As I write today, I am flooded by torrential papers, documents and letters that seems to be never ending. The never ending work (which includes all the readings in law school and actual work) and the melting weather makes me more excited for summer by the seashore that I almost forgot it’s just a month from Christmas. Almost throughout the year, I forgot how to feel. Even as I struggled, I remained poker face and numbed.

But today, as I watched ABS CBN’s Christmas Station ID, I found my eyes welling in tears and felt all that happened throughout the year reeling it like silent movies. Each face I met, each moment were vividly coming through my insight, telling me “there are a lot of things to be grateful for you ingrate!”

And I thank God for the wonderful year. There are so many things to be thankful for. And this post will not be able to contain them all. But aside from all the things that I am thankful for, all my answered prayers, the peace a midst distress, the love a midst all the doubts, what is important is that there is a future to look forward to. That there is hope of a betterI  life. Ergo, I am excited to work on this new project, the “PROSPERITY PLANNER” based on the best-selling books and internationally celebrated book by Dr. Carl E. Balita, who gave me the chance to work with him in crafting. And I quote from Prosperity:

“I shall enjoy every step of my journey, conquer all my fears, and ensure that I take forward and upward steps, no matter how small and no matter how difficult, to get to the top.” – Carl E. Balita

Way back in high school, I enrolled in a sign language school for some unexplained reason. My classmates were deaf children and their parents. In college, I supported the advocacy of persons with disabilities.

This picture was taken when I was in college, volunteering for the cause of people with disability. If my rusty memory serves me well, these three kids I was with were all diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

On the second to the last semester of my stay in the college of nursing, I took the leadership in filming a short film about childhood disorder for my psychiatric nursing class. It was my first directorial debut — or at least my first shot in being a film maker. It wasn’t bad, the class awarded me as “Best Director” and the film as “Best Picture”.

Originally, I wanted to create a film which explores the abyss autism. More than I wanted a story that would touch the heart of my viewer. However, it was difficult to film college peers acting like they have autism (as that would be appear too realistic). Secondly, my peers have already a world of their own to begin with.

Banking on the natural truant attitude and rebellious college student persona of most of my group mates, I decided to create a script on conduct disorder instead. In our little world, “Sunrisers” it was a hit that my peers requested more copies as a memoir of our crazy and fantastic college life.

After college, I had the privilege to be a creative consultant in a community play which featured real persons with disability created by Ten Outstanding Student of The Philippines’ Christopher Joseph Abriam and directed by Ford Fellow Anne Richie Garcia-Balgos, entitled “Despedida”.

Today, I regret two things: first, not pursuing the original concept that haunted me; second, politely declining the offer man who tried to sell me tickets of this independent film shot in Indonesia starring our very own Christian Bautista.

I tried to look for copies of “Simfoni Luar Biasa” (A Special Symphony) which brings to life the movie I wanted to create. A movie that speaks of redemption. A movie that transcends those commercial formulaic genre that clog Pinoy Cinema. A movie that translates all I’ve learned about autism and other childhood disorder. A movie that explores the beauty of what the human soul can do and surpass. A movie that weaves music, unexplored talents, and the quest for that something “special” in every individual.

And now as I reflect, I am convinced that all of us have disability. Normal is relative. At some point in our lives (at every point) in our lives we are crippled by a malady which may or may not be known to us. We have a disability embedded into our very person. At the end of the day, we are not measured by our disability but with how we recognize our flaws and transcend beyond those those things that pin us down on the ground.

Disability should be read THISability. Disabled spelled as THISabled…after all, all of us have the ability and we are able to be the best person we can possibly be.

According to a NatGeo, Great whites [Sharks] are the largest predatory fish on Earth. They grow to an average of 15 feet (4.6 meters) in length, though specimens exceeding 20 feet (6 meters) and weighing up to 5,000 pounds (2,268 kilograms) have been recorded.

More interesting, when it is born, along with up to a dozen siblings, it instantly swims away from its mother. “Baby sharks are on their own right from the start, and their mother may see them only as prey. At birth the baby shark is about 5 feet (1.5 meters) long already; as it grows it may reach a length three times that.”

What can be learned from the great white shark?

Almost three years I go, during the height of my rebel days in the university’s school paper, I have come a cross a great friend and a sister, Ivory who most of the times gave me shining moments and instant lectures of philosophy. I was “Ivorized” through our constant exchanges and ideas.

One night she sent me a text message from the “deep”. She said “grow my little great white sharks of the deep.”

I did not understand why she called me a shark. First, I don’t bite. Second, I am not violent. Third, I am not fond of sharks. Fourth, I don’t consider myself a predator. My brain instantaneously assimilated the personification of a “shark” with the analogy of “crocodiles”.

In the Philippines, when you are called a crocodile, it connotes something bad. Crocodiles have been the outright titles given to ‘creatures’ who lurk ’round the street, flag you down and charge you with a traffic crimes which only existed in the Rules of Chinese Garter or Limbo-rock (like ‘stepping’, ‘touching’, ‘bending’, ‘swerving’ and the likes) and charge you around 50 to a thousand bucks for their afternoon snack. Some of these creatures have also evolved in higher sophisticated forms and found their habitat in the halls of public office. And so I thought, “is the shark the cousin of the crocodile”?

So, in short, out of my curiosity, I asked her why she called me a great white shark. She answered:

“Great white sharks can grow so big. But they only grow up to the size of the waters swim into.”

This I never understood then. But now, it’s all so clear to me.

There is great white shark in all of us.

We are made to hunt. 

Great white sharks, like all other sharks, have an extra sense given by the Ampullae of Lorenzini which enables them to detect the electromagnetic field emitted by the movement of living animals. Every time a living creature moves, it generates an electrical field and great whites are so sensitive they can detect half a billionth of a volt. Even heart beats emit a very faint electrical pulse. If it is close enough, the shark can detect even that faint electrical pulse.

Like great white sharks, we too have a special sense given to us: Free will. This is our sense of detecting those that makes us happy and hunt for that which makes us happy. The human will is strong enough to energize the human being and compel him to act and seek for those things that make him happy and fulfilled. And, true enough, when we are close to the things that make us happy, there is this surge of energy that makes us do even the things that we can only imagine.

This affirms, that like great white sharks, all we need to be happy is already within us and with us. Our knowledge, our skills, our attitudes are reflections we are made to hunt for those things that make us feel that life is worth living.

We grow only as big as we allow ourselves to be.

As what my friend Ivory said, great whites grow in as much as their waters allow them to be. This I understood only now. Great whites are called so because of their enormous sizes. However, some were domesticated and domiciled large commercial fish tanks or in homemade aquariums. And these great whites grow only to the extent of these fish tanks.

Logically, the if the fish tank is big, the great white will grow big. If the fish tank is small, it grows small. Hence, most owners will ditch the fish thank that the great white outgrown, and get a larger one to allow it to swim, move and grow freely.

The stark reality is, like sharks, we need to go out of our comfort zones and realize that there is a larger world out there. Probably, as you read this, you imagine your circle of influence — your fish tank.

Perhaps, in your circle of influence, you are a great white shark — so overgrown that they respect and fear you. And sometimes, you grow so big that you are choked by your own tail and you die of your own self.

When we start to feel this, we ask ourselves: “Am I ready to explore the vast oceans?” or “Am I gonna stay here until I choke myself with my greatness?”

We are meant to be great, but there will always be someone greater.

Photo by Terry Goss, copyright 2006.

Can the great white be frightened? Can the most feared predator fear something more?

A fearless bully for he has none to fear, or does he?

On a sunny day, near California’s coastal islands where about hundred of great whites gather for two months every fall to dine on the sumptuous sunbathing seals, a tourist boat chanced on a surprising display…

The fatuous fish had met its match…Orca, the killer whale..had dispatched the fish-brained and shameful shark.

There is no doubt that we can be great whites in our own rights. When we step into the vast oceans we are only as great as the next fish we swim with. We can be stronger, wiser, wealthier and larger than most of the people we work with day to day. But we must never forget that there will always be someone greater than “ME”, something even larger than life itself. This he has to know since birth:

 The pup…will live its life at the top of the ocean’s food chain. But before it grows larger, the pup must avoid predators bigger than it is — including other great white sharks. Many baby sharks do not live they’re first year.

Like the great white shark who thought he was the greatest, we have this capacity to know that “GREATNESS” is relative. If this wisdom holds true with sharks, how much more must humans have have the heart to be humble, to bow down when we are humiliated, to learn humility, to be human? 

As I face the stage today, I’m giving up on my old ways (my vanity) in trying to “teach”. Teaching has been my bread and butter for quite a while, primarily because I know I am intelligent and I can transfer what I know to some receptive minds.

However, the turn of events these past months made me think things over. It can be said of me that I know a lot, because I speak a lot (or more than a lot). However, I was humbled by the reviews I received from a bunch of students who made me feel like I was a fool — a machine that endlessly gabs to just for the sake of saying something.

So now, I shall cut down on words and let others do the talking. But as they talk, I shall let them think. Sometimes, I ravel in to the bliss that ignorance and silence brings. The profound wisdom and tranquility that come with just thinking and not talking. As Socrates, would say:

“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”

SOURCE: http://coacheshotseat.com/coacheshotseatblog/archives/date/2011/04/11

Now, I start my day with a smile. And I begin by munching on this nugget of wisdom as my humble pie.

Everyday seems like a dead end — especially if life had been a routine for quite some time. If that’s not the case then, everyday must have been a struggle for survival; in that you don’t know what to do next. Life is a dog eat dog world. And most of the time, we don’t know what to do.

Whether its money, complicated relationships, pending tasks at work, or mortifying grades in school, we all face dead ends at certain point in time. But as the cliche goes: “ending are beginnings”.

As I flip through another season in life, the 2009 Bolliwood Film “Three Idiots” encapsulates everything I’ve learned this year: “AAL IZZ WELL” (All Is Well).

There Are Things Out of Our Control

I have always been a control freak. I want everything to go as I planned. I want each result they way i imagined them. I guess there’s nothing wrong about being clear-cut about what you want. However, we will have to realize at a certain point in our lives that there are things which is out of our control.

This is what exactly happened to me when i entered law school. Sleepless nights of battering myself and self- flagellating just to get through a single recitation and very intense examinations was not be enough to get me the grades I want. I was almost sick all day. My books sucked all the life out of me. I could not afford the luxury to smile. And sometimes, when I look at the mirror, I ask “who is this idiot staring in front of me?”

I wanted to be perfect at all times. I wanted the best grades.  I wanted to be in control. But why do I always fall below my expectations to the point of humiliation. Why o why?

The light bulb of understanding flickered as I realized, “there are things out of my control”.

I realized right there and then that I could not control my professor’s mind of what he will ask during recitations and major exams. I could not possibly fathom whether he will ever be satisfied with what I say or how I answer. Even if I studied to the point of suicide, even if I end up foaming in the mouth trying to memorize provisions of law and their accompanying cases, even if I condition myself to have that homicidal instinct to excel, if I wasn’t meant for this that I am doing, I will not survive this. As the song “AAL IZZ WELL” goes:

“Scholarship ki pi gaya daaru
Gham to phir bhi mitaa nahin
Agarbattiyan raakh ho gayi
God to phir bhi dikha nahi”

“Bakra kya jaan uski jaan ka kya hoga
Sekh ghusegi ya saala Keema hoga
Koi na jaane apna future kya hoga”

{You have drunk alchohol from the money of scholarship,
But still grief did not vanish
You have light many candles
But still you haven’t seen God

How can a goat know what happens to it (life)?
Will it be skewered or will it be minced?
No one knows what our future will be.}

Do Your Best

Accepting the fact that there are things which is out of our control does not however mean that we don’t have to do anything about it. Condescending to the that fact does not mean that we don’t have to do our best.

“Do your best…” has been the theme of this season. It’s both a joke and a cliche at first when I’ve heard this in a presentation by our Chief Operating Officer. It was a joke because when she presented this, she was just running out of things to say. But it made sense.

In order to us to conquer ourselves, we do not only have to draw out from out strengths; we have to be courageous enough to know and confront our limits. We are as only as strong as our weakest points. We are as only as good as we can get. Our best only reminds us how far we can go.

And by knowing, that’s the starting point of exceeding our limits. To think outside the box and go beyond the distance or run the extra mile.

When we do our best, we will never regret — even if we fall. The fall may still hurt, but we know in our hearts that we did everything. This protects us from the agonizing self-battering monologues “if only i didn’t”, “if only i did this”, “if only…” We take of the fact that we fell due to something beyond our span of control.

All Is Well

The bottom line is, there are things out of our control. And when we try to control the situation, we end up in worse. But this doesn’t mean we have to stop from trying. We still have to do our best. Which reminds me, the point of this blog is:

“Jab life ho out of control
Honthon ko kar ke gol
Honthon ki kar ke gol
Seeti bajaa ke bol”

{When life goes out of control,
Draw back your lips,
Whistle and Exclaim!!
Aal Izz Well!!}

“Dil jo tera baat baat pe ghabraaye
Dil pe rakh ke haath use tu fuslaa le
Dil idiot hai pyaar se usko samjha le”

If your heart get’s tense on every matter
Keep a hand on your heart and persuade it
Heart is an idiot,persuade it with love

One thing I’ve learned in my readings in Constitutional Law, “Life is meant to be enjoyed, not to be endured”. All is gonna be well at the end of the day — we just have to know that there is something bigger and grander than our lives. The one directing our lives. Do what you love and Love what you do. [More to come…]

“AAL IZZ WELL”