Before the advent of clocks and calendars, our mirror image was already a clever way to signify the passage of time. Our body is a stand-alone time-teller. True, it cannot show us the numbers on which the long hand and short hand fall. It cannot tell us how much time has passed, but it certainly...
Tag: life
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Running on that track
NEW YORK CITY—I played sikyo when I was growing up in the Philippines. Each time the captains of the opposing teams chose their players, I was the last to be called because apart from my small build I did not run fast enough. But I always insisted on joining the play, so that the captain...
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Smelling good (without going into debt to buy French perfume)
I used to have a keen sense of smell. It’s probably a vestigial faculty from my ancestors who, as hunter-gatherers in the wild of Panay, needed all their five senses heightened. But my nose has been dulled by age, Metro Manila’s pollution, and my own careless olfactory experiments. Once, I almost killed myself by being...
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Finding our way to happiness amid life’s difficulties
In my study of philosophy, I have learned from a few thinkers and philosophers who wrestled with finding meaning—and, thus, happiness—in the hardness of life, whence struggles and challenges are “sine qua non” (literally, “cannot be without”). The German existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in positing that humans suffer for a reason, argued that we can...
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Do you know the way to San Rafael?
Getting to Barangay Lico in San Rafael, Bulacan, was half the fun. My batchmates at St. Paul College (now a university) of Quezon City, high school class of 1973, decided to meet at the home of Baby, our classmate until the fifth grade, then travel to the Central Luzon province in a convoy. The car...
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Easy like Sunday afternoon
The woman has apparently just risen from her wheelchair and her companions seem to be urging her to take a few steps forward. But ever so gently: You feel love pervading the tight little scene as you walk past it on this Sunday afternoon at the UP Oval late In January, when the sun’s rays...
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Each of us is unique, good, true and beautiful
Way back in my seminary philosophical study in ontology (a branch of metaphysics that deals with the study of “being, existence, and reality”), there’s this Latin maxim, “Ens est unum, bonum, verum, et pulchrum.” Every being is one, good, true and beautiful. More often than not, we wish to be like others or even better than our...
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The grandeur of solitude: ‘Alone but never lonely’
Let me clarify at the start my thesis-thought for this piece: I’m in no way advocating solitude at the expense of or minus social interaction, or isolation over meaningful contact with others. Verily, in the objective scheme of things, according to the “no man is an island” precept, a good life cannot exclude family and...
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My babies forever and always
I remember a rainy afternoon. I was sitting next to the window, drinking hot chocolate as an alternative to coffee because I was pregnant with my fourth child. I stared outside and watched the raindrops falling to the ground. I could hear my three other children laughing and playing in the living room. On some...
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Food, friendship and more on a tour with a chef
FUKUOKA, HIROSHIMA, OSAKA—We came here to savor food that popular Filipino chef Sandy Daza has taste-tested and pronounced “exceptional” (for him, “good” is simply “not enough”). But the “Daza Japan Food Tour” of the three cities and their namesake prefectures on Oct. 20-25 offered participants more than just food. It also included visits to fish...
