Tell Your Heart

While revisiting this blog (and with no plans of resuscitating it soon), I came across this entry in the drafts section from almost two years ago.  I wonder why I never really posted it when it strongly strikes a chord. I wish I could tell Mr. Coelho, "My words exactly." But no. He's captured something so spot-on and I can only echo his sentiments. 

“Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day.

“Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.”

“But my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it’s become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I’m thinking about her.”

“Well, that’s good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.”

“My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.”

“That makes sense. Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.”

“Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?”

“Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.”

“You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?”

“Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them.

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

“Every second of the search is an encounter with God,” the boy told his heart.

“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,” his heart said. “We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their destinies, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out indeed, to be threatening place.

“So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won’t be heard: we don’t want people to suffer because they don’t follow their hearts.”

- Excerpt from P. Coelho's The Alchemist

#MultipleIntelligence

There are just some things that make a lot of sense when you're scrolling down your newsfeed. Today, I found this. And to me, it made a lot of sense. :) 

I may never beat or be as good as Einstein when it comes to Quantum Physics (or just plain Physics for goodness' sake!), but I bet he'd never outscore me in karaoke :P or preach with as much passion. :) I'm sure I don't know a whole lot of stuff that my professor knows, but I'm also quite sure that the converse holds true.  I'm just saying that we gotta love and embrace who we are, what God gave us and focus on our respective gifts and strengths. Then, we shine.  We can't drown in other people's expectations.  We aim for a goal and if we miss the first shot, who cares? Never mind the inglorious whisperers on the sidelines, the condescending look on your professor's face, the judgment that passeth the countenance of a stranger.  We try again. 'Coz if we kiss-ass and people please and try to succumb to every expectation, we will fall short at some point and fall prey to depression. So we embrace our identity, our uniqueness, and our abilities in order for us to shine the best we can.  We dust ourselves up, wipe the tears from our eyes and tell ourselves "Sige lang, ok lang yan. Kaya yan." :)

Rekindling an Old Flame

I will write again, soon - after I am settled snug in a workable academic routine and after achieving a considerably stable momentum.

I hope to allot my me-time writing instead of dillydallying in Facebook.  This is hitting two birds with one stone: writing and improving my writing, as I need to take this skill a notch higher, which means that I need to take legal writing more seriously.

In some days, I might probably spew boredom with a lot of words from outer space.  But in outer space, of course it'll make a lot of sense.  The goal is not to alienate.  The goal is to effectively alienate.

I kid. :)

Oh yeah.