In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus teaches us the profound lesson of loving our neighbor. The Samaritan, an unlikely hero, saw a wounded man and showed him compassion, while others passed by. This story challenges us to go beyond societal boundaries and personal prejudices, extending kindness to all, even those we might consider strangers or enemies. In our daily lives, we are called to act as the Samaritan did—offering help without hesitation and loving others as ourselves. May we open our hearts to God’s love, reflecting it through our actions towards everyone we encounter.
100 words on ‘being’ between Heidegger and Levinas
Heidegger and Levinas both explore the concept of being, but from different perspectives. Heidegger’s existential analysis in “Being and Time” focuses on “Being” as the essence of human existence, emphasizing individual authenticity and the nature of existence itself. For Heidegger, understanding being involves confronting our own mortality and the concept of “Being-toward-death.”
Levinas, on the other hand, critiques Heidegger’s approach, arguing that it overlooks the ethical dimension of existence. In “Totality and Infinity,” Levinas prioritizes the “Other” and the ethical responsibility we have towards others. While Heidegger seeks to understand existence in isolation, Levinas emphasizes relational ethics and responsibility as central to being.
100 words on Another Person’s Moment
Gazing at another person’s moment in time involves deeply witnessing and appreciating their unique experiences and emotions. It’s an act of empathy that transcends mere observation, allowing one to connect with another’s lived reality. This perspective fosters understanding and compassion, revealing the intricate tapestry of individual lives. By focusing on these moments, we acknowledge the significance of each person’s journey, recognizing their struggles, joys, and transformations. This practice encourages a profound respect for others’ experiences and fosters a sense of shared humanity, reminding us that each moment is a vital part of the broader human story.
when I wake up and before I sleep, when the feeling of not being ok is most sharp.
From books to TV dramas, this topic of acknowledging your feeling of not feeling ok is becoming a cliché. The premise for this adage is that most of us are not honest about our feelings. As we move within our professional circles or communities, we tend to camouflage our feelings especially when we are supposed to lead the way, in mentoring persons or groups. Before friends, we tend to pretend in order to blend. We hide our true selves before our loved ones to avoid adding to their burdens. Acknowledging the feeling of not being ok is easier said than done. For if we can’t acknowledge it before others, then we have not acknowledged it at all.
talk to someone
Most TV dramas I’ve watched involve close friendships and buddy relationships. The teleplay will always craft a loyal, unassuming friend who listens and responds compassionately. This buddy and companion always gives their friends priority attention in times of need. It takes a long time to develop this kind of relationship. When a fall out happens, the misunderstanding leads to ghosting or erasure. All light and heavy conversations about anything with friends will cease. Lost is the privilege of talking to someone without fear of judgment. Gone is that lightness of being resulting from sharing. Then it will take a long time to find a new confidante.
engage in self care
My niece told her mother about her boredom with house chores. She had to give up her work in advertising when she had a miscarriage. After that, even working from home presented too much risk. So she stopped working altogether. Eventually, she got depressed. My sister advised her to go window shopping. When she was a young single mother, she used to take her children to the mall, whenever she felt tired and lonely. Her daughter remembered those times in the mall. In those times of useless malling her Mom fitted shoes and clothes without buying, pleasing herself with a momentary new look now and then. My niece obeyed her mother’s advice and went window shopping. She came back home with an upbeat energy, having momentarily escaped that feeling of not being ok.
meditation in poetry
The poet Christian Wiman wrote, “Poetry arises out of absence, a deep internal sense of wrongness out of a mind that feels itself to be in some way cracked.” My ‘meditation’ happens on paper because writing is therapeutic. Poetry in particular is a way of thinking meditatively. In writing poetry, I pause at every line. I struggle with every word and phrase. The meaning of the poem becomes clear to me only when the poem has finally become a poem. Writing a poem is multiple rewriting of structured notes, similar to the endless revision of our lives as we discover some new ways of being. The very first poem I wrote is entitled
How not ok I feel could be expressed through aimless walking. Walking without a destination turns negative energy into exhaustion. This exercise cause my pale skin to turn red. I lose the zombie look and gets a halo.
creative expression
One thing that I had always done, collecting art materials and storing them in my old leather bag. I have always wanted to paint. However, I have not painted at all. Not ok with not having done a sketch of even one decent picture, I do an inventory of my paint colors and brushes now and then, to keep hoping. My last sketch was of my Mother when she was still with me. I can’t find this sketch immediately but its the widget at the bottom of Page a Writer that links to this Y.A. blog.
set small goals
I’ve always gotten ahead of myself, or counted chicks before the eggs have hatched. My mouth outpace my vision and I end up projecting but not delivering. But dreaming is a way of coping. When I am not ok, I review the dreams in my journals, highlighting what has been achieved however teeny-weeny.
keep the space clean
I am not ok with noise and a messy home. I can feel clutter even if I don’t see it because my house is small. Every bag and basket in my home is for storage of basic and mundane things. When I am not ok, I destress by organizing those ‘bagged’ objects, ensuring that every thing I’m keeping away deserves the space. This relaxes me.
listen to music
I find walking with earphones, and listening to music while doing something else, tedious and stressful. Restaurants play background music too loudly-not at all music to my ears. Neighborhood karaoke singing assaults my ear drums. How do I cope in the midst of noise and mess? I leave that space for one that is quiet and orderly, where music adds to the ambiance. But almost always, this space is expensive.
maintain a routine
There is the routine bad habits and the routine that is productive. Routine bad habits include drinking expensive coffee every morning, eating halo-halo or puto bumbong for dessert, risking a sugar spike, and binge watching on Netflix until very late in the evening. The routine that is productive involves the exact opposite of those three. But when not ok, meryenda and watching K-drama on Netflix is my default-not- ok normal.
seek professional help
My doctors are the following: An endocrinologist, a cardiologist, an EENT specialist, an ob-gynecologist, a breast cancer surgeon, a throat specialist, and an ophthalmologist. Aware of my mortality, I am ok only as far as ok can get. Indeed, my health card is proof of this.
I have been consuming brewed black coffee every morning, to go with corned beef pandesal. My dine-in beverage is always served with warm and cold water on the side, plus two brown sugar and half a cup of milk. Breakfast takes up at least two hours while I watch a K-drama episode with an ear-phone plugged into my ears. Between 7 and 9 AM sipping the hot brew relaxes and empties my mind of serious stuff.
While I prefer the coffee black to go with my bread and meat, I always pour the hot milk and stir in the brown sugar on the remaining coffee when I’m done eating. The coffee that I take with me to work will be my drink for the whole day. Little by little, it will be consumed while I labor on my lesson plan, check student papers, and deliver the class lecture.
I used to feel guilty about the cost of this habit. But not anymore. Breakfast time is a healthy downtime for me. I walk three blocks more from the coffee shop with a backpack that has my laptop. On the road, there is not much to see, but there is room for meditation. My mind doesn’t wander away much from the day’s routine, however, I become more alive and ready for what may or may not happen. My pace is uncalculated, there’s no reason to hurry. I have been savoring this slow pace enhanced with good coffee in a mug that fits in another bag I carry, a sling bag. Walking gets organically woven into this slow movement and I say that it is my morning exercise. Coffee will never leak from the mug in this fifteen-minute walk, but I’m mindful of its presence, as it has become a paraphernalia of my senior year.
MEMORIES OF PURE AND ADULTERATED COFFEE
As a ten-year-old child, I used to run to a nearby sari-sari store in the morning to buy coffee. The vendor will grind a ganta of Barako and wrap the ground beans in a cone-like roll of writing paper. My mother will boil water in the kettle and when the bubbles appear, she will pour the coffee. She will turn the fire to its lowest before pouring the aromatic breakfast drink into our tin bowls. We dipped our bread in the coffee, or if we were having rice, we poured the coffee onto the rice, and we ate our coffee-brimmed rice with pinais or pinangatna isda.
In my grandmother’s house, she served ‘utaw‘ or boiled ground black rice. We considered utaw our First coffee since it would always be the one served with hot bread as soon as we woke up. Then at around 10 AM during my grandfather’s break from weaving palm leaves into panels that would be lined up for roofing a nipa house, Nanay would serve the real coffee in tin mugs. We knew it was time to eat again, with coffee aroma wafting in the atmosphere. Her grandchildren would all sit on the wooden bench around the long wooden table. As our palates demanded, we poured the second coffee liberally on our fried rice, scooping mouthfuls and strips of tinapa with our bare hands.
Coffee and rice had been the comfort fast food up until I was a teenager. We did not filter our coffee and recycled the drink many times until it turned into a pale black and lost its aroma. We took it with bibingka, sweet potato, cassava cakes, boiled bananas, and pancit. When I left the province to work in Manila, coffee became rare and special. There was no way I could get it fresh and cheap from a nearby store. Instead, it was available in ‘three-in-one’ sachets of beans that were often boasting their quality. To me, a three-in-one tasted something akin to baking soda mixed with sugar. But I drank it anyway, as I hurried up before walking or riding the bus to work. Coffee wasn’t a beverage but a comrade, a prompt for the empty stomach during the early rush hours. The morning routine required a partial or full sip of this hot blend, to ensure that I was fully awake and ready to brave the day.
UNCONSUMED COFFEE TO GO FEEDS THE WRITING HUNGER
Consuming coffee little by little while writing is like having an hourglass that tells me when my blogging time is up. I started with a full mug of leftover coffee and after three hours, it was finished. Drinking coffee has made writer’s block less daunting and more tolerable. A reason to plod on was that the mug was still half full. When I’ve consumed all the coffee I bought, I can pause from thinking. Though I have penned thoughts rather than ideas, I am not hungry for more. Tomorrow, when the day begins, I can buy brewed coffee again, and go back to writing.
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 2 Cor 4:16
Rosuvastatin, 10 mg, Metronidazole forte and Cefuroxime are the latest pills prescribed for my health issues aside from the maintenance drug Levothyroxine for my thyroid, and Caltrate plus and vitamin D to prevent osteoporosis. The statin which the cardiologist always prescribed since 2019 but I had refused to ever take, has finally earned a slot in my pill box. This requires an adjustment of the budget for medicine, which currently covers only the multi-vitamins and the thyroid pill.
The side effects of a statin drug according to ‘concerned’ YOUTUBERs are muscle pain and weakness. Proponents of the Keto Diet argue that taking this lowering cholesterol drug will actually cause an imbalance in the body’s cholesterol levels, and will make it worse. Yet my doctor insists that I take it because my blood pressure stays up at 140 over 90 and goes even higher.
Should you panic about your current health condition, considering how it has been in the past?
Walking from ST. Luke’s Hospital to the Uptown Mall takes twenty minutes. I paced normally, with no issues, no dizziness, no nausea, no muscle pain, no nothing. This time of blogging [9:06-10:25 PM] attests to my feeling healthy, because while crafting this article was slow and tedious, I had enough energy to stay awake and write to the end.
As a teenager, I often fainted because my meals were not full enough to carry me through the school day. In my thirties, I was hospitalized twice due to episodes of benign positional vertigo. Thyroidectomy, Polypectomy, Mastectomy–I had these in my late forties. Now in my pre-retirement years, fainting has never re-occurred, my vertigo has not acted up. But new spasms in my stomach pressure me to avail of the health card’s executive check-up benefit.
Three days of pain on the right side of my belly was a cause for panic, but I took no drug until after I saw the gastroenterologist. By the time of my appointment, the spasms had faded and my bowels had returned to normal. I regretted buying all the prescribed medicines for the spasm. Hopefully there won’t be a relapse of the gall bladder issue, but just the same, I had bought the drugs and they were expensive.
Why do you panic?
Panic is not programmable as if clicking on some buttons will heighten or prevent it. But it happens when the budget allocated for medicine suddenly increases. The stress is caused more by limited finances rather than bad health, especially if the pathology results demand rare expensive drugs. My mother used to say that were it not for the medicines prescribed for her cervical cancer and its complications, my brother’s remittances could have purchased for her some new assets or afforded an inter-Island tour. But yes, she did not at all panic because she had a health card, an allotment for medicines, and a daily allowance for food and other basic needs.
How not to panic when your vital signs show you are not that healthy?
The safest recourse is to make sure that there is an allocation for all the cost of ill health, even if you are asymptomatic. Manage the proceeds of your government health insurance. The time has come as well to apply a portion of your stock dividends to medical contingencies. Don’t hesitate to initiate a dialogue about your financial emergencies with your nearest kin to give them an opportunity to give back. Be honest about your needs to those who can support you.
But other than these, the best safeguard against panic is still a renewed commitment to a healthy lifestyle. Eat better food, walk more blocks, pray all the time, sleep early and read more. These don’t even cost that high.
For the elderly, panic is a useless reaction because every moment must count and panic is a waste of time and energy. Worrying about our health will further shorten our days which have become shorter. And although we can still dream, we can count fewer opportunities of chasing those dreams. Since our future is here, let us then perfect the art of numbering our days. Instead of panic, we must spend our less than robust days in quiet meditation, to prepare our mind and body for the inevitable.
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