P[e]NORAMA

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It’s sad when you must relegate the things you love doing the most, and which gives you the most fulfillment, to the background; when you can only do them if and when you have extra time.

It’s not only that it’s hard to find or make ‘extra time’; it’s more because, in relegating your passion, you keep an essential part of you locked up somewhere deep. Thus, you become just half the person you are, or could be. You remain just a mere potential — one who can become, but doesn’t.

There is nothing sadder than having it, yet failing to make it.

Sherma E. Benosa; 25 August 2012; 11:59am

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REGRETS. We all have them. But we’d rather not focus on them. We’d rather focus on the positive side of things. Talking about regrets doesn’t seem so positive, so we wouldn’t dare allow our regrets to come to the fore of our thoughts.

But  there is something positive about realizing our regrets and talking about them. Knowing what we regret the most in our lives can lead us to better decision-making today, or even influence us to make a u-turn or to change our course. Being fully aware of our regrets can guide us in realizing what we truly value in life. It can help us pick up lessons from our past, thus allowing us to better ourselves.

Having regrets can actually be a good thing. It means we have realized that we’ve made mistakes. After all, you cannot regret something you don’t recognize as a mistake.

Regrets are not, in themselves, negative. What can be negative are our attitude towards our regrets. Things become negative only when we decide to dwell on our regrets, yet wouldn’t do anything to ensure that we wouldn’t have the same regrets in the future.

So why don’t we try to do things differently and for once, think and talk about our regrets and what we can do to ensure we wouldn’t have similar of them in the future?

To start, here are two of my regrets in my 30+ years:

1) I regret those moments I thought I was too old to try something. There were things I wanted to do in my early 20s but didn’t because I thought it was late. Now I look back and realize being 20-something is still young to be late for anything.

2) I regret those moments when I put a limit to myself. Now I know better. You can do whatever you set your mind to achieve. You just have to work really hard.

[I'll add to the list later.]

How about you? What are your regrets?

~Sherma E. Benosa

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My neighbors laughed when I told them what I intended to do with the rope I bought.

“You have a wild imagination,” one of them said.

But I retorted: “Disasters can happen to anyone. I don’t want to be caught unprepared.”

It was a few months after Ondoy. Ours were among the houses that were submerged in the flash flood that inundated Metro Manila. Since that experience, I had become more safety and preparedness obsessed.

Although compared to many, my brother and I may be better prepared for eventualities such as disasters, I realized during Ondoy that I am not as prepared as I want to be. So immediately after that great flood, I began devising escape plans and procuring things I may need to get myself (and hopefully others, to safety).

Hence, the rope (and the other things I bought since then).

I have two door accesses, so maybe I’m pretty safe in case of fire. But I have a third possible exit, the window. The only problem is that I will have to jump off and probably sustain fractures in order to escape. Realizing this, I bought a rope I could use in case my only exit left is the window.

Wild imagination? Maybe. But could you say that when all you needed to get to safety is a few meters of rope and you find yourself not having it?

I am not one who wouldn’t do my part and then blame the government for lack of preparedness. More than anyone, disaster preparedness is a function of families and individuals. Making sure that our place is safe is our responsibility, not the government’s. Moreover, sometimes, during emergency, the only way we could help in rescue efforts is by getting ourselves to safety on our own, so that rescue workers could focus on others who might be in worse situation.

More →

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We Filipinos tend to ‘make tiis’ of bad situations. There is not enough food on the table? Magtiis. The bed is hard? Magtiis. The job is low paying? Magtiis.  The rented room is too small and doesn’t have a comfort room? Magtiis. Better that, than nothing at all.

In bad times, being able to make do with little and put up with bad situations can be a positive trait. It enables us to withstand difficulties. It allows us to be resilient when we go through rough situations. But while being able to make do with what we have and with our difficult situations help us to survive harsh life and catastrophes, if taken to the extreme, it will also stop us from striving to make things better.

The way I see it, an adverbial particle — muna — must always go with the verb magtiis. With ‘muna,’ we are making a promise to our self that the unpleasant situation we are in is only temporary and that we will do what we can to get out of it. And soon. Until then, we have to learn to ‘make tiis.’ Magtiis while we don’t have resources to avail of something better. Magtiis until we get out of poverty. Isn’t there a Filipino saying: “Habang maiksi ang kumot, matutong mamamaluktot (While the blanket is short, learn to curl for you to fit in it)”?

Copyright Sherma E Benosa 2011
[Extracted from a longer piece scheduled for publication]

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In caring for pets, I have allowed a new kind of fear into my system: “What happens when it’s time for the kittens to go? Can I take the pain? Can I even make the decision to euthanize them when the time comes?”

These are the same thoughts that sometimes keep me awake at night, when I am most vulnerable, when fear somehow manages creep in to torment me: “What happens when the time for me to lose members of my family and close friends to death? Will I be able to withstand the pain?”

These are the kinds of thought that make me want to travel to my folks, and hug them and just wanna be with them. These are the very same thoughts that sometimes make me wish to still the moment, to make the present stay as it is. For though the present does not hold the fruition of my dreams, it has all the things I hold dear — family, friends, dreams, hopes, my pets. With the people and pets I love — alive and breathing — the here and now may well be perfect.

But just as soon, a voice reminds me to have faith in Him, to understand and accept that death is a part of life. That, without death, there may also be no life.

With that thought, I extinguish fear and I begin to breathe freely again. What will be, will be. Just enjoy the present. For all I know, I may well be the first to go.

Indeed, when we love, we make ourselves vulnerable to heartaches and pain. In caring for people and pets so much, we offer our hearts to be broken. And while our pets and the people we love might never want to break us, they will. Sometimes, simply by breathing their last.

Many times, I tell myself not to care so much to avoid pain. But that would be like killing myself to avoid dying.

So I guess I should simply live in the moment. Hug my pets and enjoy their company. Love my folks and friends, and share life with them. And to the rest of humanity — share a smile, some good deeds, and bits of myself.

Who knows, perhaps in doing what I ought to do, the inevitables will not scare me so.

//Sherma E. Benosa
September 28, 2011; 11:25am

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“Be the change you want to see in the world.” —Mahatma Gandhi.

I believe that the only way we can improve the world we live in is by changing first the things that are close to us — that means, first and foremost, ourselves.

While I endeavor to do my share in my community, I am also busy trying to change myself and become a better person.

’Project Me’ is a series of long-term (hopefully lifetime) and short-term personal development endeavors that I will go through in the hope of improving myself and creating a better me. In this project, I will analyze my weak points and create a program that I will challenge myself to adhere to, until this program/behavior forms part of my habits.

Some of these endeavors, I may choose to write about, while others, I will keep to myself.

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Background

During the past five years, I have been doing some personal personality enhancement efforts to create a better me. These efforts have been:

1) writing in Ilocano [2007-2008]

2) learning and loving to cook and becoming more physically active [2009-2010]

3) shifting my circadian rhythm [from 4am to 2pm sleep time to 11pm to 5am sleep time) [2010-present].

This is, however, the first time that I will be naming the project.

First ‘Project Me’ Endeavor: Time and Me

“The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.” —Stephen Covey

So yes, my goal for now is to manage myself vis-a-vis time. In particular, I am challenging myself to arrive at least five minutes early in every appointment, including my classes to show that I respect other people’s time. I am a perennial late comer, sometimes to the point that I get stressed out when there’s traffic. I think it’s about time I gotta change that. [Exception: GUMIL meetings.] The challenge commences tomorrow, September 12.

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She shrieks at me again

This silence with a hoarse voice.
I close my ears to her ramblings

But she pries open my soul

Her tongue sharp

She cuts me to pieces

Wounding me like she has wounded me

Many times before.

I try to kill her — my tormentor.

But she just laughs, mocking me

Killing me like she has

Killed me many times before.

Again she shows me

They ring the loudest

The words that lurk underneath

The voices we forbid to speak.

//Sherma E. Benosa; 14 August 2011; 8:41am
aka Brainteaser = Penteaser