just like always it will turn out fine.
But the thing that I am most afraid of right now yet I face with boldness are the things that are going on inside me. The so many emotion that seems so much for me to process yet I have to deal with everyday. I am beginning to think that the world revolves around me in a manner that blurs so many of the things that I want for my life. Sometimes, I wonder if the things that are in me are still ME.
I have learned from experience that when everything seems to be so confusing the best decision is always to believe on love. So in all of it I tried to find the love out of it and then just believe it regardless of how I feel. The choice becomes harder when it does not boil down to me but on other people and all I have to do is have faith. I may say a lot that I have faith on things but saying is very much different from what is happening inside of me. The anguish that I try to live each day constantly wondering if what I have been doing will lead to what my life is for. With loving, I have to allow people to be themselves and tell myself everytime that love does wonders that I do not understand. Its like waiting for a miracle to happen, hoping that things will fall amazingly in my favor but still trying to get in terms that if it does not happen then God did not want it to happen that way.
I know that after sometime, I will look back at this entry and say to myself how stupid I was to doubt my faith or how insane I was to think that what I am thinking is even remotely possible. Either way I will have to deal with what is it that will happen. But for now, the feeling inside me frightens me. It frightens me not because I am afraid of how things are to end but because for quite sometime I realized that I never wished for something as badly as I am wishing for right now. I realized that what I am wishing for will actually define the life that I will lead.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
To live and to die
Earlier today, I came from a little gathering with the Superintendent. He hosted us to welcome our new Assistant Superintendent. Being the person that he is, who always had a way of inspiring the cadets, I can't help it but be emotional of how he hard it was to mantain a certain feeling in the past weeks. Like him, I also felt that the previous week was more like a roller coaster ride.
This morning, a group of my classmates participated in a Fun Run for a cause called "Takbo para kay Toledo." It was a fund raising campaign initiated by the members of PMA Class 2006 to help their valedictorian who is now sufferning from the rare Bile Duct Cancer. I think many will remember his story as the one shown at Maalaala mo kaya a few months back. On the other hand, last Friday, somewhere in the south, three of his classmates (my upperclass) together with one member of Class 2005 was killed in an encounter with the Abu Sayaff Group. The irony of it is that as one PMA graduate struggles to extend his life while down there four other PMA graduates are gone.
This morning, a group of my classmates participated in a Fun Run for a cause called "Takbo para kay Toledo." It was a fund raising campaign initiated by the members of PMA Class 2006 to help their valedictorian who is now sufferning from the rare Bile Duct Cancer. I think many will remember his story as the one shown at Maalaala mo kaya a few months back. On the other hand, last Friday, somewhere in the south, three of his classmates (my upperclass) together with one member of Class 2005 was killed in an encounter with the Abu Sayaff Group. The irony of it is that as one PMA graduate struggles to extend his life while down there four other PMA graduates are gone.
In the previous death of 2Lt Camelon, I was able to stop my tears, with the four recent deaths, I failed. How does one accept death as a natural occurence of life when it happens so sudden to those of us who have come to accept it as such? As I said Death is death but to say that it is simply death is simply a insult to the life that these people have lived. And it is basically because of the same reason that we join hands and do everything that we can to keep Lt Toledo alive. To allow him to just pass away without a fight is an insult to the life that he lived. And I really think that the statement is true to all of us.
With the reality of death getting into me more and more each day as we mourn the death of several of our brothers in arms comes the emergence of really facing living and dying in its genuine form. To face it and deal with the issues of how to live and how to die. Life becomes so real that I can't help it and ask myself if I am giving justice to this life I am living?
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The love that overflows
In a correspondence with someone I know, our topic, although not explicitly, revolves on the love that we have experienced in our lifetime. When we talk about our family so fondly, or about how experiences changed the way we are as a person, we are in fact speaking of the love that we experienced. With that said, I will be writing about the love that overflows.
There are two things that can happen to a person. To accept love or not to accept it. Either way the person is still loved. If you come to think of it, there is never an instance in this world that one is in lack of loving, its just a matter of acceptance. I realized that the month of loving we experience solely depends on the amount of love we want to accept, this then goes on to say that those who say they lack love lacked acceptance. We will never really know how loved we are. Not that it should be taken negatively but the thought that the love we can experience can not be measured is a promising prospect that life in this world is indeed wonderful (that is if you consider being loved as a good thing).
Now the reason I am saying all this is because for most of us, we tend to think that love is something that requires other people. Especially this generation, we think that love is there to be found, the truth is: IT IS THERE TO BE EXPERIENCED. I am saying that love is not a feeling of some sort it is actually a part of our life, an experience that is for our taking. It is not borne out of intricate formula that came from a brilliant mind, but rather it is the proof of our existence that simply overflows everywhere.
The point of all this is love is a natural result of living this life the way it should be lived according to the purpose that we were created. Being borne out of love means that we are creatures of love which is also the reason why we are capable of doing so. In the end to live is to love and not to love is to be a walking dead person.
I guess it will be hard to accept that there are indeed difficult situations, lives that are ruined but in all this its just a matter of realizing that love overflows and its all a matter of acceptance.
I love you people!!!
There are two things that can happen to a person. To accept love or not to accept it. Either way the person is still loved. If you come to think of it, there is never an instance in this world that one is in lack of loving, its just a matter of acceptance. I realized that the month of loving we experience solely depends on the amount of love we want to accept, this then goes on to say that those who say they lack love lacked acceptance. We will never really know how loved we are. Not that it should be taken negatively but the thought that the love we can experience can not be measured is a promising prospect that life in this world is indeed wonderful (that is if you consider being loved as a good thing).
Now the reason I am saying all this is because for most of us, we tend to think that love is something that requires other people. Especially this generation, we think that love is there to be found, the truth is: IT IS THERE TO BE EXPERIENCED. I am saying that love is not a feeling of some sort it is actually a part of our life, an experience that is for our taking. It is not borne out of intricate formula that came from a brilliant mind, but rather it is the proof of our existence that simply overflows everywhere.
The point of all this is love is a natural result of living this life the way it should be lived according to the purpose that we were created. Being borne out of love means that we are creatures of love which is also the reason why we are capable of doing so. In the end to live is to love and not to love is to be a walking dead person.
I guess it will be hard to accept that there are indeed difficult situations, lives that are ruined but in all this its just a matter of realizing that love overflows and its all a matter of acceptance.
I love you people!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)