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the light-hearted perfectionist
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| Not-Quite Valedictory Speech LOL |
[30 Mar 2008|01:23am] |
I am done with school, imagine that. For some reason, I didn't feel particularly sentimental during the graduation ceremonies. Not even whilst my march across the stage. It's not so much as me being an emotionless bag of rocks; I just feel ready and raring to start the rest of my life. Of course, what did sort of get to me was the dinner with my parents (just the three of us; my real celebratory feast with all five siblings in tow shall be at lunchtime tomorrow). They overwhelm me, and I'm not good at handling overwhelming situations. During the dinner, I felt happy and cocky and insecure and endeared. Most of all I felt ambitious. I just want the chance to give back and share this feeling of warmth. My parents may annoy me to oblivion at times, but I nevertheless do feel like I'm the luckiest kid in the world, far too often than I deserve.
Anyway, college is over. Freaking ME is over. I realized - through the utterly inspiring speech by Dr. Hortaleza (founder of Splash Inc.), the homily by Fr. Daniel Hwang S.J. during the Baccalaureate Mass, and the experience of seeing scores of latin honor graduates march up the stage - that my performance is always good, and never great. The reason for this is not so much STML or spurts of stupidity (although these do comprise a large chunk); it's mainly because I'm unsure of what I want. I tend to be satisfied prematurely like an overeager 13-year old about to get some, that I unwittingly limit myself even when there is the opportunity to be so much more.
I'm too easily satisfied.
The ironic thing is, I also always feel like nothing is ever enough. It took me a long time to figure out how to reconcile anal retentiveness with living spontaneously. My grades serve as proof (at one time, it fluctuated from a 3.58 to a 2.08). Finally, at the final semester of my final year, my mind was clearer. I realized that trade-offs were necessary, but not as much as I once thought. There are limits to how much work and play a person can balance; but that fact alone does not determine the calibration. In the end, equipped with the right tools (like better - but still lacking - time management skills), I got the highest mark I'd ever gotten (3.71 - I am more than happy with this!) while being able to enjoy spur-of-the-moment drinking and Smash sessions. Our mode of living is not an either-or scenario - i.e. jack of all trades or master of none. There is something in the middle, if only we cared enough to aim for it.
And so I realized: Impossible is nothing... Just make a darned good plan. This involves knowing that vision translates to action; moving onward and upward; honing the skills we need to carry out plans; and, as Dr. Hortaleza said, maintaining that burning passion in your gut.
I am grateful to them Jesuits for helping me become a committed humanist; to friends for helping me remember the little things that make up life as I know it; to family for the love that makes all of what I do purposeful and beyond worthwhile. These have urged me on to a certain point where all that's left wanting is a thrust from within. I remain not so different from the little dreamer of a kid that I once was. My journals, riddled with questions of identity and the extent of natural limitations, have found their recompense in this perspective that I now happily wear. As Fr. Hwang referred to in his homily, Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov says, "You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education... And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation." I am grateful to myself for remembering - and never letting go - of what I can only deem as most important.
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| Moving Out! |
[22 Mar 2008|01:07pm] |
Hey everyone, I'm finally relocating -> ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kuriboshoe. Just add me up or whatever. :D (I don't know what "or whatever" could mean, haha.)
I'll still write in this journal though, for the heavier stuff. Kuriboshoe's more day-by-day-themed.
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| reprise to 11-04-07 entry (realized this only now, edit) |
[16 Feb 2008|07:27pm] |
I'm all alone on a Saturday night. Alone with my thoughts, which can be a pretty rowdy bunch. I've still got a ton of work ahead of me. Papers, papers. I'm doing my assignments very grudgingly, seeing as the end of term is so very, very near and because I've been youtube-ing American Idol and I feel like a cop out for not doing something I'm really interested in. (I kinda admire that David Archuleta kid who's still young but knows what he wants, in the same way I kinda admired Shia LaBeouf.) Not that I could sing or whatever, but it would be nice to know how to. But that's not even the point. The point is that I'm 21, work is very, very near, and although I have no worries about landing a good job or living my life successfully in the corporate sense (as Napoleon Dynamite said in Blades of Glory, if you think it, you can do it!), I know that that'll never be enough for me. I want so much more, and I doubt if I'm ready to get that.
So yesterday I was Wikiped-ing all these greats. Camus, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Sartre, Kerouac, Neruda, Schweitzer, Goethe, even Hildebrand for some reason. I needed perspective, one that was broad enough and transcendence-seeking enough that it works towards a humanistic end, and not for a life that would become some footnote to history. (Not that being a footnote to history makes me any less of a person, but it would signal how I didn't set out to do what I personally wanted to do.) I sound megalomaniacal, I know, but it's not about being remembered or whatever. It's about something more selfish, a purpose for existence, if you will. That purpose for me lies in being my own version of the catcher in the rye, both spatially and longitudinally. It's an audacious goal, something only a polymath can probably do. So that's what I should aim to be.
Problem is, all my life I've been wont to settle for relative greatness. The world makes it so satisficing, and I highly doubt anyone who says they don't even slightly feel the same way. (of course, relative greatness, being relative and all, is spread out in a spectrum. i'm not as concerned with it as i once was, but it's somehow still there, no matter how unwittingly subscribed to.) At times of clarity, I do what I want, but even then I'm not really 100% in it. I don't really agree with his premise (or at least of how I understood it), but it's useful to see the world the way Sartre did. We are as free as our desires allow us to be. Want more, be more.
But in wanting there is moral relevance. i'm pretty proud of my morality, where it stands and all that, but i know i've got a long way ahead of me before I reach like honest clarity. For one thing, that line from that U2 song which goes 'you say you want your story to remain untold' is something beyond me, because I do want my story to be told, and that says something about how I still have that need for some stories to be told over others. Well that isn't necessarily bad - you can't write off history - but it should be viewed in a way that still sees every person's value as infinite and incomparable to anyone else's. that sounds preachy and something your mother would say, but i truly believe that. hence, the recording of history is but a recording of inspiration.
In the end, in choosing that big dream you'll be pursuing for the rest of your life, you have to consider the entirety of your purpose and the entirety of the universe. From there, whether you choose to be a fisherman or a space cowboy, is all up to you.
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| britney spears has a british alter-ego |
[18 Jan 2008|01:59am] |
captain's log
reports: 9
papers: 7
not to mention reflection papers and issue memos.
all in one month!
tomorrow, 3 outlines due. 1 quiz.
2 readings. 1 consultation.
and i've had this massive headache for the whole day.
oh well. somehow i found the time to hang out in high street with leo, melbs, and cis while listening to amateur bands, mostly from Ateneo also.
i have not slept soundly at all this week. but i'm surprisingly in a happy mood. my hypothalamus or whatever emotion-handling chunk up there is probably damaged already.
Weeeeoow.
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| The Friends Dilemma |
[14 Jan 2008|08:38pm] |
Having spent time with groupmates - all acquaintances - for my immersion program, I realized how there are so many nice people out there. Nice people with whom certain aspects of your self just jive with. The sad thing is, as much as I'd want to get to know them better, time seems to have run out. I have my own set of friends, they have theirs, and with no pretenses of a required immersion program on the agenda, I doubt if anyone really cares to do anything about it. I know I don't. Not that I'm complaining about my current set of friends, of course. It's just that I want to know about the lives of so many other people, but there's bound to be a trade-off at some point. You can't be good friends with everyone, that's just the way things work.
This all seems obvious and preachy, but I sure as hell am feeling something unfamiliar, like I'm losing something I never owned in the first place. Of course, this positive view towards these certain people may all be due to a lack in fuller understanding of who they really are. (Familiarity, after all, breeds contempt, dunnit?) But when you're at this stage of knowing someone, you tend to assume the best, no matter how much you reason otherwise. (I don't know why I'd reason otherwise, but I'm a cynical person by default.)
I don't know. I guess I'm just disappointed with how the world works. It all becomes all too political all too fast. Next thing you know, you're shaking hands with a pretentious fuck and you realize you're just like him. Being 21 is difficult.
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| Merry Christmas One and All! |
[25 Dec 2007|10:40am] |
Christmas eve is always my favorite part. We had dinner at my grandmother's (just across the hall from my house, literally), and ate everything, from my mom's patent-pending Iberian Chicken to Bong's sister's homemade brownies. In the lead up to the dinner, we had our traditional musical sing-a-long (2460-Ooooonee!) and Bring-Albert-to-his-Girlfriend's adventure. I like how peaceful the reunion is - none of the politics that comes with, say, buying flowers for All Souls Day. Last night, it was all about holiday cheer.
And I got lots of neat gifts! Nothing stupendous like a PS3, but I couldn't care less. I'm made happy by the most trivial things.
havs from merbs
usb from my sister (this is the perfect gift for me. Me, who thinks that surviving through college with a 3 1/2 floppy disk is an achievement.)
navy blue chinos from my mom
a praxinoscope from kuya (it's like a zoetrope, that animation toy we bought at EK)
a pack of Lights + lighter from ansel
toblerone from jollan
and Kare-Kano dvds! From albert this one. I've been looking for dvds of the whole season and couldn't find it anywhere. I know, most of you are probably thinking "wtf is kare-kano?", but it's one of the most influential shows for me, right up there with Seinfeld and Arrested Development (which I'm sure I've mentioned in an old entry, but anyway.) Albert shows his thoughtful side very rarely, but when he does, it's sure to be quite something.
On Christmas morning I awoke to the words "Oh Iiii, Haaad the time of my liiiife.." and to the blurry sight of my sister watching Dirty Dancing. So now I'm looking for a copy of Dirty Dancing 2.
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| Cobblestones |
[07 Nov 2006|08:50am] |
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I want to wear a trenchcoat and own it.
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| Sucipe? |
[05 Nov 2006|12:31pm] |
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music |
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Hold On - Jet |
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I need to just be for a while.
There exists a stipulation regarding all my relationships - an evil, self-gratifying one - that provokes me to either be overly self-important, or overly self-rejecting. Well, this condition may exist for everyone else (I can't imagine how anyone else can function without it, honestly) such that it requires not an extraction of this clause, but rather, as always, a change in perspective. I want to elaborate, but I'm not capable. Not yet, anyway.
Good thing Superman leases his ol' dependable Fortress.
Count on me to make a lame joke in an effort to provide levity at what I actually consider a most serious matter.
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| From the Landfill |
[20 Oct 2006|08:03am] |
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music |
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Music is not Music Unless You Play It! Tenenenentenen |
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Sembreak, you do not come soon enough. I've finally accomplished all my requirements (save for the lib books I forgot to return today. Someone come with me on Monday, let's make an adventure of it!). Operations Rresearch Finals was draining but immensely fun. Damn Farmer John, though. His question ate up my 40 points. Philo orals went fine. The thesis I cooked up went like this:
To do philosophy is to exercise the human prerogative. The quest for self-discovery does not merely entail entering wonderland; we have the ability to determine what wonderland is. There is no final, indubitable answer to questions regarding ourselves and our purpose; what is important is the process of becoming, or homo in viator. It is not equivalent to resignation; rather, it is the very source of our humanity.
Yeah, I know. Wonderland? But I've always been fond of childhood references. My grade? B+, when I was hoping so much for an A! Sir Jope wrote "Good thesis.. Discuss the points of your thesis. No need to go through the 5Ks [philo lecture reference] one by one." I knew that! Why'd I still do it though? And what does that say about my transcendence? Haha, I guess that I do better on paper. And that I should construct my speech earlier for more time to prepare, rather than minutes after an OR exam when my mind is mush. The sad part is, my knees kept shaking while going down the stairs of Bellarmine. I'd make for a bad Roman emperor.
Gah, grade-consciousness. Sorry I can't control myself. Or that I sort of don't want to control myself about it. Help me I can't stop.
SMEG sem is over and I know I could've done better. There's a hefty big chance that I might've failed Finance, which means I wouldn't get that ostentatious certificate guaranteeing my ME-hood just yet. But I learned so many things that are more important than stock options, not the least of which is my [newfound] ability to smile in the middle of a crisis. You guys don't fail me. (Haha, that's not a real link, but I'm sure you know who you are.)
FFXII, Entourage, Naruto, here I come! I think I'll get me a haircut and new contacts, 'cause I've allowed myself to look like an imp for far too long. And there is so much more to write about, but I guess I'll save it for later. I have all the time I need anyway! MuhuhuahahaHAHAHAHAHHHHHrrzzschkljen!
Sorry. I'm just too happy! And there's Jin's birthday tomorrow to look forward to, aside from whatever The Gang planned for tonight! I know I said something counter to this during my orals, and I don't mean to be a hyprocrite, but right now, I feel that there is nothing so very wrong with finding contentment and sticking with it.
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| Interlude |
[08 Sep 2006|10:23am] |
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I think I'm ready.
Noncommital, nervous, irresolute, that the only way to interpret it is to think about the situation that brought the need for the utterance. Its meaning is always implicit. It can be, I have no choice but to make myself prepared, or, I've set my standards lower, and I am prepared for this less demanding task. When you're ready, you're ready. Your body feels that you are ready. And there are no second thoughts, or even any conscious thought, about it.
I've realized that I say this line to myself frequently. My everyday life is characterized by actions motivated by necessity, with concealed self-doubt always trailing behind. I wait for the time when there are no more words to utter - where there is nothing left but a thrust from within and a simper at the corner of my lip.
I'm a man of many wishes. I hope my premonition misses.
It, the most important it, is not just for the ignorant; it is also for the most willing.
For practical purposes, I lay it down - consciously, but with full intent. I can now honestly say, as far as honest goes, that I am ready. World, I am ready. Give me something.
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