Miah Learns to Write

When I was young, I was taught to always listen to my parents if I wanted to live a good life and I believe that children being under the authority of their parents must obey their commands because they know what's best for them except for cases when parents are committing heinous acts of abuse, I believe that obedience to them would be essential for a fruitful and meaningful life. But there comes a point when children would grow and be ushered into independence. They would start developing their own personalities and the world becomes their oyster to explore and ask questions about to discover the mysteries that lie beneath the surface of those they see and experience. And this is a critical point in their lives because whatever character, values, beliefs, worldviews, and ideologies they settle into would more or less be permanent. These are the foundations with which people base their actions and decisions in life. They are impregnable and can rarely be changed which is why I ...

The new year has come, 2016 has passed but I have experienced moments when the nostalgia brings back memories from the past which I would want to return to and experience all over again. Of course, the problem with that is we cannot go back in time and even if we were able to, it may not necessarily be the same and eventually, we would want to move on with our lives. But there is some value to reminiscing about the past because it would show us where we have been, how we have grown, and where we would go. It can make us happy when we think about the good times we've had and it could also make us tear up because we can't go back. However, we don't really have much to fret because most of our memories are stored at the back of our minds which we can retrieve during moments when we feel wistful and these experiences have also become part of ourselves through the way they changed our lives. What if, however, we begin to lose our grasp on these memories as we will inevitably ...

I bet you've had days when nothing good seems to happen to you or maybe one bad thing someone said or did to you ruined your whole day. Maybe you got caught in traffic which caused you to be late for work and your boss or your professor was also having a bad day so he vented all his stress and frustrations on you. You even woke up early and dressed to impress. Then, nobody in school takes notice and you hear people gossiping about you in the office or in your org. When you get home, aside from the tons of homework or work you have to finish, you also have to do chores around the house so your mom yells at you for being so lazy and inconsiderate. On top of that, you find out your girlfriend/boyfriend is cheating on you. What a tough day! All you want to do at the end of it all is to take a break or just escape from the mess you entered. The first thing I want to tell you is I understand what you are going or have gone through. You just want to burst out on a rampage to reliev...

In my opinion, I think some or most people are somewhat wary and even hesitant of making commitments or promises to others because we humans tend to fail too often in honoring the commitments that we have made. The words that we give to other people may not be as binding as a legal document but it bears in it an amount of trust that the other person has for you to do what you said you would do. This is where the phrase "word of honor" stems out from because whenever we give out our word to someone, it is good as done. In many other aspects in life, the same thing can be expected. When we commit, we must count the costs and determine whether we have the capacity and initiative to persevere until our commitments have been fulfilled. We must be prepared to endure whatever hardships the road toward the fruition of our commitments would entail and show that we have integrity to respect and reciprocate the trust that others place on us with our actions. The same thing ...

Let me address the rapidly intensifying problem that families in this generation face frequently even up to uncontrollable levels: teenage rebellion. I want to share how my parents dealt with it when I started to show signs of angst and frustration against them and how Jesus played a pivotal role in changing my attitude and perspective on my parents. Today, I realized the magnitude of dealing with problems in the home especially concerning children but more specifically teenagers who are starting to be exposed to the reality that the world is a very menacing place filled with vices, distractions, addictions, and all sorts of bad influences that dissuade them from making prudent judgments in taking the right course of action. I am shocked after reading the news that a 17-year-old teenager beat his grandmother to death after being scolded by her when she fetched him from the computer shop. One tidbit that I am currently taking notice is that the boy was playing the popular game...

In response to my previous post regarding our bad habit of mismanaging our time and procrastinating your work, ending up with poor, mediocre, or lackluster results, I would like to urge everyone especially the youth of the Philippines to start managing our time wisely. The reality is we do not have the luxury of time in our hands and we only live once in our lives so we have to do our best to make the most out of the time that we have been given to do the most worthwhile and meaningful things with our lives and our time. 1. Attitude.  I believe to be able to get out of the rut and break the habit of procrastination and the issues concerning time management, we have to take the challenge seriously upon ourselves and be consistent in establishing the system that we would want our body and our mind to develop. We need to know what our main priorities should be and from there, you would need to have the conviction to follow through the plan of action that you will do to help you...

Let me start out by taking a quote from Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie , " Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. " Today, I am reminded that our lives are much like the wick of a candle, once it has been lit, it will slowly burn out and in time, it will die unless the wind blows the flame away giving it yet another day to live. But the inevitable truth is that our lives are short and the moment that we are born into the world, the hourglass has begun to pour out sand until our time runs out. In  Tuesdays With Morrie , Mitch's professor, Morrie Schwartz, tackled the subject of death and the imminence of it or the undeniable truth that one day we must all pass, with wisdom and resolve, " Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it... If we did, we would do things differently.. most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking.   We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doin...

In one of my Social Science classes which revolves around Political and Social Philosophy, we dabbled on and on about what the best kind of life a man could live and how he goes about attaining that. So we discussed the concepts and ideas that Plato, Aristotle, and indirectly, Socrates, suggested, observed, and reflected upon. We looked at Plato's The Republic and we are currently tackling Aristotle's The Politics, both of which try to elucidate what are the necessities for an established, well-rooted society that would make way for the best kind of life. Plato suggested that philosophers must be kings since it is reason that governs the soul of these type of people. He stratified the society in such a way that the characteristic that rules within a person's soul is the basis on classifying the citizens of the society into three groups namely: the Rulers or Guardians, the Auxiliaries, and the Laboring Class. Aristotle, on the other hand, described certain politic...

Have you ever encountered certain people who, despite their own problems and struggles in life, stay positive and joyful all the time? Every time you pass them by, they exude an aura of cheerfulness that pulls people's attention toward them. You can easily relate with them in conversation and you would immediately feel comfortable around them. I have met and made friends with people like this and I can tell you, it's going to be life-changing. Being surrounded with really joyful people and being able to experience insurmountable and irrepressible joy myself, I have observed that there are things we can do that would make us feel happy at any point of our lives and I would like to share them with you. 1.   Always Keep Yourself Healthy Whenever my friend Andrea skips breakfast, she becomes cranky and irritable. There were also times when I skipped lunch for a few hours just to get my appointments done but then I would come down with a headache and I would have to take...