What's up!

I haven’t been posting stuff about law school lately and not because I’m not in school. In fact, I have been very much into it that I don’t have to impel myself to talk about it. Get my jive? Anyway, I won’t be posting about legalese but some insights I gathered these past few weeks.

To say that my first year had been a roller-coaster ride is an understatement. I have definitely messed up a bit (or a lot), but the great thing about law school is how it builds me up.  There’s this maxim a batchmate told me while I was going through a tricky situation during registration: law school’s not a race, it’s a marathon.  My timetable was ruined, but I was as calm as calm can be – probably because I’ve learned from the past.  Trusting God on this is the best decision I’ve made in this aspect of my life.  Hence, the motto which I go by in law: FIGHT ‘TIL THE LAST BREATH.  It doesn’t matter if things didn’t work out as planned, the important thing is to continue.  Because my heart beats for this.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be crazy enough to prolong this calvary. But my heart beats for it, that is why it is a happy calvary I’m very much willing to take.

I’ve seen myself grow.  This may seem to you a pompous statement, but I couldn’t rephrase it more discretely.  I’ve been disciplined like never before, compelled to focus like never before, and taught to control my emotions.  It taught me how to manage my time wisely, but at the same time to never be too busy that I forget myself or my purpose. “Yes, fight ‘til the last breath but I’ll never be too busy for You and you.” It’s such an irony, dontchathink?

I don’t talk about this dream this way often because it’s something I don’t find a need to.  But I want to share a bit of it.  As I told a friend, law school is humbling.  The profession seems grand, but the process of attaining an ATTY before your name is humbling.  It made me realize the nothingness in me – how small and weak and a naught I am.  It is good news, actually because when I am nothing, God becomes my everything. He takes over like a flood that surges when you’re all out.

I’ve been through that irresolute stage, that seemingly endless stage that’s so full of DRAMA and soul-searching! But after going through impossibilities and finding myself alive, I take it as a thumbs-up from my Father to carry on.

Law school is bad-ass HARD. But it makes me want to be better.  It doesn’t have to conflict with everything else! :) How in the universe am I going to balance school with ministry and family and friends and love life (yeah, let’s include that assuming it arrives)? Impossible, eh? Exactly why I like it when things go impossible.  BECAUSE God works best then.

It’s like walking in water, all the time.

Philippians 4:13

Waiting

The idea of waiting strikes a rather downbeat chord – at the outset.  Nobody wants to wait in line for hours.  It’s bummer enough to wait, but to do so standing in a poorly ventilated place with the dissonance of heads scampering about sucks out what is left of anybody’s cool. There’s the waiting for results – of an exam, of a medical test, of a long prayed for pregnancy. One can imagine the excruciating pain of waiting for a final grade or the unforbearing ordeal of waiting for a promotion after years of impeccable service.  For some, there’s the long wait to get out of high school and move on to college for self-reinvention. Or to move on with college and start building their own lives. Children couldn’t wait to mature.  Teenagers try to advance to adulthood like there’s no tomorrow. And parents can’t wait for their children to grow up – only to realize late in life that time flew so fast they wished they were young again.  There’s the waiting for dreams, the thought bubble of “someday when I grow up”. Sometimes, those bubbles dissipate or get popped; for some they get larger as they are realized or remain as is.  There’s also that big wait for the One, that solitary being you feel would perfectly complement you – or if he or she will ever come.  Sadly enough, some couldn’t wait on life.  The saddest thing comes when we couldn’t wait on God.  And we blow it all away.

Three things.  The wait, the why and the what you’re waiting for.

The wait is the act or time throughout which some action is anticipated.  It may sound passive but it doesn’t necessarily have to.  In fact, those who become productive even while they wait are less likely to complain of the length of time of waiting.  They busy themselves, that upon the end, the wait wouldn’t even seem long.  The wait is the period of growth, not an interlude of grumbling.  The wait is the period of preparation for what you’ve waited for, so that when it finally comes to pass, you’re all set and ready to receive.  Why the need for preparation? Because a month-old baby will not be able to handle solid food and will just end up sick.  He needs to grow up first. Just the same, we might not be able to handle it all at once and waste it all away.  When it comes to relationships, the period of waiting for the right person is vital to the quality and success of your relationship, of your future and the outgrowth of it.  When you can’t wait and rush in where angels fear to tread, regrets will most likely later hound you, to say the least.  The question is not how long (or how short) you waited; the question is if you did it right. When people tire of waiting, they tend to be myopic and fail to see the bigger picture.  Suddenly a rash spirit overcomes them.  Insecurity, jealousy, ennui, dissatisfaction or raging hormones take the better of them.  All of a sudden, waiting seems to be a sacrifice they find hard to take.  But it’s only a matter of perspective.  The wait is no sacrifice but a part of the timeline of your life.  While you wait, it doesn’t mean that the rest of your world stands still.  Waiting is no sacrifice for those who look at it in a different light.  Perspective and attitude both play major roles. The good news is while you wait for a dream, you are getting ready to handle that dream in the process.  And the period of getting ready is part and parcel of the whole package.  In childbirth, you wait nine months while carrying the bundle of joy in your womb.  The whole nine months of growing and preparing is part and parcel of the whole package of a wonderful and healthy baby.  Waiting reaps; in fact, it reaps generously that when it finally comes to pass, you’ll realize that it was all worth it. And that probably you wouldn’t have it any other way.  But the challenge to waiting is that one must go through it.  Sure it’s a nice thought to know what lies ahead, the prize that awaits you, the end goal that you are going to conquer.  But it’s easier said than done. That is why the idea of waiting must be appreciated.  To endure, you always go back to how you value the why behind the wait. Because the more that you know and value your why the more that you are able to endure the wait.

And why endure? Because the period between your decision and the result is no smooth-sailing.  Expect tests, problems and challenges along the way.  You dream for that top spot in your company? Going up the corporate ladder means facing challenges to your self-esteem, impossible bosses, a stretching of your expertise, a not-so-perfect work environment and even possibly, a lay-off.  You dream to become a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer? Well school’s not always so cool when you have to pull an all-nighter to study, sacrifice a barkada weekend for a trip to the library, or get picked on by your most terror professor.  You dream for a lucrative business? Well, they don’t happen overnight. Big successes usually start with small ones.  Dream of marrying the One? Trial-and-error relationships will get you nowhere near your destiny.  Why wait when you think the feeling’s mutual? Because fact of the matter is: love is more than mere heightened emotions.  You want to have a family of your own? Well financial and emotional preparedness come with the package.  Are your spirits dampened already? Check your attitude. All of these are NOT to discourage but to keep things in perspective.  If you don’t have the right attitude, you might find yourself questioning everything. If you fall prey to the temptations of seemingly better alternatives and want the easy way “up”, you forfeit the best in store for you.  God made you a promise and He will deliver without a doubt.  But that promise may not always come at your own appointed time.  Trust this: God has a better timing (who knows, his timing may be earlier than yours!).  The promise may be clouded out by present circumstances, insecurity, rejection, trials and doubts, but it remains.  Your dream will be fulfilled if God says so, but it will also be tested.  And the tests sometimes come in the form of waiting.

In the end, all this fuss about waiting will get those who patiently do so to a favorable conclusion: it is not so much the wait that counts most really; it’s what you’ve waited for that matters.  After enduring hours standing in line, all the bad vibes disappear as you finally get your turn.  After waiting and working hard for that promotion, satisfaction will taste better when you achieve it.  After waiting patiently for years for that special someone you’re going to spend the rest of your life with, you realize that those years could well have been minutes.  After waiting for a child that seemed impossible to arrive, you find yourself awed in God’s grace with a baby that’s worth all the wait and the faith.  Waiting is more than a test of endurance.  It is more than a challenge of our determination.  It defines our character and our faith.  It defines the result, the prize we are to take.  Your appreciation of waiting and determination to do so will determine a value.  Your faith that it will come to pass determines its coming to pass.  If the prize is worth the wait, then be worthy of the prize: wait. :)

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the weakest of them all?

The strongest is.

Animals of the wild appear stronger than their domesticated counterparts.  But in fact, they have higher mortality rates.  What is unguarded is naturally prone to attack. Even if you call dibs on the title of king, you are not impervious to nature and its rage.

A heart has to be tamed for its own sake.  If you let it go wild, it might end up broken – for all the wrong reasons, at such an unripe season.  Sometimes, the heart speaks a different language than one’s logic.  And sometimes, it is truly liberating.  But other times, it is unrepresentative of one’s identity.

A heart has to be tamed by its owner before it is won by another.  If it remains the savage catalyst that it is, it will throb more painfully when its captor fails.

A heart longs the chase and if it is strong enough, holds back for a moment before giving in to the pursuit. It does yield to the truly deserving.  If the runner succumbs to another, the heart does not crumble.  It knows its worth.  If the chaser surrenders to frivolity, then it is deserving not.

The heart is easily deceived – no matter the personal fortification.  Its weakness can lie in its strength. It trusts, it opens up, it responds.  And when it finds itself a victim of an illusory feat, it looks towards several options.  Almost automatically it is built up.  Almost automatically also, it grieves.  But unsurprisingly, it self-administers anesthesia.  The pain-averse does not want to feel any more of the throbbing and aching.  For this to happen, it needs to shut off completely.  In effect, it deflects all the other feelings in the process – even those of genuine joy and pleasure. The bare heart, on the other hand, will accept anything that can fill the void.  It will take whatever is handed over – even the shallowness and counterfeit.  In the process, it becomes prostituted. Of course, this is not universal and may just be an arbitrary observation.

If a heart chooses to keep its peace, it seeks maturity.  It could choose to give itself away, but when it holds back, it thinks forward – to its benefit and the other’s.  It could try to catch attention, but if it chooses to look away, it applies wisdom.  It could choose to urge the physical to speak the sentiments and emotions, but if it can contain it and inhibits itself, it gives much discretion to the will, in fact a greater will than its spirit. It knows it is not its duty to do so yet. Maybe then, it has found a permanent place to rest.  Maybe then, it is tamed.  And maybe then, it is ready.

It could show you, but it will not.  Not the tamed one, not unless it is captured. The irony of it all.

Excerpts

Because I can't get enough of C.S. Lewis and his genius. I started Mere Christianity with high regard for its content and author but just the same, dismissed it as one of those "intellectually stimulating" Christian books that just tickle spiritual savvy.  But it was more than just sound reasoning, to say the least.  In fact, it seemed to me like a compendium of topics relating to Christianity or God, in general, that is both enlightening and practical at the same time. Might be posting excerpts in the next few posts.

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.  If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.  Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.  I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."

On Faith

"Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.  For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes.  I know that by experience.  Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. 

[...]

Unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.  Consequently one must train the habit of Faith."

On the unreliability of emotions (my way of paraphrasing haha)

"But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.  It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him"

On Love (Charity)

"The rule for all of us is simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did.  As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets.  When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."

On Temptations

"No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

 [...]

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.

 [...]

We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means – the only complete realist. 

 [...]

Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort of trying harder and harder.  But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home."  

On Pride

“According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.  Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

[…]

“The Christians are right : it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.  Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people.  But Pride always means enmity – it is enmity.  And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

                In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself.  Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all.  As long as you are proud you cannot know God.  A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” [Emphasis supplied]

*drumroll please*

MAVS WIN!

And I can't help but GRIN :D

I'm finding myself at a loss for words, and the funny thing is it's okay.

Rooting for the Underdog

Lately, I’ve been an avid viewer of the NBA and getting my savvy back on the game.  I realized that apart from a preconceived bias, I’m inclined to root for the underdog.  From the start, Miami had a sure spot on the top 2.  It’s creditable to them how they bounced back on their last game against the Bulls.  To say the least, they earned their place on the championships. Whether you’re a fan or not, there’s no denying that the Heat IS good.  TOO GOOD in fact that I found myself rooting for the underdog, the one expected to lose.  So I woke up one day and realized it was the start of the NBA finals.  It was game 1.  I rooted for Oklahoma against Dallas during the playoffs.  So obviously, I had no clear position on the finals.  But I stuck it out through game 1 and found myself (guess what?) on the side of the Mavericks.  They lost the first game but what a surprise they were at the second.  The Heat looked as if they owned the game and their players talked big on the court – but it was indeed too early a celebration.  Game 2 finally taught them a lesson.  I’m rooting for the Mavs because they have less gall and more grit.  Their last game against the Heat showed resilience and the spirit NOT to let home court advantage, a 15-point lead by their opponent in the last quarter, and the terror trio of James, Wade and Bosh dictate the end result of the game.  A team trailing by scores of points, pressured by the boos of the audience, and threatened by dunks, steals, impeccable three’s, and turnovers against their favor by the other team (obviously more advantaged!) will most likely go downhill over all these disadvantageous circumstances.  But the Dallas Mavericks is something else.  Heck they wouldn’t have squeezed their way to the top if they’d been otherwise. They persist in the most cutthroat moment even when LeBron James pulls a very intimidating dunk and Chris Bosh follows through a missed shot with such surprising flair.  The other team is clearly stronger in terms of players.  But the Mavs define "cool under pressure". They fight ‘til the last second and endure consistently. A special mention to Dirk Nowitzki who never fails to deliver! He is indeed THE German Assassin – and a modest one, at that. In the last remaining minutes of the fourth quarter, the Mavs pulled through scoring consistently, not missing a shot while the Heat was, well, caught by surprise.  They just had to celebrate too early.  Consistency and persistence even under immense pressure got the Mavs their first win by a crucial 2-point lead in the last remaining seconds.  From being a consistent runner up in all four quarters of game 2, victory was still on their side. What a turn of events!  Who would’ve thought.  But to be fair, I also give it to the Heat.  They surprised the Bulls with a slamming comeback.  I was honestly rooting for the Bulls to win.  But Miami is a powerhouse, inevitably strong and less exciting to cheer for.  That is why in this season’s finals, I’m rooting for the underdog – win or lose.

GO MAVS!!!