P[e]NORAMA

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As my way of bidding goodbye to 2009 and welcoming 2010 and its infinite possibilities — with the kind of hope that can never be extinguished by painful circumstances — allow me to post some of my selected Status shoutouts in FaceBook since I became active in April. Let it be my humble way of thanking you for sharing with me your time and friendship. For, despite the challenges that came our way as a nation, the past year had been rife with lessons, opportunities, and blessings. Thank you for the good times, the opportunity to appreciate life with you, the friendship.

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I am chasing words. Where have they gone? 

I think I’ve become my dad’s pen name: Tawatao (Wanderer)

I think I have an avid stalker by the name of Virtuelle Friend. He’s tailing my every move. Oh my, I guess I oughtta behave. Properly. 

I am stalking my stalker; my captive who wants to believe he is the captor. haha! 

One of the best moments of my life is when I can be my child self, free of all the inhibitions and worries of my adult self. It’s when I know other adults must be laughing at what I’m doing, or for doing what I am doing (at my age), and not caring one bit.

By virtue of the power vested in me by my crazy-trippin’ self, I declare today a real V-day! No thinking about work, reading up for class, letting anything/anyone stress me up, nor complaining that FB forces me to shorten my shoutouts. I’ll just concentrate on pestering my Sweetie.

“Almost” followed by a positive word is such a sad phrasal construction. Though it suggests “close to being,” it still means “not quite.” (—SEB, June 28, 2009 while traveling to Baler)

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“Why are you back?” The store-owner exclaimed when he saw Magico, the magic spectacles, back on his display shelf. He had just sold it to an odd couple — a pessimist and a dreamer. “Your new owners must be looking for you!”

Magico simply dropped his gaze.

The store owner’s brows creased. “What’s wrong, Magico? You look so sad. Did your new owners mistreat you?” he asked softly, opening the display cabinet. He took out the magic spectacles and made it sit on the glass top, facing him.

Magico shook his head. “No master,” he replied softly.

“Then why did you leave them? What happened?”

“Well, Master,” Magico sighed. “The dreamer put me on. Then he exclaimed, ‘Oh, how lovely everything is. Beautiful clouds across a clear blue sky, smiling flowers and swaying leaves, vast oceans, captivating sunset and sunrise, spellbinding moon, twinkling stars… ah! How beautiful earth really is.’”

“So? What’s wrong with that?” The brows creased deeper.

“I don’t know, Master. It just made me very sad. I thought it was sad that even with me on him, he still couldn’t see everything. He was only able to see the beautiful things, not the bad.

“So?”

“So,” Magico gestured helplessly, “it means he thinks he lives in a perfect world. Even with his sharpened vision, he still couldn’t see the troubles of this world. That means he never will. So he will never be able to address them.”

The master touched his chin with his right hand.

“Then,” continued Magico. “the pessimist put me on and exclaimed, ‘Moon? Captivating sunrise and sunset? Twinkling stars? My, you must be on to your pathetic dream again! I don’t see anything across the sky. All I see are the blackish clouds threatening to fall. And the flowers, the leaves… what’s so special about them? Can’t you see they will eventually wilt? Pathetic, that’s what life on earth is!”

“Oh, so they quarreled?” The master exclaimed. “Is that why you left them?”

“I don’t know if they quarreled, Master,” Magico shook his head. “I left them as soon as I heard them exclaim those things. I realized I’m of no use to them. Sure, I could make their visions clearer, I could sharpen their eyes, but I can never make them see the world as it really is. I can never widen their perspective nor inject understanding into them. What’s the use of sharpening their vision if all they see are the things they want to see?”

The store owner simply gazed at Magico, unable to form a good reply.

//SEB; 24 July 2008; 11:30

Copyright 2008 Sherma E. Benosa. All Rights Reserved.

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Ever wondered why contentment seems to elude man? When we get that which we’ve always wanted, we are happy and seemingly content for a while. But soon, we will find ourselves wanting something else. Our needs, our wants, just keep coming. We are never content.

I am sure you’ve heard that to live life to the fullest, we should concentrate only on the essentials. But how do we know which of the things we have, or want, are essential, and which aren’t, when we tend to measure life by the non-essentials that we have?

The following article, which was sent to me via email, illustrates this point very well.

Wisdom in Hot Chocolate

(Author Unknown)

A group of graduates, well-established in their career, were talking at a reunion and decided to visit their old university professor, now retired.

During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives.

Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups — porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain-looking, some expensive, some exquisite — telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.

When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said: “Notice that the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup you’re drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases, it is just more expensive, and in some cases, even hides what we drink.

“What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup. But you consciously went for the best cups. And then, you began eyeing each other’s cups. Now, consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your money, job, position in society are the cups. They are just the tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us. God made the hot chocolate; man chooses the cup. The happiest of people do not have everything. They make the best of everything they have.”

So, how’s your hot chocolate? Can you say, “it’s very good” and truly mean it?

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They always tangle or get knotted up!

I’m talking about the cords — those highly functional bits of strands without which we cannot turn on our gadgets unless they are battery operated. I untangle them every day, or every other day, but soon they will again be all tangled and knotted up. I keep thinking they simply have a habit of “messing” themselves up. Perhaps to annoy the impatient me?

I also noticed that they tangle in a way that is not easy to fix. Often, for me to fix them, I will have to unplug one or all of them. It just wouldn’t do without some unplugging, which is a bit annoying when you are currently using the gadget to which they are attached. Like me, I use wired connection, so I often do not want to fix the tangled cords because I would lose my connection, which sometimes I need to do for me to get something else working, say my speaker which is plugged on the same socket.

So yeah, I sometimes think life is so much easier without these cords. But then, when I need them and I find that I don’t have them (like when I went home to Nueva Vizcaya last year and realized I did not have my PC charger) I realize I couldn’t properly work without them. Hah!  It’s during these moments that I realize just how much gadget-dependent I am. (But that is not really the point of the post, sorry.)

Back to tangling and untangling. This afternoon, as I crouched down to yet again untangle and unknot my cords, a thought hit me: cords are very much like us. No matter how careful we are, we always get caught up in tangles we never wanted to find ourselves in. And no matter how often we untangle ourselves, we just keep getting knotted up and tangled. I involuntarily shook my head at the idea.

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AN UNSEEN HAND turned an unusually bright spotlight upon a darkened stage. Out of nowhere, a figure stepped onto the platform, with no idea how he got there or where he came from. Neither did he know what to do. But in his mind, he seemed to be hearing a voice fainter than a whisper, giving him a vague instruction to act and to say something. 

Half-bewildered, half-suspecting someone was pulling his leg, the figure looked to his left and right, and realized that he wasn’t alone; that he shared the stage with several other beings — puppets, marionettes, dolls, and stick figures — who, like him, had no idea why they were there.

It was as he turned to his right that the figure noticed something peculiar: the arena where he and the other beings were to perform had no seats for spectators.

AFTER HOURS OF walking to and fro the stage — many times crossing paths, a few times colliding with, and sometimes walking alongside the others — the figure just knew, though he couldn’t explain how, that he was being called off the stage. So he delivered his last lines, bowed to the other beings, and started to make his exit. As he retreated to the backstage, he heard some kind of noise erupt. Whether it was a collective applause or booing, he wasn’t sure; he didn’t turn to see.

Reaching the backstage, the figure saw a silhouette making weird gestures as though he was conducting an orchestra. Thinking that the silhouette was another actor about to step onto the platform, he gave him a sympathetic look and exclaimed, “Whew! That was some kind of a play. A scriptless one! Would you believe that? And undirected, too. Weird, isn’t it?”

Receiving no response, the figure persisted, “By the way, are you an actor, too?”

The silhouette shook his head, not taking his gaze off the invisible orchestra. “No, I’m the director.”

Stunned, the figure exclaimed, “The director? You are the director? Why then aren’t you directing? I would have been spared of all those collisions. I would not have gotten lost. I would have been able to put in a better performance; I would not have a-fretted and a-strutted upon that weird platform like some kind of a drunk!”

The silhouette momentarily turned his attention to the figure. “I was. You just weren’t listening.”

 Copyright 2005 by Sherma E. Benosa

All Rights Reserved.

Re-posted to cap my “Life Is…” series.

If you notice, that is this blog’s new tagline.

More than a week ago, I decided to change my header, and with it, my tagline. My tagline used to be simply my name. But then I decided to put my name in the header, which, by the way, is a view of my hometown, Nueva Vizcaya, located about 180 kilometers north of Metro Manila, the country’s capital, where I am currently based.

So I thought of coming up with a good tagline, something that is relevant to my domain name (Brainteaser), and will encapsulate what the blog is all about — my reflections about life and about the things I label ‘essential.’

I wrote down some words. Brainteaser. Life. Reflections. Puzzles. And from there, I was able to come up with the tagline, which is also a statement of how I view life.

You see, I see life as a big puzzle board upon which pieces and clues of a difficult and unending riddle is scattered. In our attempts to solve this riddle, we look everywhere for clues — in the challenges that come our way, in the people that join us in our journey, in the roads we take, in the humps that deter us in our travel. We see glimpses of the answer there. But the greatest clue, I think, is inside us. The pieces of the puzzle lay hidden in the contents of our hearts and in the strength of our faith, for in this puzzle, we are an important piece, a significant clue, and an indispensable player, all rolled into one.

As to the answer, I believe it had always been given: God. There could be no other answer. We only seem to stumble upon different answers because we are slow in realizing — and accepting — His significance, as a result of our inability to recognize Him among the clues we stumble upon.

//Sherma E. Benosa; 11 June 2008; 9:57am

First posted at my photo-blog, Photo.Graphic Thoughts.

(c) 2008 Sherma E. Benosa. All rights reserved.

Fashion is generally regarded as a paltry topic, but there are a couple of rules in fashion that would do us good if we could apply them to our life. They are the rules on accessories.

When tastefully used, accessories can make a plain ensemble look stylish. They can even make a cheap dress look classy and expensive. They can make our dress — and us — stand out.

When used tastelessly, however, our accessories can be our ruination. Being overdressed and over-decorated can make us a sore to the eye.

So the rules of thumb in fashion I like best are these: 1) Don’t overdo; and 2) Choose only those that complement your personality; expensive does not necessarily mean beautiful.

I think the same can be applied to life. Our accessories — our jobs, our cars, our earthly possessions — can make our life more comfortable. But like fashion accessories, we should try not to over-decorate ourselves with them, lest we would lose focus on what life really is. We might get mixed-up with what is essential and what isn’t.

Life is not our accessories. It is the basics that we have — the things we cannot do without.

//Sherma E. Benosa

14 June 2008; 9:04am

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Points to Ponder

What are the 5 things in life you consider to be merely accessories? What are the 5 things you cannot live without? Do you think you are overly decorated?