My Own Happiness Project

My Own Happiness Project
because happiness begins inside and flows out...

20071111

the one song that tells about my life so perfectly...

So here I am
Doing everything I can
Holding onto what I am
Pretendin' I'm a superman
I'm tryin' to keep
The ground on my feet
It seems the world's
Fallin' down around me
The nights are all long
I'm singin' this song
To try and make the answers
More than maybe

And I'm so confused
About what to do
Sometimes I want
To throw it all away

So here I am
Growin' older all the time
Lookin' older all the time
Feelin' younger in my mind
And here I am
Doing everything I can
Holdin' onto what I am
Pretendin' I'm a superman

I'm tryin' to sleep
I lost count of sheep
My mind is racin' faster every minute
What could I do more
Yeah I'm really not sure
I know I'm runnin' circles
But I can't quit

And I'm so confused
About what to do
Sometimes I want to
Throw it all away

Controllin' everything in site
I'm feelin' weak
I don't feel right
You're tellin' me
I have to change
Tellin' me to act my age
But if all that I can do
Is just sit and watch time go
Then I'll have to say good bye
Life's too short to watch it fly
Watch it fly

So here I am
Growin' older all the time
Lookin' older all the time
Feeling younger in my mind
And here I am
Doin' everything I can
Holdin' onto what I am
Pretendin' I'm a Superman

20071110

the one about being an eligible bachelor...

I was going through my sister's piles of old magazines when one caught my attention as the selected reading while I take a dump (a bad habit really difficult to shake off). It says on the front cover "Babelicious Bachelors!", though I may come quite far from being one of them, but judging on their responses to the standard questions posed, I think I can answer some of them better.

If I were to join, my column would be like this...

ARTEo
Medical Officer, 28


Describe yourself in 5 words I am who I am... A woman is most beautiful when she carries her family on one shoulder and her career on the other... one who knows what she wants... The nicest thing a woman's ever said to me is anything that starts with "can I tell you the truth..." How would you describe your style? You'll seldom find me spotting a necktie... I ma more of a polo and jeans person, and half of my wardrobe is from Giordano. I also wear a red ribbon to promote awareness on AIDS... I know she's special when she accepts my inadequacies and appreciates my extras (including extra bodyweight)... What scares you? Lizards and flying cockroaches... What were you teased about as a child? Apart from my weight, people call me Roti and Teh-O... Go figure... Men makes the worst nuns... If I could trade place with a man for a day, I'd pick the Pope... Describe your date from hell pointy face, horns, glossy red skin and carries a hay-fork... other than that, anyone who cannot carry a decent conversation beyond the first few minutes... A wife beater has no balls... What is an antimacassar? The piece of thick tissue found on headrest of airplane chairs... I'm currently listening to jazz... It's always jazz...

the time i should start looking back at the year that was...

About almost the same time last year I underwent a serious discernment that would change my life and my surrounding in quite a major way. It didn't exactly start then (as I have been evaluating and re-evaluating the thoughts many many many times before) but one show got it going... I was watching Ed, and in that particular episode, he asked himself what is his legacy... what would he be leaving behind once he is dead and gone...

Well my thoughts were not as morbid as his, but I started considering a lot of my own feelings and emotions and all those things a busy man should have no time to think about... (and yep, I plunged myself deeper into work as a result of some decision I made, and yet work can only provide so much short-term reliefs from the pain I went through)

The year that was has shown many things in life that I am not sure I was ever ready to see, but still, as one would say that everything happens for a purpose, it left me many opportunities to reason out every strands of experience that made me the person I am today.

Yet I would not exchange the world for any of those that I went thorugh.

20071109

the one about pleasure by kahlil gibran

Pleasure is a freedom-song, But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
It is a depth calling unto a height, But it is not the deep nor the high. It is the caged taking wing,
But it is not space encompassed.
Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedomsong.
And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.

Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.
I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.
For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone;
Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.
Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?

And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.
Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.

And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;
And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.
But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?
Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?
And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?
Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?

Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?
Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.
And your body is the harp of your soul,
And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.

And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.