What I loved and learned on the Anniversary of my Birth version 2009

I wrote this for my last birthday, I'm posting in here in this blog to remember what I've learned and evaluate if I've really learned them. Be ready for the next update.

What/Who I've loved and learned on the anniversary of my birth

THANK YOU. I just want to send love to all the people who have and continued to join me in my celebration of life. I thoroughly enjoy birthdays. Sometimes I get confused or rather feel contradictory - living in an effort to be humble and also as a responsible hedonist.

There are so many moments of enlightenment and joy, moments where I've been humbled by simple truths and challenged to change..just in this week. I felt like sharing a few things I've noticed over the span of my life. I don't know if they are necessarily correct but it does feel good living knowing these things.

1. Love yourself

I know, I know I always say this and sometimes i say this to remind just to myself. When you love yourself, you won't let someone else play you, hurt you, you won't take things personally, you'll be able to say no and express yourself and what you really want because you'll know. YOU WILL LOVE and RESPECT YOURSELF. You can let it hang out and feel SO GOOD. When you love yourself, you'll be able to love who or what your want and radiate love into the world. YOU ARE ENOUGH by the virtue of simply being created. Don't buy into any crock of shit telling you or convincing you otherwise. You are human, imperfect and glorious!

2. You can live without a cell phone, facebook, myspace..i promise.

I think it's healthy to do a cyber/cellular/media fast when possible. Fasting seems to be an underlying theme of many cultures...Ramadan, lent, juice "feasting" etc. Move away from addictions. There are so many little things I've noticed on fasts... namely, how powerful addictions are but even more importantly how it is possible to overcome them. I know it may seem like it goes against the "responsible hedonism" but the deep pleasure of knowing you are - not your goodness or badness, your addictions, your vices, your joys, your loves - but just you in your being, in your presence and just living - that is to me the ultimate Pleasure.

I actually know people without aforementioned technological devices and social networking, they are amazing.

3. Allow yourself to learn from others

I'm not trying to preach, okay I guess I am a little. I just want to share this 'cause I feel a little wiser and kinda obligated to spread it out. I would be an awesome virus. But as of today I know for sure that although some lessons mean more when you learn them yourself...you can definitely learn from others. The caveat is, watch who you are learning from and I don't mean necessarily their morality but rather agenda. Everyone can teach you some thing but just watch yo'self.

I'm not trying to promote robotic living in the least. You can do me no greater justice then THINKING FOR YOURSELF. Seriously. So many great people and minds have come before us, that it seems like a tremendous disservice to yourself not to "stand on the shoulders" of their giant hearts and minds and excellent examples.

4. Is there good and bad?

I don't know and won't try to answer.

I guess this is what ultimately got me out of jury duty this year, try being philosophical next time you are at jury duty. How can you judge another and condemn them to a system that is flawed. Free thinkers are brazen, considered dangerous by some. I like danger.

I would fully enjoy being a responsible citizen but when i'm not really sure that the "justice" system promotes justice and tolerance but rather intolerance and fear, how can I take part? I guess it's your tolerance level - how much of inconsistency do you tolerate between what you do and what you believe?

5. In moments when you feel challenged or overwhelmed, you can choose between destruction or construction. Personally, I'm more about the break through then the break down.

6. Don't take things personally.

Hate, anger, vengenance - these are corrosive. My amazing mother has taught me the importance of letting things go. DETACH DETACH DETACH D E T A C H

Harboring anything only affects you, not the other person. Are they up in the bed crying, cloistering themselves up, afraid to live? NO. NO. NO.

There will be a time when the discomfort, hopelessness and despair is enough.

7. Live slower.

Eat slower. You appreciate your food and your company more. I think it is important to eat with people you love, whenever you can. Chew your food. You get full faster.

Talk slower. You are more likely to say what you mean. 7a. MEAN WHAT YOU SAY!!!!!! To the best of your ability. I know that I've been tongue tied many a time but you don't have to have an superhuman lexicon to express yourself. I'm hurt. I'm hungry. I'm uncomfortable. I feel happy around you. I'm jofyul. I like you.

Live a little slower. There is no such thing as managing your time because no matter what YOU do, TIME GOES ON. Just do whatever you decide to do the best way you can. Why not give one thing your all instead of half assing ten things at once.

8. Let bad things happen.

Accept small defeats and losses. These are okay. With these little bad things, you can find meaningful lessons. Adversity, challenge, risk, defeat- I've probably written this already but these things can help you see how you are, who you want to be and break through to a fuller, better you. Let bad things happen and appreciate the good things and the great victories when they occur. Remember all that you have accomplished, all you have overcome and believe in yourself!

I believe in the amazing potential of human beings and embrace all we can do. We can solve world hunger and live in world peace but we have to choose to and do something about it. I have so many things to learn and love and share. Thanks for being in my life and Thanks for reading!!!!!!!

I love LA

I'm out of exile baby.

It's about time for an update. I had hope this blog would be a way to chronicle 9 months of living in a different country. A history of transitioning from the developed to developing nation, liberal to conservative environments and it turned out to be some venting for some really shit times for the past nine months.

It's early Thursday morning and I've time travelled. I've coasted off an easy 14 hour flight. I'm blogging now from a very cold but full of warm feelings H O M E after our ritual family dinner in Chinatown aka "Little Manila" (because of the volume of Filipinos present at Mayflower, our favourite Vietnamese owned Chinese Restaurant) post an international flight.

I felt like an immigrant being welcomed into LAX, "my port of entry into the United States." I was in this almost weird state of awe and appreciation. Freeways. Variety of People, Colors and Pronunciations. Immigrants. Tourists. Travellers. Proper lighting and AC. It was cold in the best way after 9 months in humidity, heat and pools of sweat. From the little important things like efficient queues, seamless times at customs and immigrations, proper toilet paper and traffic rules...I appreciated every little thing so much. These little things contribute to a system that works, friendly and familiar.

I flew in with a bunch of passengers off an Air Canada flight, many wearing shorts and carrying there surfboards. Welcome to the Cali Holidays. Compared to Philippines though, I am really feeling the cold. The last time I was this cold was during a night sleeping on the beach in Hong Kong. It's time to unearth my flannel pjs again

There was this relieving sense of peace finally coming back home after 9 months of being away. I've been excited to be back in LA from vacations and some travels but never ever like this. I wanted to kiss the ground and my customs officers. I caught two fellow angelenos getting into a verbal smackdown. This my darlings is my LA that I love.

Obviously LA isn't perfect, nowhere is and these are all just little things to appreciate in most developed cities. Tbe best part about being back here is to be welcomed back into a loving home surrounded by two of the best and most amazing people in my life. We may fight and bitch but I am so lucky to have you to call my family. Our final crew member comes in a few days!

There were a lot of bad vibes in Pavia: internalized conflict, dishonesty, bitterness, envy, greed and this was just on the compound! Unfortunate how a place that could be beautiful has the fakeness has negativity and conflict brewing. Maybe, a lot of places with extended family has this.

There was also a lot of beauty there despite all of that: Jeff the Dog, enriching lessons to be learned and wonderful relationships with cool people like Cha, Tita Ana and new solid friends like Th3rd. I've even meet my favourite Penguin that I'm so happy to have in my life.

I've left there stronger than ever and will return one day with the renewed strength I feel. Maybe there might be some properly asphalted roads next time around.

Let critics criticize, Let builders build, Let haters hate, and Let Humans Evolve.

We all are dying and life is too short and too precious to pay attention to unnecessary people bringing you down. It's our responsibility to choose who we are despite whatever environments we find ourselves in!

Authenticity and Privacy

I'm dealing with authenticity and privacy.

Can one be authentic and true to themselves in a culture centered on family relationships?

I think yes, but I don't know how yet. Someone told me consider leading a double life which doesn't hit the authenticity requirement.

Another option is to convey what's essential. I think that may be a good start. I thought that part of love was letting someone into your life and sharing your experiences in the confidence of knowing it was between you yourselves. That doesn't seem to happen in families, friends or groups of people that have some sort of community relationship.

I guess the other option is to abandon family and culture norms to be true to yourself and all your imperfections, ideas, values and understandings and create a community to surround yourself with that is like minded.

Do you have any more?

What was my initial effort to be authentic and preserve some memories and thoughts, an emotional catharsis for myself, and sharing this with any human being or bot reading this out in the world of interwebs has to be re-evaluated. Note to self to start my journal again, in private perhaps.

I'm hurting because of how exposed and judged I feel because of dealing with experiencing living with extended family. Thankfully it's a temporary emotion. Ultimately, the smarter part of me knows not to care for something ridiculous, out of my control and that I can really leave individuals to their own thoughts and judgments and the energy that consumes.

I have the business of life to attend to.

One has to remember, it's a privilege to let someone into one's life and one has to put a price on one's head. What I mean - love yourself and don't settle for a friend, lover, family member who doesn't respect, care or love you unconditionally without forcing you to be one thing or anoher.

I've found it valuable to consult for advice and also to consider the source. Now, I've learned to consider the source includes the possible biases or confusion they might have in helping. I realize that if the person you have shared with lets that privileged information leak to the other parties, shit hits the fan.

Essentially I see why people are untrusting, it's when these low feelings occur. I think trust in any kind of relationship with love is important so maybe it's better said to avoid wreckless trusting or be selective and that doesn't make a person any less if you say convey and act that values your own private matters.

When someone ask how are you, they might not mean it the same way you do. They might not want to know or might want to know with intention, good or bad. There is no way to really know.

It's a must to begin feeling a measure of peace in one's own life. Family, School, Governments, Work Places, Religion, anything "organized," can be making you into something you are not by structuring thought process, values, priorities and motivations with or without being conscious or having malicious intent, so it is a challenge and pleasure to remain as true to one self in our society.

Attitude is so important. Realizing that life never promised to be easy, painless or without suffering remains vital to sanity.

I think one of the most important tricks to life is to not take things personally. I have for a long time. It's made me sad that I have to realize not everyone is trust worthy, that I have to wait until someone shows me they are. I don't like the wall that this creates in the world.

Some people just express themselves as jerks, and the motivation of greed for money or power and control, lust...there are so many base things that can coerce even a conscious human being to act disgustingly, to act insensitively, uncompassionately, violently, hypocritically.

So for this bit of sharing with me and if you want so more insight contact me and we will talk.

Signing Off.

sense and senselessness

senselessness: not marked by the use of reason.

There are some grand and frustrating absurdities in life. I've often felt in myself and seen in others a vain attempt to try to be something - something for someone you care about, someone else for your lover, someone different for your family, someone to this friend, someone else to that friend. It's powerful once you can just be who you are in the process. Seeing someone who is completely themselves, even for a moment, is a uplifting thing to witness.

One of my classmates in high school passed away this week. I didn't know her well but had the pleasure of witness the twinkle in her eyes and the joie de vivre she radiated. She was simply beautiful, inside and out, an athlete, an intelligent woman who seemed to be wonderfully mature in the sense of herself she projected. She also, even if just only in her teens, seemed to have a deeper sense of self than most.

Death doesn't discriminate and when someone who embodied living well, like she did, passes in her youth - it's frustrating and senseless. It makes me laugh at the insanity of being in my own head with the little problems I create for myself when life is simply too short and I've been humbled with enough examples to know that. I feel so irresponsible being unmotivated and wallowing recently when there is so much life and only this moment to live Well.

Shannon Hayes, may you have an eternal, amazing peace. I wish I knew what and how you came to radiate amazing warmth and joy, your gorgeous smile and and an unmistakable joie de vivre. I remember catching the twinkle in your eyes exchanging hellos through the locker lined rooms in PHS. You seemed to have a place in your heart for everyone. Your were simply a beautifu, genuinel human being. I'm humbled to have known you. Thank you for reminding me to live strong. RIP.

On the Shortness of Life - Some Seneca for your reading pleasure

On The Shortness of Life - Lucius Seneca
The majority of mortals, Paulinus, complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, because even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live.
Nor is it merely the common herd and the unthinking crowd that bemoan what is, as men deem it, an universal ill; the same feeling has called forth complaint also from men who were famous…
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.
Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by greed that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men’s fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: “The part of life we really live is small.” For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.
Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about, and no rest from their lusts abides. Think you that I am speaking of the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their blessings. To how many are riches a burden! From how many do eloquence and the daily straining to display their powers draw forth blood! How many are pale from constant pleasures! To how many does the throng of clients that crowd about them leave no freedom! In short, run through the list of all these men from the lowest to the highest—this man desires an advocate, this one answers the call, that one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence; no one asserts his claim to himself, everyone is wasted for the sake of another. Ask about the men whose names are known by heart, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them: A cultivates B and B cultivates C; no one is his own master. And then certain men show the most senseless indignation—they complain of the insolence of their superiors, because they were too busy to see them when they wished an audience! But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of the pride of another when he himself has no time to attend to himself? After all, no matter who you are, the great man does sometimes look toward you even if his face is insolent, he does sometimes condescend to listen to your words, he permits you to appear at his side; but you never deign to look upon yourself, to give ear to yourself. There is no reason, therefore, to count anyone in debt for such services, seeing that, when you performed them, you had no wish for another’s company, but could not endure your own.
Though all the brilliant intellects of the ages were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their wonder at this dense darkness of the human mind. Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life—nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal. And so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: “I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count. Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!” What, then, is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.” And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!
You will see that the most powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure, acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. They desire at times, if it could be with safety, to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though nothing from without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes crashing down.
The deified Augustus, to whom the gods vouchsafed more than to any other man, did not cease to pray for rest and to seek release from public affairs; all his conversation ever reverted to this subject—his hope of leisure. This was the sweet, even if vain, consolation with which he would gladden his labours—that he would one day live for himself. In a letter addressed to the senate, in which he had promised that his rest would not be devoid of dignity nor inconsistent with his former glory, I find these words: “But these matters can be shown better by deeds than by promises. Nevertheless, since the joyful reality is still far distant, my desire for that time most earnestly prayed for has led me to forestall some of its delight by the pleasure of words.” So desirable a thing did leisure seem that he anticipated it in thought because he could not attain it in reality. He who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who determined the fortune of individuals and of nations, thought most happily of that future day on which he should lay aside his greatness. He had discovered how much sweat those blessings that shone throughout all lands drew forth, how many secret worries they concealed. Forced to pit arms first against his countrymen, then against his colleagues, and lastly against his relatives, he shed blood on land and sea.
Through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries he followed the path of battle, and when his troops were weary of shedding Roman blood, he turned them to foreign wars. While he was pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies planted in the midst of a peaceful empire, while he was extending its bounds even beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others were being whetted to slay him. Not yet had he escaped their plots, when his daughter and all the noble youths who were bound to her by adultery as by a sacred oath, oft alarmed his failing years—and there was Paulus, and a second time the need to fear a woman in league with an Antony. When be had cut away these ulcers together with the limbs themselves, others would grow in their place; just as in a body that was overburdened with blood, there was always a rupture somewhere. And so he longed for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to answer the prayers of mankind.
Marcus Cicero, long flung among men like Catiline and Clodius and Pompey and Crassus, some open enemies, others doubtful friends, as he is tossed to and fro along with the state and seeks to keep it from destruction, to be at last swept away, unable as he was to be restful in prosperity or patient in adversity—how many times does he curse that very consulship of his, which he had lauded without end, though not without reason! How tearful the words he uses in a letter written to Atticus, when Pompey the elder had been conquered, and the son was still trying to restore his shattered arms in Spain! “Do you ask,” he said, “what I am doing here? I am lingering in my Tusculan villa half a prisoner.” He then proceeds to other statements, in which he bewails his former life and complains of the present and despairs of the future. Cicero said that he was “half a prisoner.” But, in very truth, never will the wise man resort to so lowly a term, never will he be half a prisoner—he who always possesses an undiminished and stable liberty, being free and his own master and towering over all others. For what can possibly be above him who is above Fortune?
When Livius Drusus, a bold and energetic man, had with the support of a huge crowd drawn from all Italy proposed new laws and the evil measures of the Gracchi, seeing no way out for his policy, which he could neither carry through nor abandon when once started on, he is said to have complained bitterly against the life of unrest he had had from the cradle, and to have exclaimed that he was the only person who had never had a holiday even as a boy. For, while he was still a ward and wearing the dress of a boy, he had had the courage to commend to the favour of a jury those who were accused, and to make his influence felt in the law-courts, so powerfully, indeed, that it is very well known that in certain trials he forced a favourable verdict. To what lengths was not such premature ambition destined to go? One might have known that such precocious hardihood would result in great personal and public misfortune. And so it was too late for him to complain that he had never had a holiday when from boyhood he had been a trouble-maker and a nuisance in the forum. It is a question whether he died by his own hand; for he fell from a sudden wound received in his groin, some doubting whether his death was voluntary, no one, whether it was timely.
It would be superfluous to mention more who, though others deemed them the happiest of men, have expressed their loathing for every act of their years, and with their own lips have given true testimony against themselves; but by these complaints they changed neither themselves nor others. For when they have vented their feelings in words, they fall back into their usual round. Heaven knows! such lives as yours, though they should pass the limit of a thousand years, will shrink into the merest span; your vices will swallow up any amount of time. The space you have, which reason can prolong, although it naturally hurries away, of necessity escapes from you quickly; for you do not seize it, you neither hold it back, nor impose delay upon the swiftest thing in the world, but you allow it to slip away as if it were something superfluous and that could be replaced.
But among the worst I count also those who have time for nothing but wine and lust; for none have more shameful engrossments. The others, even if they are possessed by the empty dream of glory, nevertheless go astray in a seemly manner; though you should cite to me the men who are avaricious, the men who are wrathful, whether busied with unjust hatreds or with unjust wars, these all sin in more manly fashion. But those who are plunged into the pleasures of the belly and into lust bear a stain that is dishonourable. Search into the hours of all these people, see how much time they give to accounts, how much to laying snares, how much to fearing them, how much to paying court, how much to being courted, how much is taken up in giving or receiving bail, how much by banquets—for even these have now become a matter of business—, and you will see how their interests, whether you call them evil or good, do not allow them time to breathe.
Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn. Of the other arts there are many teachers everywhere; some of them we have seen that mere boys have mastered so thoroughly that they could even play the master. It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and—what will perhaps make you wonder more—it takes the whole of life to learn how to die. Many very great men, having laid aside all their encumbrances, having renounced riches, business, and pleasures, have made it their one aim up to the very end of life to know how to live; yet the greater number of them have departed from life confessing that they did not yet know—still less do those others know. Believe me, it takes a great man and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him, and it follows that the life of such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly to himself whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle; none of it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most grudgingly, he found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time. And so that man had time enough, but those who have been robbed of much of their life by the public, have necessarily had too little of it.
And there is no reason for you to suppose that these people are not sometimes aware of their loss. Indeed, you will hear many of those who are burdened by great prosperity cry out at times in the midst of their throngs of clients, or their pleadings in court, or their other glorious miseries: “I have no chance to live.” Of course you have no chance! All those who summon you to themselves, turn you away from your own self. Of how many days has that defendant robbed you? Of how many that candidate? Of how many that old woman wearied with burying her heirs? Of how many that man who is shamming sickness for the purpose of exciting the greed of the legacy-hunters? Of how many that very powerful friend who has you and your like on the list, not of his friends, but of his retinue? Check off, I say, and review the days of your life; you will see that very few, and those the refuse. have been left for you. That man who had prayed for the fasces, when he attains them, desires to lay them aside and says over and over: “When will this year be over!” That man gives games, and, after setting great value on gaining the chance to give them, now says: “When shall I be rid of them?” That advocate is lionized throughout the whole forum, and fills all the place with a great crowd that stretches farther than he can be heard, yet he says: “When will vacation time come?” Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow. For what new pleasure is there that any hour can now bring? They are all known, all have been enjoyed to the full. Mistress Fortune may deal out the rest as she likes; his life has already found safety. Something may be added to it, but nothing taken from it, and he will take any addition as the man who is satisfied and filled takes the food which he does not desire and yet can hold. And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long—he has existed long. For what if you should think that that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.
I am often filled with wonder when I see some men demanding the time of others and those from whom they ask it most indulgent. Both of them fix their eyes on the object of the request for time, neither of them on the time itself; just as if what is asked were nothing, what is given, nothing. Men trifle with the most precious thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is an incorporeal thing, because it does not come beneath the sight of the eyes, and for this reason it is counted a very cheap thing—nay, of almost no value at all. Men set very great store by pensions and doles, and for these they hire out their labour or service or effort. But no one sets a value on time; all use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But see how these same people clasp the knees of physicians if they fall ill and the danger of death draws nearer, see how ready they are, if threatened with capital punishment, to spend all their possessions in order to live! So great is the inconsistency of their feelings. But if each one could have the number of his future years set before him as is possible in the case of the years that have passed, how alarmed those would be who saw only a few remaining, how sparing of them would they be! And yet it is easy to dispense an amount that is assured, no matter how small it may be; but that must be guarded more carefully which will fail you know not when.
Yet there is no reason for you to suppose that these people do not know how precious a thing time is; for to those whom they love most devotedly they have a habit of saying that they are ready to give them a part of their own years. And they do give it, without realizing it; but the result of their giving is that they themselves suffer loss without adding to the years of their dear ones. But the very thing they do not know is whether they are suffering loss; therefore, the removal of something that is lost without being noticed they find is bearable. Yet no one will bring back the years, no one will bestow you once more on yourself. Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of the populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay. And what will be the result? You have been engrossed, life hastens by; meanwhile death will be at hand, for which, willy nilly, you must find leisure.
Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own. Whither do you look? At what goal do you aim? All things that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightway! See how the greatest of bards cries out, and, as if inspired with divine utterance, sings the saving strain:
The fairest day in hapless mortals’ life
Is ever first to flee.
“Why do you delay,” says he, “Why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it flees.” Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must vie with time’s swiftness in the speed of using it, and, as from a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must drink quickly. And, too, the utterance of the bard is most admirably worded to cast censure upon infinite delay, in that he says, not “the fairest age,” but “the fairest day.” Why, to whatever length your greed inclines, do you stretch before yourself months and years in long array, unconcerned and slow though time flies so fast? The poet speaks to you about the day, and about this very day that is flying. Is there, then, any doubt that for hapless mortals, that is, for men who are engrossed, the fairest day is ever the first to flee? Old age surprises them while their minds are still childish, and they come to it unprepared and unarmed, for they have made no provision for it; they have stumbled upon it suddenly and unexpectedly, they did not notice that it was drawing nearer day by day. Even as conversation or reading or deep meditation on some subject beguiles the traveller, and he finds that he has reached the end of his journey before he was aware that he was approaching it, just so with this unceasing and most swift journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether waking or sleeping; those who are engrossed become aware of it only at the end.
Should I choose to divide my subject into heads with their separate proofs, many arguments will occur to me by which I could prove that busy men find life very short. But Fabianus, who was none of your lecture-room philosophers of to-day, but one of the genuine and old-fashioned kind, used to say that we must fight against the passions with main force, not with artifice, and that the battle-line must be turned by a bold attack, not by inflicting pinpricks; that sophistry is not serviceable, for the passions must be, not nipped, but crushed. Yet, in order that the victims of them nay be censured, each for his own particular fault, I say that they must be instructed, not merely wept over.
Life is divided into three periods—that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For the last is the one over which Fortune has lost control, is the one which cannot be brought back under any man’s power. But men who are engrossed lose this; for they have no time to look back upon the past, and even if they should have, it is not pleasant to recall something they must view with regret. They are, therefore, unwilling to direct their thoughts backward to ill-spent hours, and those whose vices become obvious if they review the past, even the vices which were disguised under some allurement of momentary pleasure, do not have the courage to revert to those hours. No one willingly turns his thought back to the past, unless all his acts have been submitted to the censorship of his conscience, which is never deceived; he who has ambitiously coveted, proudly scorned, recklessly conquered, treacherously betrayed, greedily seized, or lavishly squandered, must needs fear his own memory. And yet this is the part of our time that is sacred and set apart, put beyond the reach of all human mishaps, and removed from the dominion of Fortune, the part which is disquieted by no want, by no fear, by no attacks of disease; this can neither be troubled nor be snatched away—it is an everlasting and unanxious possession. The present offers only one day at a time, and each by minutes; but all the days of past time will appear when you bid them, they will suffer you to behold them and keep them at your will—a thing which those who are engrossed have no time to do. The mind that is untroubled and tranquil has the power to roam into all the parts of its life; but the minds of the engrossed, just as if weighted by a yoke, cannot turn and look behind. And so their life vanishes into an abyss; and as it does no good, no matter how much water you pour into a vessel, if there is no bottom to receive and hold it, so with time—it makes no difference how much is given; if there is nothing for it to settle upon, it passes out through the chinks and holes of the mind. Present time is very brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has come, and can no more brook delay than the firmament or the stars, whose ever unresting movement never lets them abide in the same track. The engrossed, therefore, are concerned with present time alone, and it is so brief that it cannot be grasped, and even this is filched away from them, distracted as they are among many things.
In a word, do you want to know how they do not “live long”? See how eager they are to live long! Decrepit old men beg in their prayers for the addition of a few more years; they pretend that they are younger than they are; they comfort themselves with a falsehood, and are as pleased to deceive themselves as if they deceived Fate at the same time. But when at last some infirmity has reminded them of their mortality, in what terror do they die, feeling that they are being dragged out of life, and not merely leaving it. They cry out that they have been fools, because they have not really lived, and that they will live henceforth in leisure if only they escape from this illness; then at last they reflect how uselessly they have striven for things which they did not enjoy, and how all their toil has gone for nothing. But for those whose life is passed remote from all business, why should it not be ample? None of it is assigned to another, none of it is scattered in this direction and that, none of it is committed to Fortune, none of it perishes from neglect, none is subtracted by wasteful giving, none of it is unused; the whole of it, so to speak, yields income. And so, however small the amount of it, it is abundantly sufficient, and therefore, whenever his last day shall come, the wise man will not hesitate to go to meet death with steady step.

Perhaps you ask whom I would call “the preoccupied”? There is no reason for you to suppose that I mean only those whom the dogs that have at length been let in drive out from the law-court, those whom you see either gloriously crushed in their own crowd of followers, or scornfully in someone else’s, those whom social duties call forth from their own homes to bump them against someone else’s doors, or whom the praetor’s hammer keeps busy in seeking gain that is disreputable and that will one day fester. Even the leisure of some men is engrossed; in their villa or on their couch, in the midst of solitude, although they have withdrawn from all others, they are themselves the source of their own worry; we should say that these are living, not in leisure, but in idle preoccupation. Would you say that that man is at leisure who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes, that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of each day upon rusty bits of copper? Who sits in a public wrestling-place (for, to our shame I we labour with vices that are not even Roman) watching the wrangling of lads? Who sorts out the herds of his pack-mules into pairs of the same age and colour? Who feeds all the newest athletes? Tell me, would you say that those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber’s while they are being stripped of whatever grew out the night before? while a solemn debate is held over each separate hair? while either disarranged locks are restored to their place or thinning ones drawn from this side and that toward the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit too careless, just as if he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any of their mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not all fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not rather have the state disordered than his hair? Who is not more concerned to have his head trim rather than safe? Who would not rather be well barbered than upright? Would you say that these are at leisure who are occupied with the comb and the mirror? And what of those who are engaged in composing, hearing, and learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best and simplest movement Nature designed to be straightforward, into the meanderings of some indolent tune, who are always snapping their fingers as they beat time to some song they have in their head, who are overheard humming a tune when they have been summoned to serious, often even melancholy, matters? These have not leisure, but idle occupation. And their banquets, Heaven knows! I cannot reckon among their unoccupied hours, since I see how anxiously they set out their silver plate, how diligently they tie up the tunics of their pretty slave-boys, how breathlessly they watch to see in what style the wild boar issues from the hands of the cook, with what speed at a given signal smooth-faced boys hurry to perform their duties, with what skill the birds are carved into portions all according to rule, how carefully unhappy little lads wipe up the spittle of drunkards. By such means they seek the reputation for elegance and good taste, and to such an extent do their evils follow them into all the privacies of life that they can neither eat nor drink without ostentation.
And I would not count these among the leisured class either—the men who have themselves borne hither and thither in a sedan-chair and a litter, and are punctual at the hours for their rides as if it were unlawful to omit them, who are reminded by someone else when they must bathe, when they must swim, when they must dine; so enfeebled are they by the excessive lassitude of a pampered mind that they cannot find out by themselves whether they are hungry! I hear that one of these pampered people—provided that you can call it pampering to unlearn the habits of human life—when he had been lifted by hands from the bath and placed in his sedan-chair, said questioningly: “Am I now seated?” Do you think that this man, who does not know whether he is sitting, knows whether he is alive, whether he sees, whether he is at leisure? I find it hard to say whether I pity him more if he really did not know, or if he pretended not to know this. They really are subject to forgetfulness of many things, but they also pretend forgetfulness of many. Some vices delight them as being proofs of their prosperity; it seems the part of a man who is very lowly and despicable to know what he is doing. After this imagine that the mimes fabricate many things to make a mock of luxury! In very truth, they pass over more than they invent, and such a multitude of unbelievable vices has come forth in this age, so clever in this one direction, that by now we can charge the mimes with neglect. To think that there is anyone who is so lost in luxury that he takes another’s word as to whether he is sitting down! This man, then, is not at leisure, you must apply to him a different term—he is sick, nay, he is dead; that man is at leisure, who has also a perception of his leisure. But this other who is half alive, who, in order that he may know the postures of his own body, needs someone to tell him—how can he be the master of any of his time?
It would be tedious to mention all the different men who have spent the whole of their life over chess or ball or the practice of baking their bodies in the sun. They are not unoccupied whose pleasures are made a busy occupation. For instance, no one will have any doubt that those are laborious triflers who spend their time on useless literary problems, of whom even among the Romans there is now a great number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire into what number of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, whether moreover they belong to the same author, and various other matters of this stamp, which, if you keep them to yourself, in no way pleasure your secret soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a scholar. But now this vain passion for learning useless things has assailed the Romans also. In the last few days I heard someone telling who was the first Roman general to do this or that; Duilius was the first who won a naval battle, Curius Dentatus was the first who had elephants led in his triumph. Still, these matters, even if they add nothing to real glory, are nevertheless concerned with signal services to the state; there will be no profit in such knowledge, nevertheless it wins our attention by reason of the attractiveness of an empty subject. We may excuse also those who inquire into this—who first induced the Romans to go on board ship. It was Claudius, and this was the very reason he was surnamed Caudex, because among the ancients a structure formed by joining together several boards was called a caudex, whence also the Tables of the Law are called codices, and, in the ancient fashion, boats that carry provisions up the Tiber are even to-day called codicariae. Doubtless this too may have some point—the fact that Valerius Corvinus was the first to conquer Messana, and was the first of the family of the Valerii to bear the surname Messana because be had transferred the name of the conquered city to himself, and was later called Messala after the gradual corruption of the name in the popular speech. Perhaps you will permit someone to be interested also in this—the fact that Lucius Sulla was the first to exhibit loosed lions in the Circus, though at other times they were exhibited in chains, and that javelin-throwers were sent by King Bocchus to despatch them? And, doubtless, this too may find some excuse—but does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise human. O, what blindness does great prosperity cast upon our minds! When he was casting so many troops of wretched human beings to wild beasts born under a different sky, when he was proclaiming war between creatures so ill matched, when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman people, who itself was soon to be forced to shed more. he then believed that he was beyond the power of Nature. But later this same man, betrayed by Alexandrine treachery, offered himself to the dagger of the vilest slave, and then at last discovered what an empty boast his surname was.
But to return to the point from which I have digressed, and to show that some people bestow useless pains upon these same matters—the man I mentioned related that Metellus, when he triumphed after his victory over the Carthaginians in Sicily, was the only one of all the Romans who had caused a hundred and twenty captured elephants to be led before his car; that Sulla was the last of the Roman’s who extended the pomerium, which in old times it was customary to extend after the acquisition of Italian but never of provincial, territory. Is it more profitable to know this than that Mount Aventine, according to him, is outside the pomerium for one of two reasons, either because that was the place to which the plebeians had seceded, or because the birds had not been favourable when Remus took his auspices on that spot—and, in turn, countless other reports that are either crammed with falsehood or are of the same sort? For though you grant that they tell these things in good faith, though they pledge themselves for the truth of what they write, still whose mistakes will be made fewer by such stories? Whose passions will they restrain? Whom will they make more brave, whom more just, whom more noble-minded? My friend Fabianus used to say that at times he was doubtful whether it was not better not to apply oneself to any studies than to become entangled in these.
Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only. They annex ever age to their own; all the years that have gone ore them are an addition to their store. Unless we are most ungrateful, all those men, glorious fashioners of holy thoughts, were born for us; for us they have prepared a way of life. By other men’s labours we are led to the sight of things most beautiful that have been wrested from darkness and brought into light; from no age are we shut out, we have access to all ages, and if it is our wish, by greatness of mind, to pass beyond the narrow limits of human weakness, there is a great stretch of time through which we may roam. We may argue with Socrates, we may doubt with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics. Since Nature allows us to enter into fellowship with every age, why should we not turn from this paltry and fleeting span of time and surrender ourselves with all our soul to the past, which is boundless, which is eternal, which we share with our betters?

Those who rush about in the performance of social duties, who give themselves and others no rest, when they have fully indulged their madness, when they have every day crossed everybody’s threshold, and have left no open door unvisited, when they have carried around their venal greeting to houses that are very far apart—out of a city so huge and torn by such varied desires, how few will they be able to see? How many will there be who either from sleep or self-indulgence or rudeness will keep them out! How many who, when they have tortured them with long waiting, will rush by, pretending to be in a hurry! How many will avoid passing out through a hall that is crowded with clients, and will make their escape through some concealed door as if it were not more discourteous to deceive than to exclude. How many, still half asleep and sluggish from last night’s debauch, scarcely lifting their lips in the midst of a most insolent yawn, manage to bestow on yonder poor wretches, who break their own slumber in order to wait on that of another, the right name only after it has been whispered to them a thousand times!
But we may fairly say that they alone are engaged in the true duties of life who shall wish to have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus, as their most intimate friends every day. No one of these will be “not at home,” no one of these will fail to have his visitor leave more happy and more devoted to himself than when he came, no one of these will allow anyone to leave him with empty hands; all mortals can meet with them by night or by day.
No one of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no one of these will wear out your years, but each will add his own years to yours; conversations with no one of these will bring you peril, the friendship of none will endanger your life, the courting of none will tax your purse. From them you will take whatever you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you do not draw the utmost that you can desire. What happiness, what a fair old age awaits him who has offered himself as a client to these! He will have friends from whom he may seek counsel on matters great and small, whom he may consult every day about himself, from whom he may hear truth without insult, praise without flattery, and after whose likeness he may fashion himself.
We are wont to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the more persons you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open to you the path to immortality, and will raise you to a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way of prolonging mortality—nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at hand, and things that are far off we are more free to admire.
The life of the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one.
But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing. Nor because they sometimes invoke death, have you any reason to think it any proof that they find life long. In their folly they are harassed by shifting emotions which rush them into the very things they dread; they often pray for death because they fear it. And, too, you have no reason to think that this is any proof that they are living a long time—the fact that the day often seems to them long, the fact that they complain that the hours pass slowly until the time set for dinner arrives; for, whenever their distractions fail them, they are restless because they are left with nothing to do, and they do not know how to dispose of their leisure or to drag out the time. And so they strive for something else to occupy them, and all the intervening time is irksome; exactly as they do when a gladiatorial exhibition is been announced, or when they are waiting for the appointed time of some other show or amusement, they want to skip over the days that lie between. All postponement of something they hope for seems long to them. Yet the time which they enjoy is short and swift, and it is made much shorter by their own fault; for they flee from one pleasure to another and cannot remain fixed in one desire. Their days are not long to them, but hateful; yet, on the other hand, how scanty seem the nights which they spend in the arms of a harlot or in wine! It is this also that accounts for the madness of poets in fostering human frailties by the tales in which they represent that Jupiter under the enticement of the pleasures of a lover doubled the length of the night. For what is it but to inflame our vices to inscribe the name of the gods as their sponsors, and to present the excused indulgence of divinity as an example to our own weakness? Can the nights which they pay for so dearly fail to seem all too short to these men? They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.
The very pleasures of such men are uneasy and disquieted by alarms of various sorts, and at the very moment of rejoicing the anxious thought comes over them: “How long will these things last?” This feeling has led kings to weep over the power they possessed, and they have not so much delighted in the greatness of their fortune, as they have viewed with terror the end to which it must some time come. When the King of Persia, in all the insolence of his pride, spread his army over the vast plains and could not grasp its number but simply its measure, he shed copious tears because inside of a hundred years not a man of such a mighty army would be alive. But he who wept was to bring upon them their fate, was to give some to their doom on the sea, some on the land, some in battle, some in flight, and within a short time was to destroy all those for whose hundredth year he had such fear. And why is it that even their joys are uneasy from fear? Because they do not rest on stable causes, but are perturbed as groundlessly as they are born. But of what sort do you think those times are which even by their own confession are wretched, since even the joys by which they are exalted and lifted above mankind are by no means pure? All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers. For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. New distractions take the place of the old, hope leads to new hope, ambition to new ambition. They do not seek an end of their wretchedness, but change the cause. Have we been tormented by our own public honours? Those of others take more of our time. Have we ceased to labour as candidates? We begin to canvass for others. Have we got rid of the troubles of a prosecutor? We find those of a judge. Has a man ceased to be a judge? He becomes president of a court. Has he become infirm in managing the property of others at a salary? He is perplexed by caring for his own wealth. Have the barracks set Marius free? The consulship keeps him busy. Does Quintius hasten to get to the end of his dictatorship? He will be called back to it from the plough. Scipio will go against the Carthaginians before he is ripe for so great an undertaking; victorious over Hannibal, victorious over Antiochus, the glory of his own consulship, the surety for his brother’s, did he not stand in his own way, he would be set beside Jove; but the discord of civilians will vex their preserver, and, when as a young man he had scorned honours that rivalled those of the gods, at length, when he is old, his ambition will lake delight in stubborn exile. Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure, but never enjoy it.
And so, my dearest Paulinus, tear yourself away from the crowd, and, too much storm-tossed for the time you have lived, at length withdraw into a peaceful harbour. Think of how many waves you have encountered, how many storms, on the one hand, you have sustained in private life, how many, on the other, you have brought upon yourself in public life; long enough has your virtue been displayed in laborious and unceasing proofs—try how it will behave in leisure. The greater part of your life, certainly the better part of it, has been given to the state; take now some part of your time for yourself as well. And I do not summon you to slothful or idle inaction, or to drown all your native energy in slumbers and the pleasures that are dear to the crowd. That is not to rest; you will find far greater works than all those you have hitherto performed so energetically, to occupy you in the midst of your release and retirement. You, I know, manage the accounts of the whole world as honestly as you would a stranger’s, as carefully as you would your own, as conscientiously as you would the state’s. You win love in an office in which it is difficult to avoid hatred; but nevertheless believe me, it is better to have knowledge of the ledger of one’s own life than of the corn-market. Recall that keen mind of yours, which is most competent to cope with the greatest subjects, from a service that is indeed honourable but hardly adapted to the happy life, and reflect that in all your training in the liberal studies, extending from your earliest years, you were not aiming at this—that it might be safe to entrust many thousand pecks of corn to your charge; you gave hope of something greater and more lofty. There will be no lack of men of tested worth and painstaking industry. But plodding oxen are much more suited to carrying heavy loads than thoroughbred horses, and who ever hampers the fleetness of such high-born creatures with a heavy pack? Reflect, besides, how much worry you have in subjecting yourself to such a great burden; your dealings are with the belly of man. A hungry people neither listens to reason, nor is appeased by justice, nor is bent by any entreaty. Very recently within those few day’s after Gaius Caesar died—still grieving most deeply (if the dead have any feeling) because he knew that the Roman people were alive and had enough food left for at any rate seven or eight days while he was building his bridges of boats and playing with the resources of the empire, we were threatened with the worst evil that can befall men even during a siege—the lack of provisions; his imitation of a mad and foreign and misproud king was very nearly at the cost of the city’s destruction and famine and the general revolution that follows famine. What then must have been the feeling of those who had charge of the corn-market, and had to face stones, the sword, fire—and a Caligula? By the greatest subterfuge they concealed the great evil that lurked in the vitals of the state—with good reason, you may be sure. For certain maladies must be treated while the patient is kept in ignorance; knowledge of their disease has caused the death of many.
Do you retire to these quieter, safer, greater things! Think you that it is just the same whether you are concerned in having corn from oversea poured into the granaries, unhurt either by the dishonesty or the neglect of those who transport it, in seeing that it does not become heated and spoiled by collecting moisture and tallies in weight and measure, or whether you enter upon these sacred and lofty studies with the purpose of discovering what substance, what pleasure, what mode of life, what shape God has; what fate awaits your soul; where Nature lays us to rest When we are freed from the body; what the principle is that upholds all the heaviest matter in the centre of this world, suspends the light on high, carries fire to the topmost part, summons the stars to their proper changes—and ether matters, in turn, full of mighty wonders? You really must leave the ground and turn your mind’s eye upon these things! Now while the blood is hot, we must enter with brisk step upon the better course. In this kind of life there awaits much that is good to know—the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, knowledge of living and dying, and a life of deep repose.
The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labour at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world—loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.
And so when you see a man often wearing the robe of office, when you see one whose name is famous in the Forum, do not envy him; those things are bought at the price of life. They will waste all their years, in order that they may have one year reckoned by their name. Life has left some in the midst of their first struggles, before they could climb up to the height of their ambition; some, when they have crawled up through a thousand indignities to the crowning dignity, have been possessed by the unhappy thought that they have but toiled for an inscription on a tomb; some who have come to extreme old age, while they adjusted it to new hopes as if it were youth, have had it fail from sheer weakness in the midst of their great and shameless endeavours. Shameful is he whose breath leaves him in the midst of a trial when, advanced in years and still courting the applause of an ignorant circle, he is pleading for some litigant who is the veriest stranger; disgraceful is he who, exhausted more quickly by his mode of living than by his labour, collapses in the very midst of his duties; disgraceful is he who dies in the act of receiving payments on account, and draws a smile from his long delayed heir. I cannot pass over an instance which occurs to me. Sextus Turannius was an old man of long tested diligence, who, after his ninetieth year, having received release from the duties of his office by Gaius Caesar’s own act, ordered himself to be laid out on his bed and to be mourned by the assembled household as if he were dead. The whole house bemoaned the leisure of its old master, and did not end its sorrow until his accustomed work was restored to him. Is it really such pleasure for a man to die in harness? Yet very many have the same feeling; their desire for their labour lasts longer than their ability; they fight against the weakness of the body, they judge old age to be a hardship on no other score than because it puts them aside. The law does not draft a soldier after his fiftieth year, it does not call a senator after his sixtieth; it is more difficult for men to obtain leisure from themselves than from the law. Meantime, while they rob and are being robbed, while they break up each other’s repose, while they make each other wretched, their life is without profit, without pleasure, without any improvement of the mind. No one keeps death in view, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes; some men, indeed, even arrange for things that lie beyond life—huge masses of tombs and dedications of public works and gifts for their funeral-pyres and ostentatious funerals.
But, in very truth, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as though they had lived but the tiniest span.

"There is all this pleasure people are missing out on"

The world would be a better place if...

I met a great guy and good friend this past weekend. Now, if you've spent some of your lifetime getting to know the world and it's locals then I'm willing to take a listen to your answer. One thing I did learn in college is to remember where you get your sources and their credibility. There needs to be a level of discernment, like with fox news, you can judge for yourself if that's the kind of news resource you want.

People are missing out on a lot of pleasure. Agreed. I remember thinking the EXACT THING last year. Even wrote a blog on compersion. I'll repost it here. It was a hot southern california summer seeing all the barely dressed and very attractive co-eds in my anthropology class and two clueless guys in front talking about how they cannot get any. It is a shame people are missing out on a lot of pleasure. I can agree with that as well.

So knowing this now what, what do we ask ourselves? Would the world be a better place if people persued pleasure as much as developed character or values? I mean some people do, but what makes it bad is when the people they are pursuing don't know or maybe aren't in their right mind or the worst, when the other party wants more.

Who knows, but does it have to get better than that. I mean this is the world right? So instead of hoping to make the world better, something you don't have any ultimate power over, why not instead allow yourself to be better. Being better, perhaps you'll discover yourself in a different place and the world might reveal itself different to you.

Oh my clueless classmates, they need a woman friend who will help awaken their inner cassanova.

So, as my friend is entertaining locals and trying to hook up a cute local girl with a new boyfriend, I am reminded of the pleasure people are missing out on. Life is short friends, so if you are not pleasuring yourself then the question remains, why not. Follow your bliss...

But it's not easy? Why is that? Are there other priorities than pleasure? If so, why do they have to interfere with things? Are people afraid? There is nothing to fear but fear itself, yes it's trite and true. Casual Sex. Friends with benefits sex. Why do these carry stigmas if everyone is happy and no one gets hurt in the process?

Here's the thing. Women are HARDWIRED to have feelings after sex. It's the oxytocin. The same way guys can be horny with perpetual hard ons. Men, please be advised, women also get horny, to varying degrees but know that it can be AS INTENSE and perhaps MORE if a man knows just how to turn on a woman. I can understand the perpetual hard ons in males, to bad there is not a similarly obvious sign with women. Would it make things easier? If so, we could walk around with signs but that might translate to desperation in this day in age. Is there a fine line between frankness and desperation? But maybe that's not the right question when desperation manifest a lack of something else in a person's life.

What I don't understand is how hard-ons continue to happen for men, sometimes without stimulus. Guy getting hard ons on a empty bus, cooking an omelet, or at grandma's house. Maybe that's why estrous hasn't really evolved in women yet, given the right kind of stimulus, a woman can always be up to it physically. Emotionally and mentally, is a whole different game.

I think a good partner can bring out a better lover. In my opinion, that kind of quality in a relationship takes time and is not just about the sex but about being a lover. If someone follows their pleasures and doesn't hurt anyone in the process, remains honest, clearly states his/her intention then the world could be a better place if people pursued their pleasures.

I'm starting to feel the "player" isn't really there if there is no one being "played" so pursuing pleasure honestly is okay on this blog. Just proceed with caution, especially if this is new territory.

Carpe Diem, seize the now!

ninjas and pirates

I really need to blog mobile but while I'm waiting for a super sexy blackberry to come into my life, I'll go old school with a notebook. I used to roll with a huge bag but it's kinda of liberating not bringing anything around with you. Anyway, I'll try to work a happy medium, keeping the larger mama bags, just limiting the contents.

It's around 8:00am at 9:00 I'll start my first round of muraling. I'm so exciting. I'm looking for a mandala for inspiration for the front door.

This morning, woke up at around four, did the morning routines sans yoga...my mats at my "chateau." and picked some veggies from the garden. Organic okra, best pick of the day, it tastes amazing, with just a little of that slippery okra-ness. The best part of its freshness is the texture so CRUNCHY, especially if you're used to it cooked in Gumbo or some kind of soup or stewed, you'll find it a new refreshing take. Crunchy, green, and incredibly delicious.

So, one of the guys here totally suprised me today. He is a secret warrior, no joke...he could be Bruce Lee status if he wanted to. It may sounds like an exaggeration but with only self study and copying what he has seen, he can bust out some olympic caliber lines on the rings, flips, dismounts, all that stuff. Amazing how talented some people are. When people have talent like that, I just want to show them to the world. He told me he's been in fights where he has had to fight
five or more guys with knives and it's just him, armed only with himself and he took them all down or at least lives to tell about it. My fighting vocabulary in Ilonggo is minimal, there were so many words I didn't understand but I'm sure the admiration I had translated.

I may have just met one of the last living real ninjas in the world.
Philippines is officially the land of ninjas and pirates.

I just came back from picking some mangos today, 33.3% return, I have got to work on the cathcig skills. The neck strain is the most painful though. I'm eating a fresh carrot now, the first I've ever picked...it tastes kinda soapy. I miss purple carrots. It's interesting how the orange ones became the chosen ones. I think orange carrots were selected for and bred by the Dutch, a patriotic color maybe?

So I've met a treasure hunter, a ninja...and hopefully one day a pirate.

being in the zone

so I've been defining my passion. One key element I think in finding what you are passionate about is defining the moments and actions in your life when you are totally in the moment. Some examples might be a performer on stage, a writer inspired with the writing bug, a dancer moving their body, etc.

Once a person gets to that place when they are so in the moment, they are not afraid to make a "fool" of themselves and mess up, there is passion there. There is determination, there is presence.

thoughts from the food documentary

Food affects our lives.
Food is an exchange and an expression of love. Even though it would be easier if food came in a pill form, eating and preparing food is fun. Looking at food is an experience. Ascetics as so much to do with our food experience. What we eat defines us culturally and even has changed us genetically.
We are what we eat.
That's just some random thoughts.
Some random facts:
I learned that human adults are naturally lactose intolerant. Wild bananas have big seeds. Modern day wheat is dependent on human technology for its growth.
Pregnant women, fried spicy food usually triger nausea.
more later...watching more documentaries!

Bang Bus and 102+ other stories

I met a cousin this weekend who works at a call center. The very call centers that some people blame for much of the job loss in the great US of A. Well, as she brilliantly stated to a caller complaining that they are taking American jobs, "Ma'am I'm sure if you were willing to be paid about $1.50 an hour, you could have a job too."

One of the first clients for the center was the porn company "Bang Bus." When customers would call into to ask for something "hott" they were instructed to reply "well, how hott do you want it. There was also a commission for each DVD sold. Now, they do customer service for motorola, AT&t, etc. Unfortunately, no free phones or commission or free porn with AT&T.

So much has happened these past couple days and it's hard to remember all of it. I just want to make sure I wrote about the Bang Bus before I forgot.

The call center provides classes for their employees. Since they are working for American companies and engage customers in small talk, there are daily news ticker updates for them. When training, there are also classes such as United States of America 101. This gives call center workers a crash course in American culture. Previously, there was also an accent reduction class but now that most people know these call centers are overseas, they are no longer required to claim to be from "texas" or "oklahoma."

She has so many stories about people freaking out without internet access.
And then,I remember, there are people here living fully sustainable lives without internet access nor the need for it. Albeit, the internet is such a tool for learning, connecting, expanding our knowledge, but it is equally addicting, time consuming and promotes staring blanky into an inanimate screen. Sometimes at parties you'll see a table of pre-teen boys all glued to their PSP, instead of talking and engaging with each other opting for PSP games and stimulus. Sometimes it can seem de-socializing youth from an outside prespective but maybe the PSP can bring these kids together too.

I see some resent searches on my google queue: StumbleUpon, Furniture design, nude Russian Models, ex-boyfriends...The internet is definitely the closest thing to the Genesis tree of knowledge.

Time to write more. I don't know if it's so smart to post goals. Some people claim that talking about things you are planning or changing, deters the effort by making the individual falsely believe they have taken steps for an action by merely speaking about taking steps towards progress and their goals.

I'm already accumulating a lot of stuff, much of it not needed. It was nice with the sparse living for awhile. It's evening now so tomorrow again for the de-cluttering.

Write more soon blogging world, write write for real soon too.

progress

The secret of making progress is to get started. The secret to starting is to divide your complex, overwhelming task into small, manageable tasks, and then start the first.

~ Mark Twain

some updates

Okay my postings have not gone as planned. brown outs and some hindered wi-fi, but that's the past and the present is I'm here, wi-fi ready.

Lots, well relatively, many things have happened. I miss home as much but I'm becoming better adjusted here so if there is a gate theory to longing, there is not much space for missing anymore. This is good. I've also been noticing the healing aspect of time and wisdom. Wisdom as I have learned though is not something to be taught but cultivated through individual experience and effort.

Boxes arrived from America after six weeks on the ocean. My Siddhartha book found me, I'll finish it tonight. I just spent some moments in a bahay kubo but retreated after being feasted on by mosquitoes. There is a rather noisy lizard with me now.

It's about dusk and slowly the sky is dimming. I woke up around one this morning, read and listened to music until sunrise. Music carried me through the morning. Even a little heartbreak music but my heart on track. It's a kind of comical sobering noticing yourself unneccessarily wallowing in a self-constructed puddle of fuck the world shit. This life is not forever and squandering time, hideously idiotic.

I've been pondering attitudes, choices and mantras. So maybe there's a heartbreak. There's the option of holding a pity party in the lonely morning hours, wanting the world to stop and cry with you, there is the denial option or trying to forget by drinking, celebrating, fucking or just simply go on with living. Attitude makes all the difference. Following the attitude or paradigm shift, one could just choose to be grateful for the experience and move on from whatever pain or sorrow to what's next. Thus no failure or fall would be squandered, time well spent living.

It's not about pursuing or acquiring things to make you happy, it's more about changing your attitudes so that no matter what, there is an inner happiness that can't be taken away.

Happiness, inclusive of satisfaction, fulfillment, self-awareness, is rich and so worthwhile. Some really wise people say there is a lot of happiness in devoting yourself to other, maybe in order to contribute the the universal collective of humans or simply just the high of doing something good for others.

Maybe, to whoever reads this, the next time someone comes to you for help see what you can do...and maybe it could be something other than some paper currency but genuine time or care or just a hug and some love.

I've been eating a lot more fiber, my belly feels full and my deuces numerous. A fast should be in order soon.

I will make an effort on the Seneca too, pending a ballroom dance or not.

love.

vibrators and being chewed out

I found vibrators today. I found vibrators and learned about "bomba." I found vibrators (plural), learned about bomba and heard a guy say "dang that's a small vibrator." Then I go and say, "well not if it's up an ariputan (Asshole)." I learned that Itot or fuck is a really really unlady like word. Crass and simply "Doesn't sound good" coming out of my mouth.

I got chewed out today by someone with good intentions and although I wanted to talk back I didn't. Perhaps I could chalk it up to cultural training or respecting your elders but what she said didn't upset me to the point of rebuttle. What I wonder though is if there is a loss of integrity when one doesn't fight back or say something "Sabat".

I wonder as I eat a sweet piece of corn but maybe that doesn't really matter.

I'm learning more about industrial design, what an awesome thing to design things to make them more useful.

Website browsing and building is tiring on top of clearing out boxes of American memories and things that have traveled an ocean for more than 6 weeks to join me. Raw food books, piano book, umbreallas, rainboots, clothes and candles. I'm really excited for the candles.

It's been raining on and off, so I'll start transporting stuff before the next rainfall happens and no matter what the long awaited yoga is gonna happen.

Next entry will talk about Seneca once I finish a brief reading, just another reason I'm not into retiring and posting living to the last years of life.

Seneca is pretty genius. I'm genuinely inspired. There is so much of the planet I want to see, want to do, want to taste, want to be with...

no water

There is electricity now but the water is not running. I ate some leftover crackers from Lola's wake. For the next wake I will definitely fast because YOU WILL GET FAT DURING A WAKE IN THE PHILIPPINES IF YOU LET YOURSELF GO. I just tried to do a round of skipping rope and got winded out. Hopefully, I will digest soon.

Wakes in the Philippines = smorgasboard of cookies, crackers and juices, gifts of lechon and pancit molo at your door, pots of pata soup and a sweet linugao. I've had a wide, delicious variety of treats in my day and the mediocre crackers don't really take the cake but there was something about this week, staying up, drinking, playing games and eating, everything didn't taste necessarily better but with the abundance of food surrounding the place, there was a perpetual hunger. Oh well, that's past and what's now is extra calories to work off. At least I still am rawish....lol, not like I need the label. I've been satisfying and non-existent sweet tooth. I just miss the clarity and elevated feelings from being raw.

WAKES = toxification!!!!!

I have a theory that for some women, when horniness is not satisfied, some turn to food for satisfaction, others fashion maybe, shopping but because eating and sex are both so related to sensual stimulus, I think food is the closest second.

Thankfully, there is music and meditation. Oh yoga!!

dating, mating and sexual maseratis

I recently learned about the practice of textmates. It's the getting to know you part of courtship here that is similar to chatting online. Here's how it goes down: a man will see a woman he finds attractive on the street and will try to get her number by any means possible without directly asking, through a friend, mother, cousin, etc. Then he will txt her and they will talk about simple getting to know you facts and after awhile decided whether or not to meet.

Then I learned about the sex trade, some of it anyway, where for 3000 PhP something like 60 bucks you can have your choice of an attractive female at some massage place in Manila. Prostitution is an old business and even is around this small section of the Philippines. Southeast Asia is known as a cheap sexual playground for interested foreigners buying in euros, dollars or pounds with sex on the brain.

Hunger and Horniness are very powerful physical drives. Meditation can help some deal with the lust for a body or gluttony. Is the consequence of being fat to overeating the same as STDs to unprotected sex? I read online Karl Lagerfeld saying fashion is the number one medicine against obesity.

No wonder food porn and sex porn are so related. When you're a hedonist in your 20s, these urges are surging.

What do you do when women are not educated? Orgasm training, natural cycles, protection, condoms. Some people really don't know some things. You cannot assume anything. What some men don't realize is the advent of women who want sex. Throughout history there have been the siren that have always wanted sex. The sexual revolutionaries downplayed by patriarchal history and double standards.

With the ability for multiple orgasms, no worries about sexual dysfunction, women are goddesses. Women represent fertility and the propagation of the species. Women are sexual maseratis, a ride better than the wind blowing past your fast on a speeding on a ducati.

Woman want sex but I guess there is something about paid sex that can get people turned on. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Until then, I can educate interested parties on the horniness of women for a nominal fee but eventually, as most of my friends know, I'm really about the promotion of sacred sex and tantric sex. If sexual pleasure is more in the mind, the pleasure of sexual satisfaction with knowing your "mind" and minding your thoughts could be sensation out of this world.

Through sex, some say people can get closer to God.

More later, run pending and yoga.

papa's eulogy v1.0

Lola as a mother
On behalf of my brothers, Rodney, Jerry and Chester and our families, we would like to thank you all for being here. We would also like to send our thanks to Mama’s caregivers and all those who where with us this week and throughout her last days with us.
As the Lord commands, we honor thy father and mother and with this in mind we remember and honor Mama today. Every day we say prayers and thank God for our blessings, like having such a wonderful woman to call a woman.
She instilled many lessons upon us like. 1. The Love of God , 2. Love of Family, 3. The importance of Hard Work, 4. Honesty in your dealings, 5. Respect for other people.
I would like to share with you the humor of my mother. (Pangihi sa cemetario)
From her example, I have learned so much. One thing mama exemplified was not talking badly about other people. If you don’t have any good things to say about other people. Do not say anything at all.
We remember Mama as the strong woman that she was. It was a blessing to have her as a mother, as a shining example of a devoted mother, caring for all of us. We send her to the Lord with our prayers and pray for her eternal peace.

lola's eulogy

Lola as a grandmother
Friends, family and loved ones, Thank you all for being here.
As a child, I constantly misplaced things. You could see me bouncing around, turning the house inside out and upside down looking for a lost toy or book. I would frequently go to Lola asking her help in locating whatever I had lost or couldn’t find. I vividly remember one time when I was looking for a can, running frantically throughout the house and it was just right there in front of me but I couldn’t find it, she handed it to me and told me “Lisa, look with your eyes not your mouth.”
That was just one of the lessons Lola taught me. Now as a grown woman, Lola still had so much wisdom to impart. Even though she had a difficulty hearing, she would always listen to whatever you had to say. So many times, we can hear but not really listen to each other, thinking instead in what ways to respond or about whatever else was important in your life. That was not the case with Lola, when you came to her with a concern in your heart. She made you the priority. Whatever kind of pain or challenge, you could come to Lola and she would help you through it.
She gave me good advice. She was a woman with a sharp mind and great wit, always imparting wisdom and making us smile and laugh.
The greatest lesson she gave me is the one I want to share with you today. It was a somewhat gloomy day and one of Lola’s stronger days. She had just finished a stroll in her wheelchair. We sat together and I looked at her sweet face. We held each other’s hand and she told me “Lisa, life is short.”
That is all she said. That’s all she had to say. Once you know your life is short and not forever, your perspective becomes enriched.
This is the lesson I want to share with you. Whether you are inspired to love more deeply, abandon greed and petty rivalries or jealousy, live life more fully, take risks and chances, find peace, devote yourself to your God or a higher spirituality, please look within and do what you must. The best way to remember Lola would be to live our lives remembering life is short, being people of good character and embodying kindness and compassion as she did.
To everyone who helped Lola and took care of her I say Thank you so much. In a world where many die in hospitals or even alone, I’m happy we had a chance to be with her in her final moments. Now it is Lola’s time for transformation as she moves on from life her among us in the physical world to the next. Let us do our best to live with the lessons she imparted and following her example of kindness, compassion and love. We send Lola off to her eternal rest and peace with our prayers.
Peace and blessing to you all as we continue our journeys through life.

wake night one

Wake observance here in the Philippines is intense. One thing I like though is getting to see so many relatives and friends. I've meet a great uncle with awesome stories about when he was rich, living in santa monica. Those will be a series of blogs - here's some teasers...death by sex, "ling-ling", chicken ranch, popo and berettas, mcdonalds arrest...

I'm heading back in a few. A bunch of lovely local ladies just said some prayers and songs. Now they are feasting on some pancit molo and pata. Someone brought salad tonight too. Thank you Baby Jesus, Buddha, the divine, the universe, the flying spaghetti monster for that person's kindness. I get to eat tonight and have I missed lettuce.

I miss lettuce. When I get back to North America, I will be eating every green available.

I'm not sure whether I can do naked yoga this week, with people coming in and out of the compound. We'll see. I need to power yoga son regardless, I haven't been on my yogitoes in a while!

how

how can you celebrate
when all around you
people are suffering
there are empty tummies on the streets

how can you live
an unexsmined, comfortable life
when a woman
an excellent example of kindness
passes on and remind you just how short
life
is.

life.
the beautiful, confusing labyrinth of a series of breath
and circulations
steps and action
over the course
of a lifetime
whether by causation, determination
or by the action of the free moral agent

you are reading this
i am writing this
we are living.
so seize the moment
in awareness
do not put off for a tomorrow
that isn't even real
or live in the past
that is alive only in memory

live in the now
for that is all me have
and it is ever changing
irrecoverable
and ever beautiful
in the in the unglorious
painful
agonizing
moments
it is beautiful
because this is what we have
and our divine right
is to have our life
be as beautiful as we are
creative as we are
and
divine as we are.

Pass Peace

I kissed your forehead
and you were cold and hard
and for the first time
I was genuinely not afraid to die

I am braver now
I am stronger now
I know more of my self now
You are a big part of that awakening

Being around you has made
a great impact in my life
and I only wish I was here for you
in the moments I was
not
when I was sick
and uncle told me to stay away
screw him, I should have lingered
but I know, he didn't have bad intentions
and didn't know you would be passing on tonight

I celebrate you
Deeply
I ring the bells of joy in my heart
joie de vivire
or however the french say
I will remember you in my joy of life

I will remember you asking me what I ate
even in your most painful moments
remembering to feed
your already overfed granddadughter
visiting you from the states
lovesick, heartbroken and you mending the pieces
and recognizing a deeper sadness within my soul

you the one who was deaf, probably the best listener of all.
No wonder it is great to talk to dogs or pets
and you feel like they listen
and they don't have to say anything.
Most of the time, you just want someone to listen
and share a moment with you
people want to open up

I want to contact so many people
and i will
clear things up and leave them in their peace
and myself in the peace
that has always been mine
that sometimes I have left
or forgotten
or been blocked from
by my own
attachment
suspicions
needs
self inflicted suffering

Death, your death, has humbled me
and forever I celebrate life
the chance to be living
your life and your being so kindly in the world
to give arise to my own soul
and experience
and to learn what life has taught you in 91+ years

I love you, I want to eat a bucket full of barquillos but it's not time for emotional eating when what needs to be expressed is that I'll miss you, I didn't get to say and tell you all the love I had for you but I know in our moments I expressed them to you and meant them so now that you are not living among mortals but have met whatever awaits us, I ask you to be in peace and I pray for your peace, the peace of your soul and celebrate you!!!!

More than ever it's time to realize the divine potention and go for "your ambitions" as you would have said.