From “Infinite Possibilities”
“Our first responsibility in life is not to make the world a better place or to tend to those less fortunate but to live up to our own high standards, to act with faith that our dreams are meant to be and to maintain a tolerance and compassion for our own divine journey.”
This was not how I was taught in school. Neither did I teach this!!!!
From Gill Edwards:
“I believe that our first responsibility is to make our own lives work. By finding inner peace, for example, we are contributing towards global peace.”
My own sister, Julie Escay, and Tato Malay are living examples of the above. I have chosen to be guided by the two quotations above.
I’m 73 years old. I am happily recovering from a hip surgery. The last time I left our condo building was almost a month ago. While apparently isolated from the world, I am actually inundated with soooo many challenges/stimuli.
Pick any day. I deal with many stimuli created by my ever-productive mind sometimes as early as 1 am. I have significantly tamed my thoughts thanks to Boorstein, Tamura, Brickner, Malay etc. But it is still a challenge not to enter into darkness like what happened in the 90s.
I am grateful my husband is stable emotionally, mentally and whatever “-ally”.
Often I get updates from our daughter now a British citizen. Thank God. For more than a month now I get only pleasant messages.
As early as 9 AM I get pesky cellphone messages about food franchise, loans, condos etc. When I go to Facebook, I have to deal with ads after every 3 or more posts from friends. To think Facebook keeps repeating they are managing my preferences! AS THOUGH THEY CARE.
Makes me feel I am dealing with the government.
Every so often I get irritating PLDT calls from promo agents. An unforgettable one was from a female agent who kept insisting on talking to my husband even after I identified myself several times as the wife. Eventually I got peeved. She thought she had better chances of convincing my husband. I threatened to report her to Mr Pangilinan. She stopped! But how could I report? I was not able to get her name. Perhaps, the trouble was she kept on using Filipino while I kept speaking English. And my English gets better when I am angry!
Dealing with delivery boys/men whether for food or laundry can sometimes be entertaining but at other times be trying to my patience.
I often speak English because my Filipino is not good enough.One particular young man is an eager learner. Once when he delivered food at 6pm he greeted me good afternoon. I pointed to our wall clock and taught him “Good evening”. Next day he delivered in the morning. He was smart enough to know how to greet me.
I have many other anecdotes but surely with the above I can claim I can isolate myself in our tower on the 37th floor but I am still vulnerable.
I would like to ed with a quote from Tamura:
“Although you may take them (crises) personally, situations in life don’t happen to you. They just happen and you get involved in them according to the way you respond to [them].”