Post by dredpooh on Apr 2, 2006 9:39:24 GMT 8
Hiyeeh, Happy RK Day! 
Read on Korina's column today...
www.philstar.com/philstar/lifestyle200604029601.htm
or
Wait, hold that moment
CHAMBERS By Korina Sanchez
The Philippine STAR 04/02/2006
It’s either a day raining petals of flowers as if in a nostalgic slowmo against a cool mist disappearing into the warmth of the rays of the morning sun – or it’s a day raining… and…. that’s about it. Some of us wake up in the morning raring to get out of bed no matter which side of it we rise up from knowing the world awaits to be conquered. Some mornings are darker than the evenings before. There are times Murphy’s Law rules the entire week and you say, "If that’s the best you’ve got, then bring it on!" At other times, the mere sound of the next car’s honking horn can send you on a warpath. For women there might be a bevy of stimuli to cause a bad reaction. Let’s see. PMS. Husband came home late. Again. Kid got a failing mark. Jeans won’t fit. Peri-menopause, oh God, not yet. Menopause…oh God, save me. For men, well, it is said there are four things one should NEVER comment on to a man’s face. His hair. His height. His income. The size of his – (CLUE: It isn’t his bank account). Safely, if a man were to be entertaining thoughts of updating his last will and testament just in case he really gets around to jumping from the rooftop, that would most probably be because of something that’s got to do with any of these four. But really. How exactly do you know whether you’re having a bad day – or a bad life?
It’s crucial to know the difference. How sorrier could it be beyond believing you were born to suffer? I’ve been "retired" a couple of times in my career. In my cub reporter years in the government-owned MBS Channel 4, I thought I’d put in quite a lot into three years of clocking in 18 hours every day of editorial assisting, cutting bond paper and inserting carbon sheets then stapling them in orderly perfection (I don’t know exactly when the xerox machine became an ordinary office fixture but we didn’t have it then), rushing down two flights every 60 minutes to get to the studio for the hourly newsbreaks, doing the weather report every night and reporting from the field on weekends. Then came 1986. My first sampling of corporate politics and political history Philippine- style was when after then President Marcos was finally confirmed as having landed and was secured in Hawaii. All my bosses were replaced and then Information Minister Greg Cendana was the first to go. The senior correspondents were shown the door and most of those who got in because they were well-connected naturally took the longest vacation of their lives. There wasn’t anything to tweak in weather reports and, being the weather girl, I was one of the less controversial carry-overs (I did hear though that the former First Lady could actually make it rain when she wanted – by cloud seeding). Yes, I was one of those who got to stay. But they wouldn’t let me go back as an anchorperson. Gone, too, were the days I’d have the chance to pinch-hit for the newscaster who couldn’t make it to her shift. I was devastated. I had to accept I was retired at 21. Or I thought I had to. A year or so more into my retirement came the buzz about the return of the franchise to operate for the reopening of ABS-CBN. Better to start from zero somewhere else than to have stayed where you were good as a 70-year-old holdover. Turns out – believing myself at 21 would have meant missing out on, arguably, the best years of my broadcast life…being part of the team that restarted Channel 2.
Thrust into the grownup world of political revolutions and corporate upheavals, the experience was definitely good practice not to ever succumb to the temptation of thinking that a bad moment translates to a bad destiny.
A friend who runs a drug dependence rehabilitation center in Tagaytay tells me that most of his patients who keep coming back on relapse are the kids who never quite snapped out of a bad moment or a succession of bad moments. While the escapist turns away from society and goes against the rules and, in the process, becomes the identifiable candidate for reform it is, actually, the discreet functionary – the one who gets up for work, drives the kids to school, puts up with the dead-end job and pays the bills – who requires extra sensitivity. We can actually walk dead thinking we’re living. He’s lost all faith and hope and even the wife doesn’t know it. She has decided to quit trying and her husband doesn’t even know it. Was it the loss of their child to leukemia? Was it the second mistress? Was it her premature hysterectomy? The company going bankrupt? God forbid but, to some of us, it could be more than two or three of all these. Even rock-hard land mass gets eroded over time by the constant, continuous assault of the waves. My new friend Bernie let me in on a secret. He told me he put up the drug rehab center after himself coming out of that dark pit where all he saw was a more tolerable distorted picture of reality. His reality being – he wasn’t good enough for his family so he made himself good enough to his junkie groupmates. He remained hooked on shabu for years. It was the realization of the joy that family gave – his wife and children – taken away that made him snap out of his indulgence. He decided to hold on to one moment against the other. It was that moment when Bernie first saw his first-born stand up and walk to him and drool with baby-saliva while laughing over that moment when he first failed in his fledgling business. It was that moment when his kids and wife were praying over Christmas dinner and the children going for the presents under the tree over that moment when he believed the sky crashed on his world when he was expelled from the Ateneo, the only school he had ever known and loved. I haven’t met Bernie’s wife. But I can imagine that, in standing by Bernie through all that she did she probably let go of those moments she cried her eyes shut in despair and chose to hold on to the moment Bernie proposed his love and commitment to her. Our lives have so far been made up of such moments. And who we are is determined by which moments we hold on to.
Unfortunately, there probably wasn’t a camera around to snapshot every good moment that came your way. I have a personal habit of picking up an unusual stone or a leaf from a tree nearby, or a napkin at a restaurant, a ticket or receipt to remind me of feelings of joy, warmth, accomplishment, love and contentment. In case you’re wondering, these mementos either go to a box or get pasted to an album – a project I have yet to finally complete. Like some of you, I suppose I’ve also consistently saved and archived in my computer text messages I’ve received that warm my heart. Messages that remind me I’m somewhat a worthy human being that somehow makes some difference for the good in some people’s lives. For everything else that haven’t been caught on camera or were moments in memories from the distant past, I’m planning to list them all down in this beautiful white leather covered notebook I got as a gift last Christmas (thanks Malu). It’ll be my very own Feel Good Moments notebook. Imagine the next time you get talked down on by anyone and you start believing you’re not good enough. And then you take hold of that time when the sale for a client in your company came through because of your idea, yours! Or imagine a time when you’d feel lost and unanchored and you take hold of that moment you had a talk with your Mom or Dad and they said, "You can do it. Kaya mo ‘yan. Just believe in yourself and in God." Or imagine your husband coming home late neither giving you a kiss nor a hug you so expected and you watch him in his pyjamas mouth open snoring beside you in bed. You’re tempted to cry yourself to sleep. And then you take hold of that moment when you realized this was the same man who most believed in you when no one didn’t seem to.
Imagine yourself writing down every good moment you could remember – just the things that most mattered, for starters. You might think it corny. But you might just save yourself in the process. For in the memories of your heart will you find one of the most potent weapons of self defense for your good life. The good moments. The only moments that truly matter.
Read on Korina's column today...
www.philstar.com/philstar/lifestyle200604029601.htm
or
Wait, hold that moment
CHAMBERS By Korina Sanchez
The Philippine STAR 04/02/2006
It’s either a day raining petals of flowers as if in a nostalgic slowmo against a cool mist disappearing into the warmth of the rays of the morning sun – or it’s a day raining… and…. that’s about it. Some of us wake up in the morning raring to get out of bed no matter which side of it we rise up from knowing the world awaits to be conquered. Some mornings are darker than the evenings before. There are times Murphy’s Law rules the entire week and you say, "If that’s the best you’ve got, then bring it on!" At other times, the mere sound of the next car’s honking horn can send you on a warpath. For women there might be a bevy of stimuli to cause a bad reaction. Let’s see. PMS. Husband came home late. Again. Kid got a failing mark. Jeans won’t fit. Peri-menopause, oh God, not yet. Menopause…oh God, save me. For men, well, it is said there are four things one should NEVER comment on to a man’s face. His hair. His height. His income. The size of his – (CLUE: It isn’t his bank account). Safely, if a man were to be entertaining thoughts of updating his last will and testament just in case he really gets around to jumping from the rooftop, that would most probably be because of something that’s got to do with any of these four. But really. How exactly do you know whether you’re having a bad day – or a bad life?
It’s crucial to know the difference. How sorrier could it be beyond believing you were born to suffer? I’ve been "retired" a couple of times in my career. In my cub reporter years in the government-owned MBS Channel 4, I thought I’d put in quite a lot into three years of clocking in 18 hours every day of editorial assisting, cutting bond paper and inserting carbon sheets then stapling them in orderly perfection (I don’t know exactly when the xerox machine became an ordinary office fixture but we didn’t have it then), rushing down two flights every 60 minutes to get to the studio for the hourly newsbreaks, doing the weather report every night and reporting from the field on weekends. Then came 1986. My first sampling of corporate politics and political history Philippine- style was when after then President Marcos was finally confirmed as having landed and was secured in Hawaii. All my bosses were replaced and then Information Minister Greg Cendana was the first to go. The senior correspondents were shown the door and most of those who got in because they were well-connected naturally took the longest vacation of their lives. There wasn’t anything to tweak in weather reports and, being the weather girl, I was one of the less controversial carry-overs (I did hear though that the former First Lady could actually make it rain when she wanted – by cloud seeding). Yes, I was one of those who got to stay. But they wouldn’t let me go back as an anchorperson. Gone, too, were the days I’d have the chance to pinch-hit for the newscaster who couldn’t make it to her shift. I was devastated. I had to accept I was retired at 21. Or I thought I had to. A year or so more into my retirement came the buzz about the return of the franchise to operate for the reopening of ABS-CBN. Better to start from zero somewhere else than to have stayed where you were good as a 70-year-old holdover. Turns out – believing myself at 21 would have meant missing out on, arguably, the best years of my broadcast life…being part of the team that restarted Channel 2.
Thrust into the grownup world of political revolutions and corporate upheavals, the experience was definitely good practice not to ever succumb to the temptation of thinking that a bad moment translates to a bad destiny.
A friend who runs a drug dependence rehabilitation center in Tagaytay tells me that most of his patients who keep coming back on relapse are the kids who never quite snapped out of a bad moment or a succession of bad moments. While the escapist turns away from society and goes against the rules and, in the process, becomes the identifiable candidate for reform it is, actually, the discreet functionary – the one who gets up for work, drives the kids to school, puts up with the dead-end job and pays the bills – who requires extra sensitivity. We can actually walk dead thinking we’re living. He’s lost all faith and hope and even the wife doesn’t know it. She has decided to quit trying and her husband doesn’t even know it. Was it the loss of their child to leukemia? Was it the second mistress? Was it her premature hysterectomy? The company going bankrupt? God forbid but, to some of us, it could be more than two or three of all these. Even rock-hard land mass gets eroded over time by the constant, continuous assault of the waves. My new friend Bernie let me in on a secret. He told me he put up the drug rehab center after himself coming out of that dark pit where all he saw was a more tolerable distorted picture of reality. His reality being – he wasn’t good enough for his family so he made himself good enough to his junkie groupmates. He remained hooked on shabu for years. It was the realization of the joy that family gave – his wife and children – taken away that made him snap out of his indulgence. He decided to hold on to one moment against the other. It was that moment when Bernie first saw his first-born stand up and walk to him and drool with baby-saliva while laughing over that moment when he first failed in his fledgling business. It was that moment when his kids and wife were praying over Christmas dinner and the children going for the presents under the tree over that moment when he believed the sky crashed on his world when he was expelled from the Ateneo, the only school he had ever known and loved. I haven’t met Bernie’s wife. But I can imagine that, in standing by Bernie through all that she did she probably let go of those moments she cried her eyes shut in despair and chose to hold on to the moment Bernie proposed his love and commitment to her. Our lives have so far been made up of such moments. And who we are is determined by which moments we hold on to.
Unfortunately, there probably wasn’t a camera around to snapshot every good moment that came your way. I have a personal habit of picking up an unusual stone or a leaf from a tree nearby, or a napkin at a restaurant, a ticket or receipt to remind me of feelings of joy, warmth, accomplishment, love and contentment. In case you’re wondering, these mementos either go to a box or get pasted to an album – a project I have yet to finally complete. Like some of you, I suppose I’ve also consistently saved and archived in my computer text messages I’ve received that warm my heart. Messages that remind me I’m somewhat a worthy human being that somehow makes some difference for the good in some people’s lives. For everything else that haven’t been caught on camera or were moments in memories from the distant past, I’m planning to list them all down in this beautiful white leather covered notebook I got as a gift last Christmas (thanks Malu). It’ll be my very own Feel Good Moments notebook. Imagine the next time you get talked down on by anyone and you start believing you’re not good enough. And then you take hold of that time when the sale for a client in your company came through because of your idea, yours! Or imagine a time when you’d feel lost and unanchored and you take hold of that moment you had a talk with your Mom or Dad and they said, "You can do it. Kaya mo ‘yan. Just believe in yourself and in God." Or imagine your husband coming home late neither giving you a kiss nor a hug you so expected and you watch him in his pyjamas mouth open snoring beside you in bed. You’re tempted to cry yourself to sleep. And then you take hold of that moment when you realized this was the same man who most believed in you when no one didn’t seem to.
Imagine yourself writing down every good moment you could remember – just the things that most mattered, for starters. You might think it corny. But you might just save yourself in the process. For in the memories of your heart will you find one of the most potent weapons of self defense for your good life. The good moments. The only moments that truly matter.
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