Tuesday, May 31, 2005
unclear clues to my head and heart..
*sigh* i was gonna post it... but....
Friday, May 27, 2005
off early
thank goodness, i need rest.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
it is finished...
it went well, considering. i was surprised about it actually. i can't say i'm happy cuz i'm not. it's so sad. but i'm a bit relieved for now. we'll see how life goes... who knows what the future has in store. if we're meant to be together, then there we'll be.
thank you for those kind ears who listened to me. i truly appreciate my friends. sometimes i don't feel i have many close ones. and i miss those that i've had through the years. so thanks.
thank you for all the lessons learned and the love we shared (despite The Rule. i hate the rule still).
thank you for those kind ears who listened to me. i truly appreciate my friends. sometimes i don't feel i have many close ones. and i miss those that i've had through the years. so thanks.
thank you for all the lessons learned and the love we shared (despite The Rule. i hate the rule still).
Monday, May 23, 2005
what's that line?
hey, you know in the last episode of sex in the city, when carrie goes off to the french guy about her wanting love, blah blah blah kind of love, the can't live without each other kind of love... what is it [the line] exactly? can someone help me out?
testing
dude, what's with the browser... does the bottom of my blog cut off on your browsers too? i can't seem to get to the bottom of my page...
Saturday, May 21, 2005
great mail
from my auntie enid, as always. and the timing is just impeccable.
Advice for the married, planning to get married, single but not
available, single and available, no love life.
------------------------------------------------------------------
PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz
I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.
When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.
And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible.
How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the other's habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other? The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility.
Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages.
The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They got to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They’ve seen each other at their worst and at their best. They’ve shared time together before they got swept into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.
This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each other's company over the long term.
If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world.
Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new. Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.
After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.
Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance doesn't become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.
There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.
So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word.
There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.
Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.
If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.
But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousnesses come together and share a view of life that passes
before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared.
This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken is somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains.
But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.
So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation.
If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers.
If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom...endlessly.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means you've decided to see life beyond the imperfections. So, don't say you're happy because everything is alright. Be happy because everything sucks but you're just fine..." -- Anonymous
Advice for the married, planning to get married, single but not
available, single and available, no love life.
------------------------------------------------------------------
PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz
I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.
When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.
And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible.
How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the other's habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other? The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility.
Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages.
The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They got to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They’ve seen each other at their worst and at their best. They’ve shared time together before they got swept into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.
This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each other's company over the long term.
If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world.
Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new. Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.
After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.
Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance doesn't become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.
There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.
So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word.
There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.
Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.
If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.
But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousnesses come together and share a view of life that passes
before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared.
This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken is somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains.
But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.
So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation.
If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers.
If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom...endlessly.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means you've decided to see life beyond the imperfections. So, don't say you're happy because everything is alright. Be happy because everything sucks but you're just fine..." -- Anonymous
Friday, May 20, 2005
it's a miracle
... yes, i'm actually going to post. well, maybe. for some odd reason, i'm a lil nervous, cuz i feel like i forgot how to do this blog thing. it's been a long long while, ya? i figured most of you have gotten discouraged, and i'm pleasantly surprised that there are still those optimistic ones who check every once in a blue moon.
~ where oh where? ~
so if you didn't know, what's occupied my mind, time, energy has been mina and danny's wedding. well, the fateful day of may 14, 2005 has come and gone like the wind and the happy couple are currently in the riviera maya, mexico.
and here, i am, in the quiet of my thoughts. it was kinda nice the first few days, but like all brides, i am having withdrawals from the wedding planning. even jill said she got sorta depressed after planning her wedding. lotsa people have actually been p1mping out my services to other brides-to-be to help them with their wedding planning. i'm sooo totally down for it. at this point, honestly, i'd love to be compensated just by a kickass tip. i'm not exactly sure about how much wedding planners charge, but i figure, if i'm just helping out friends here and there, i don't need to charge an actual amount. it'd just be nice to have a nice "thank you" tip. cuz i do love doing this stuff anyway.
~ drama encrypted ~
certain incidents occurred at the wedding the snowballed into other issues that brought yet other issues to surface. and now i sit here wondering about the fate of my relationships and if there is something i should do more actively or wait to see if things will improve or see if things blow up again. if the 3rd of those choices occur, then i'll be in the same boat again, wondering if i should stay or if i should heed the red flag or ignore it, hoping that it will improve/go away, but with the realization that i may have to accept the fact that it will continue to occur for the rest of my life. and if that's the case, then will i accept that fact and live with it? for...the...rest...of...my...life?
~ and more questions ~
and then there's always the age-old advice that i get from people i trust in my life. just wait and be patient. don't rush into things. but what does that mean? does that mean, continue what i have going right now? even with the knowledge that it may someday end? or not even the knowledge, but the wondering if it will end? and if it will end someday, then shouldn't we not waste time and just end it now? but there are so many implications of that result that would be so sad to lose! but in the long run, will it be better?
so with all this... it's been a rather depressing week. lemme rephrase, it's actually outwardly been a good week, especially cuz today is aloha friday! but i've been rather depressed this week. and i dunno how to get out of it. it's not like i have a resolution, so all i'd have to do is implement it. i don't know what the resolution should be. my worst fear is making the wrong decision in my life. that tends to make me afraid of making choices, so i remain paralyzed.
~ little girl ~
sometimes, i wish someone would just tell me what to do. all of those years my parents told me what to do and i resented them... now, i kinda wanna hear it, but no, they actually tell me that it's my decision to make. great.
~ where oh where? ~
so if you didn't know, what's occupied my mind, time, energy has been mina and danny's wedding. well, the fateful day of may 14, 2005 has come and gone like the wind and the happy couple are currently in the riviera maya, mexico.
and here, i am, in the quiet of my thoughts. it was kinda nice the first few days, but like all brides, i am having withdrawals from the wedding planning. even jill said she got sorta depressed after planning her wedding. lotsa people have actually been p1mping out my services to other brides-to-be to help them with their wedding planning. i'm sooo totally down for it. at this point, honestly, i'd love to be compensated just by a kickass tip. i'm not exactly sure about how much wedding planners charge, but i figure, if i'm just helping out friends here and there, i don't need to charge an actual amount. it'd just be nice to have a nice "thank you" tip. cuz i do love doing this stuff anyway.
~ drama encrypted ~
certain incidents occurred at the wedding the snowballed into other issues that brought yet other issues to surface. and now i sit here wondering about the fate of my relationships and if there is something i should do more actively or wait to see if things will improve or see if things blow up again. if the 3rd of those choices occur, then i'll be in the same boat again, wondering if i should stay or if i should heed the red flag or ignore it, hoping that it will improve/go away, but with the realization that i may have to accept the fact that it will continue to occur for the rest of my life. and if that's the case, then will i accept that fact and live with it? for...the...rest...of...my...life?
~ and more questions ~
and then there's always the age-old advice that i get from people i trust in my life. just wait and be patient. don't rush into things. but what does that mean? does that mean, continue what i have going right now? even with the knowledge that it may someday end? or not even the knowledge, but the wondering if it will end? and if it will end someday, then shouldn't we not waste time and just end it now? but there are so many implications of that result that would be so sad to lose! but in the long run, will it be better?
so with all this... it's been a rather depressing week. lemme rephrase, it's actually outwardly been a good week, especially cuz today is aloha friday! but i've been rather depressed this week. and i dunno how to get out of it. it's not like i have a resolution, so all i'd have to do is implement it. i don't know what the resolution should be. my worst fear is making the wrong decision in my life. that tends to make me afraid of making choices, so i remain paralyzed.
~ little girl ~
sometimes, i wish someone would just tell me what to do. all of those years my parents told me what to do and i resented them... now, i kinda wanna hear it, but no, they actually tell me that it's my decision to make. great.
quotable quotes
-
"To try is to risk failure. But risk must be taken because the
greatest hazard of life is to risk nothing. The person who risks
nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid
suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change,
grow, live, and love."
~unknown
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
~ Abraham Lincoln
"live a life that others will remember years from now, NOT because it pointed to you but because of how it pointed to the One who made you."
~ Mark Hart, the Bible Geek
"we grow up learning to become self-reliant, but really we need to be God-reliant"
"we could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors....but they all exist very nicely in the same box"
"never wound hearts that love u, never give them the endless pain, because wounded hearts are like roses that never bloom"
"there comes a time when we have to stop loving someone not because that person has stopped loving us but because we have found out that they'd be happier if we'd let go"
