MikeLigalig.com

John is the kind of guy you love to hate.  He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say.  When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, 'If I were any better, I would be twins!'

He was a natural motivator..

If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, 'I don't get it!'

'You can't be a positive person all of the time.  How do you do it?'

He replied, 'Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today.  You can choose to be in a good mood or...you can choose to be in a bad mood

I choose to be in a good mood.'

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or...I can choose to learn from it.  I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or...I can point out the positive side of life.  I choose the positive side of life.

'Yeah, right, it's not that easy,' I protested.

'Yes, it is,' he said.  'Life is all about choices.  When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice.  You choose how you react to situations.  You choose how people affect your mood.

You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood.  The bottom line:  It's your choice how you live your life.'

I reflected on what he said.  Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business..  We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw him about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied, 'If I were any better, I'd be twins...Wanna see my scars?'

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

'The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,' he replied.  'Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices:  I could choose to live or...I could choose to die.  I chose to live.'

'Weren't you scared?  Did you lose consciousness?'  I asked.

He continued, '...the paramedics were great.

They kept telling me I was going to be fine.  But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared.  In their eyes, I read 'he's a dead man'.  I knew I needed to take action.'

'What did you do?' I asked..

'Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,' said John.  'She asked if I was allergic to anything 'Yes, I replied.'  The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply.  I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Gravity''

Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live.  Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.'

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude...I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully...

Attitude, after all, is everything.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.'  Matthew 6:34.

After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. - forwarded email...

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I agree...life is about choices.. not choosing also is a choice.

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if someone preferred not to choose, its still his choice.

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so you did made a choice?....

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Sounds good. But we have to remember that decisions are not discrete: they are connected to everthing else in our life, to who were are, to our sense of self-worth. Moods certainly make a difference, but moods should be subject to one's principles, and not vice versa. You cannot choose to be in a good mood while a murder is being committed and decide to just let the murderer have his way, just because you woke up to a decision to be in a good mood. Unless, of course, you're an utterly despicable human being... 

The positive side of life is not, I'm afraid, a matter of choosing the best mood to be in. The positive side of live is, I believe, living up to your principles, wherever these principles lead you, and in whatever mood they bring you there. Mood is simply the costume you wear to the carnival of life. Other people might mistake the costume for the person, but you ought to know better. And they should, too.

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Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet
-Horace




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And it's because circumstances are shifting and unpredictable that training and principles come into play. Sometimes, conscious deliberate choice is not an option. It can happen that one is not given the luxury of agonizing over a decision.

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Yes, life is just too full of variables that there's no way of knowing where our decisions lead us, or what unintended consequences they engender. The mind can fairly easily surmount personal debacles, but the wounded heart will be marked for life. 

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When I read this, I immediately thank God that I am not in a real life episode of 24 and I never have to kill someone for the better good. When you think about it, there are men and women out there fighting for our freedom, not just in the US but for the rest of the world as well and making "Jack Bauer Type" decisions that will probably haunt them for the rest of their lives.

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shush ! you're not old, just really wise.  Old sounds so negative.

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Thanks, ladies. (Or should I rather say, girls?)

I am told that one may be silly in youth but should be solemn in age. Yet one could be a humorless adolescent, or a silly old fool. I regret being humorless when I was young; I hope I won't become silly when I'm old.

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Sa Tagalog pa: " Patandang Paurong"..hope not. Just keep the laughter alive no matter what LOL!

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He he, mao jud. Matod pang Oscar Wilde: "Life is too important to be taken seriously."

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thus do i shudder at the possible breadth and depth of your wisdom when you positively, truly, do get old.



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And when times get rough and friends just can't be found, Ms. Isle, like a bridge over troubled water lay you down and do a latinate Shakespeare:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And hiss out: "Populus me sibilat!"

Bwahaha! Sa Binisaya pa, "Bilatsyang ina!"

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well, yes it is.

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Pila naman diay ka Bay Hubs? As though you'd ever choose to answer!

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He he, sugat-sugat lang ning ato, Bay Ben. Kon asa lang gud ta malingaw...



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Quite true. There are very few absolute truths in life. Some of these are:

1. Our thoughts are ours, unless shared
2. Life is given, however, anyone has the ability to terminate his or her own life
3. Decisions are your own.
4. Death is guaranteed; the only difference is the manner and the time.


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And if I may add:
1)     What has been said, cannot be left unspoken
2)     Things we did cannot be undone
3)     We cannot change our relatives


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Excited na bitaw ko nga kulba-kulbaan pud. After being out of the country for two decades, some people say this decision is a bold leap of faith. Para di ta ma-OT ba, let me just say I made this decision a long time ago to be back home in my mid-40's and sought the opportunities to fulfill it. Gusto pud nako suwayan ang bag-ong career while still at my prime back home. I was even willing to settle for a teaching job at a local university, and it's just a bonus I'm being offered this opportunity by a Japanese company so close to home. I'll start my work on June 1. Sige, kita-kita ta pohon sa Cebu o Bohol ...


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But we can always choose our friends. :-)

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Seleccion para todos, por favor: It is essential that each of us have friends, but to each person--we must be wise in who we select as true friends, worthy of our secrets and lifelong friendships. For there are people who might appear friends, but will spurn one on the dime for their own personal entertainment, and to the reversal of your own.

I agree with this synergistic addition, Alc.

~~

In regards to the past equipping the future, we only take the lessons of the past as strength; charge to experience, so to say. The strong man can differentiate experience and utilize it as strength for motivational purposes; the weak individual is hounded and haunted by the past continuously...and becomes a slave to the past.

Again, the present dictates the future. And the subconscious mind of the individual. It is his mental prowess that guides the physical and allows the acquisition of the goal.

Which, of course, is in the best interest of attaining the prize in that certain decision-making process.


Forward!

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I think there should be a good balance between both to move forward.

If we are not practical and reign ourselves in, we never get things done that would propel us forward.

If, on the other hand,  we are too obsessed with just dealing with the here and now and not ever entertain dreams, then we wouldn't have the drive nor persistence to achieve anything greater than what we've already got.

Thomas Edison failed more than a thousand times but persisted because he had a dream, and voila...we have the light bulb. To be more current, the inventor of Dyson vacuum cleaners was in Reader's Digest (or Playboy) recently and I read that it took him 10 years, financial struggle, etc  before achieving success.

A lot of people break under these circumstances and so they just stop dreaming. Some dont. But we need everyone to work as a society. We all have our niche's. Yours will always be different from mine... just part of the beauty of humanity ! 

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It was reason that brought light and democratic plurality that the great French political thinkers of the Great French Revolution such as Marat, Robespierre, Jacobins to exclaim: Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

The works of Voltaire, John Locke, Marat, Robespierre, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin etc were strengthened by the European Enlightenment, that brought Reason, Universality of Human Rights, Democracy, and Freedom from Monarchical Absolutism.

The great political thinkers claimed that revolution was reason; and claimed that the royal absolutists were unreasonable, living their dreams of aristocratic and oligarchic reverie, while the poor commoners in the Third Estate were left to pay taxes, burden the military cost, and submit themselves to absolutist control of the monarchy.

Human reason, which descends from Wisdom of the Most High and Intelligence that comes from the Holy Spirit, is what guides and directs the wise man to make a good Decision and allocate his resources to support that decision that he so fully believes in, in confidence and in Faith in Divine Understanding.

A wise decision leads to positive results; an unwise decision, will lead to doubts, and failure.

Hitler Dreamed of a Pure Third Reich ruled by Aryan Germans, and liquidated jews, homosexuals, slavs, communists, and dissenters, pro-democrats, and his decision lead to the purging of millions. His was a miserable unwise decision. That resulted in the collapse of the German Nation, and the deaths of millions.

There is a clear difference between wisdom, stupidity, dreams, fantasy, and lunacy.

Schizophrenic patients dream alot, and have lost contact with reality.


Cheers.

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Right Manay.  God is the planner and I'm here to accomplish or screwed up His plan.

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“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.” --Oscar Wilde
 
Bwahaha! Brute reason and reasoning of a brute. Same difference.



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To reason is to compromise and understand. The dreamer does not reason, he has lost all reality, rather, lives in his own dreams.

The beauty of reasoning is that it shows one's ability to make a discerned choice. 





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Yet brute force is a necessary evil as it is the only language that some people speak and understand. :-)


In some cases are used as defense mechanism of the weak to fight the strong, and vice versa, weapon of the strong to make the weak weaker...

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sail on, silver boy, sail on boy, your time has come to shine, bai hubag.  i chose to err on the side of shakespeare's contemporary, john donne.

"Nobilibusque trahunt, a cincto corde, veneum, succis et gemmis, et qual generosa, mimistrant ars et natura instillant.

Whence we can take a better argument, a clearer demonstration, that all the greatness of this world is built upon opinion of others and hath in itself no real being nor power of subsistence, than from the heart of man?"

                                                                                            (from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions)

Jus vocis civilas otens.


  

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i will get to that soon, bai hubs, silver boy, now that you've told me.  at the moment, i can settle for john hodgen:

He’s supposed to call his doctor, but for now he’s the May King with his own maypole.
He’s hallelujah. He’s glory hole. The world has more women than he can shake a stick
at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us Germans he can ich
liebe dich at. He’s Dick and Jane. He’s Citizen Kane. He’s Bob Dole.
He’s Peter the Great. He’s a tsar. He’s a clown car with an extra car.
Funiculì, Funiculà. He’s an organ donor. He works pro boner. He’s folderol.
He’s fiddlesticks. He’s the light left on at Motel 6. He’s free-for-alls.
He’s Viagra Falls. He’s bangers and mash. He’s balderdash. He’s a wanker.
He’s got his own anchor. He’s whack-a-doodle. King Canoodle. He’s a pirate, Long John
Silver, walking his own plank. He has science to thank. He’s in like Flynn. He’s Gunga Din,
holding his breath, cock of the walk through the valley of the shadow of death. He’s Icarus,
hickory dickerous, the mouse run up the clock. He’s shock and awe. He’s Arkansas.
He’s the package, the deal, the Good Housekeeping Seal. He’s Johnson & Johnson.
He’s a god now, the talk of the town. He’s got no place to go but down.

poem's title:  for the man with the erection lasting more than four hours  



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Quite existentialist. This has the aura of Darwinian theory of evolution; the weak must make room for the strong.

Good addition, Wolf.

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Another one: keep inspiring!





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and that, precisely, is what i mean by being off the mark, which makes me suspect that maybe, just maybe, you didn’t really get bai hubag’s drift.
  
you presumed hubag’s inability to reason, his disinclination to reason, and topped that pudding off with the cream of declaration that to dream is to live one’s fantasy, as if that is all there is to dreaming.

first, we’ve got to give it to hubag who might not be able to write that way if his reasoning were not acute.

second, dreaming in the context of hubag’s write-up is, in hyperbolic terms just so I could get my point across, in the league of world conquests.  conquerors dream of conquests and dream up and visualize strategies to win wars.  they don’t go to wars because of their brawns alone, much less because of their reason.  they go to wars because of their what-ifs.

to dream thus is also to invent, to devise.  great poets, philosophers, and scientists dreamed.  and changed the world.  no one can question their ability to reason beyond ordinary mortals.

the dreamers that bai hubag refers to actually have their reason intact.  this, one can derive by reading between his lines, which entails the reader to go beyond one’s self.  as for his statement about dreaming his life away, again, context, as it is obviously said tongue-in-cheek.      

after your presumptions (or should I say conclusions?) that hubag is far from reason, you go on to medical school to explain what extreme dreaming is and call on european enlightenment (because it was the age of reason?).  i as a reader felt like I bungee jumped without the ropes.

oh, martin luther’s “i have a dream…” is far from schizophrenic.  and we know his role in defining u.s. civil rights.

allow me please to go further, to your reply numbered 62 in this same thread.  you mention wolf’s post as existentialist, and then relate this to darwin’s theory of evolution.  what?  one has nothing to do with the other, so i was confused.  what, indeed, is existential about survival of the fittest when existentialism is all about denying that the universe has any built-in meaning or purpose and therefore individuals have to take responsibility in shaping their own destinies?  

what i’m trying to say here is that reading anything, like writing anything, needs contextualization and the proper grasp of concepts that one brandishes.  we have to go beyond the literal to be freed from the traps of the nuances of language.  

i have nothing against youth’s knowledge and understanding.  these are gifts to the world.  but there is such a thing as mental indigestion that only the passing of years can cure. even child musical prodigies practice themselves to greatness.   thankfully, the mistakes youth makes are corrected through the years.  often.
  
at 40, you may look back to when you were 20, and laugh.  knowledge needs to be placed in the context of life as it is lived.  and, like good wine, it takes time.  

love you too.
    



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lorenzo,

the way your mind works is truly awesome.  you don’t only miss the mark, you’re also cross-eyed.

our topic is the context of dreaming.  you zero in on one aspect like existentialism to prove what?  that you know something that any idiot can easily cut and paste from internet sources?  don’t steer the discussion to that which you can cut and paste (these are obvious because the syntax and grammar are different from your own lapses).
 
dear lorenz, you even give wise advice to me and others “to differentiate between nihilism and existentialism”!  goodness gracious.  here’s my own advice:  if you’re going to be a doctor, better start disciplining the way you think or, heaven forbid, you might treat a patient for syphilis when in fact he only has hemorrhoids.

okay, here’s something for your “outside the box” (shoe box?  manny pacquiao box?), cut and pasted as well:

Most existentialists have argued that we aren't born with a fixed human nature which forces us to act in certain ways and prevents us from acting in other ways. Instead, what we usually see as our "natures" is actually a product of our choices — sometimes even choices we don't realize we are making.

Thus, Darwinian evolution provides some scientific credibility in more than one way to the existentialist position that humans make themselves and remake themselves during their struggle to survive in their day-to-day lives. Not all existentialists are necessarily "staunch Darwinians," however. Although it would be a rare existentialist who rejected the truth of evolutionary theory, there are those who don't regard it as having any real bearing on their philosophy.  (emphasis mine)  

i’m sorry to say that even this claim is unimpressive as it is striking more as an affectation of the intellect, like muddling the waters to see the bottom or wearing high heels with the miniskirt to give the illusion of long legs.   besides, darwin’s theory remains that, a theory.

with all your religious posts here at tb, you now seem to lean on the side of agnosticism and atheism by calling on existentialism and nihilism.  how is that?

as for wine, my husband is the oenophile, not me.  to be honest, i hate his collection of vintage reds, some dom perignons, including a smattering of liquors like hennessys and single malt whiskies side by side with his cigars in humidors, the total cost of which to my simple mind is the cost of a car.  i must admit though that on rare occasions I go for simple good, old bailey’s and a mateus.   

awed at your mish-mash but glad that reading you brings out the nihilist in me,




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"In every single thing you do, you are choosing a direction.
Your life is a product of choices."

-Dr. Kathleen Hall

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hahaha, then that makes two of us, Hubag. Sige, you make snow angels, and i'll make us a snow igloo.



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LOL! i cant help it, man. Fine, when im done the igloo, you can decorate it with snow angel faces. hahahaha!

Then when its done, we can let Ms. Isles inspect it. See if its stable ba. hahahahaha!



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thanks for the compliment, but i have to point out that the phrase “vivid spirit” is clumsy and infelicitous.  distinct and intensely bright objects can be vivid; accounts, memories and imagination can be vivid; but “spirit” cannot be vivid.  choice of words is like choice of medication; choose the wrong word and you end up mangling your statement.  choose the wrong medication and you prove yourself and incompetent doctor.

so the “context of dreaming never was mitigated” by your posts.  (and thus you changed the topic rather than admit to something that might have changed your mind?)  my mistake.  i couldn’t help but comment on your earlier post claiming hubag’s disinclination to reason because he’d rather dwell on fantasy (quoted thus:  â€œhubag talks about his inability to reason or his disinclination in that, rather, defends the notion of dreams and dreaming…”).  such grand claims about other people’s opinions merit a few minutes’ attention of idiots such as i.    

“Quite existentialist.  This has the aura of Darwinian theory of evolution; the weak must make room for the strong.”

i am quoting from your earlier post your exact words on existentialism and evolution.  no doubt there are points of convergence between the two, but the idea of the weak making room for the strong doesn’t have anything existentialist about it at all.  for instance, the concept of “engaged freedom” which serves as one of the cornerstones of existentialist thought cannot, by any stretch of imagination―much less of reason―coalesce (your term) with the darwinian concept of “survival of the fittest”.

you seem to know your evolutionary theory, but perhaps you should read more existentialist literature.  i won’t suggest titles, since you can easily google them yourself.

after mastering your existentialism, you will probably find out that you don’t have to choose to be discerning, as you still apparently do now.

love ya, my dearest boy.  

i care, so please don’t imbibe too much of your favorite pinot noir while you copy from your medical books (or google) for this discerned sharing of yours.  the words may tumble out from the pages and come out as incomplete sentences, as your existential treatise on hemorrhoids and syphilis shows.  it doesn’t matter, of course.  what is important is you can start practicing your rx on yourself.  don’t worry, dearest of all dears, napoleon had hemorrhoids, nietzsche had syphilis.

which reminds me, you must also try lambanog from our country’s north.  the nearest that i can compare it to is the greek ouzo (which, to my husband’s dismay, i once half-filled a bottle with star anise to make ‘anisado wine’ for my tocino; it turned out great).  i tried lambanog once, long ago, and felt as if my ears fell off.  nothing can be more vivid a spirit worth imbibing than this one.      

keep on with your youthful existentialist spirit and your elementary understanding of existentialism, dearest, for as long as it keeps afloat your sense of self,




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It is always an honor to discuss with a learned individual like yourself, Islander. I hope and pray that your duties are completed in haste and in proper decorum, as I would expect from a person of caliber such as yourself. Looking forward to your return.

Cheers.

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