Hormones

Kris Aquino was airing her disgust and dismay over Korina Sanchez’s feature of her former husband talking about Kris and James’ child Bimby. The sister of the former president said: The feature that the wife of Mar Roxas came out with today is a slap to my face. Yes. I am talking this personally because I put my and my children’s future on the line without expecting anything in return. And the apparent payback for me and the children is a feature on the deadbeat father. The Queen of All Media then lashed out those who accused her with overreacting. She then reason: I am a mother, I need to protect and find what is good with my children. She even said that Korina could not empathize with her since the former is not a mother.

In another scenario, there was a time when a heated discussion erupted when all of a sudden, the other side burst out: You do not understand! I am a woman and you are not! Women must be understood since we have hormones! The discussion ended since the main theme was muddled with concepts and stands being misused.

Commission on Population defines Gender and Development (GAD) to the development perspective and process that is participatory and empowering, equitable, sustainable, free from violence, respectful of human rights, supportive of self-determination and actualization of human potentials. It seeks to achieve gender equality as a fundamental value that should be reflected in developmental choices and contends that women are active agents of development, not just passive recipients of development.

The policies and laws recognizing the participation and contribution of women as equals are not anti-male. It must also be understood by women that these are  mandates that could be abused or misused by them. For reasons of making these laws and concepts as an excuse of lashing out to males and justifying shortcomings to female hormones is not acceptable. When a mistake is committed, hormones could never be an excuse. And motherhood could never be a valid reason for being rude and “unbecoming”. Being a mother is not reason enough to lash out hurting comments online. Why not do heated and mature confrontations in person?

Of course, we need to understand the physiological changes and activities on women. But we also have to do the same with men. What about fatherhood? When a relationship would go adrift, could we point directly to the men as the culprit? There are lots of relationship astray being caused by women as well!

The thesis and dissertation of this writer are focused on women and children’s rights since it is really true that gender inequality and child abuse are rampant in our society. But it was also discovered that there are women and children who abuse these mandates to the point that crime and injustice are being committed since there are laws protecting them. In fact, legislators are now fine-tuning the laws for them to be of equal benefits to both gender and humanity in general.

There are two sides of the coin. And it is always true that it takes two to tango. Maturity comes when the person evaluates his or her side first on a certain event and consider the other side as well. Selfishness will always be a main reason of division.

Korina could have just acted as a journalist. She could have thought about the side of James Yap as the father of Bimby. Her intentions might not be malicious but done for the sake of being a broadcast journalist where every side must be considered. She could have asked Kris to air the feature…but what for?

Friendships and other relationships are bound with respect and understanding. We could never be a good and better person unless we open our minds to the things around. We could deny ourselves but not forget our rights. By being true to what and who we are, we might be freed from the chains of selfishness and looking for justifications on our mistakes and even misfortunes. We are equal. We are humans with being. Our gender is not an excuse nor a reason for not being able to love.

Green

We have them around. They are pervasively present in our society, in our circle of friends…and even in our families. There are people who could drain out your emotions and positive energy since it is their nature to draw out the positive light from you. They envy your positive disposition to the point that they would like to make you like them: bitter. They will constantly complain, see the world negatively, accuse people of being innately bad and critique the minutest detail in everything. They were not able to develop the value of appreciation and living on the positive side of life. Being with them could be considered as hell on earth.

Most of them create a facade of being happy and friendly yet they are not. They will then look for your mistakes and pull you down to the pitiful lives similar to what they are living. Their words are patronizing in front of others but could be very poisonous once you are out of sight. These things could be from their turbulent backgrounds or the uncontrolled evil inside. They were not able to nurture the person within to the point that most of them have the incapacity to love, serve and give. They turn out to be selfish and clanish. They could not connect to the bigger communities since their perspective is on the micro level only: That is focusing on their own selves and the people they consider as “theirs”.

There are older people whom you see as fixated to the material and worldly things. They equate success to clothing, cars, fame and power. They adore people who are moneyed and powerful neglecting the values and contributions of these people to humanity. Their vision of success is superficial to the point that they will do illegal and immoral things since they VALUE the aforementioned materials than the universal values. Most of them strive to acquire property and things which they feel would fill in their incapacity.

But then, according to Harvey Jackins, the person in the grip of old distress says things that are not pertinent, does things that don’t work, fails to cope with the situation, and endures terrible feelings that have nothing to do with the present. That is the main reason that these “persons” are actually unsuccessful in their fields. Most of them are actually being left behind by their contemporaries in terms of power and fame and money. Instead of defining success to what they are right now, they continue to be driven with things which won’t actually quench their thirst for craving for the material things they desire.

Thus, they are bitter. Their presence could then become toxic and energy-draining since their words and actions reflect their insecurity. They try their best to sound pertinent but they are actually wading on shallow waters.

So why linger on them? We have lots to enjoy in life. We need not be influenced with what we consider as unhealthy things in our Being and Becoming. We could stay away from these people since they are actually NOT our friends. Friends unconditionally give love, affection, respect and even resources to us and not instruments of self-destruction and defeat. It is a decision with the inner person to severe relationships which could not make the outer being a contributor of pain and negative energy to the universe. Life is better than that.

With the readings we get, we see that reflective people have lesser companions and so-called friends since they understand how to separate themselves from the toxic ones and keep the best ones whom they could nurture compatibly. We treasure these people since they help us with our missions and enhance our strengths to pursue the purposes of our lives.

We then continue to keep our quiet and appreciate the things we have. We believe that their is a greater force guiding us to reach our destinations. We define our own happiness and not be mandated by the pressures we see in different platforms. We reach out to people not to use or abuse them. We do this since we are like them: human with beings.

Incapacity to Love

He wept. We could directly see him since he was conspicuously seated in the front row. He was crying for the whole duration of the Thanksgiving Mass. Then during the graduation ceremonies, while almost all his classmates painted beautiful smiles on their faces, his was the epitome of sadness etched on all angles of his being. These events are supposedly victorious moments! There is something wrong with the picture he is projecting! What was it?

It was later learned that his parents are not around. They were not there during one of the most important phases of his life. They separated due to their own reasons…Reasons that a child could not understand. He even bargained that they could separate as long as they are there during that moment. But they were not. Probably, they were doing justifications on their actions. Still, in the heart of the child, they are simply selfish.

Relationships could be nurturing or toxic. It takes two souls to find the level of maturity for them to nourish each other and the EGO to turn situations into poisonous encounters to the point that the two must separate for self preservation. Maturity is the name of the game since mature individuals seek to find themselves first before connecting to another soul. That is the main point of the word “soul mate”. One has to discover the things he/she is thirsting first before quenching another person’s thirst. The person must strengthen the inner being so that when the being he/she is connecting to needs more energy, there is something to offer, to fill in. But, what if both of the partners have inadequacies? What is there to give?

Is it good to enter into a relationship to make the partner as part of a rehearsal? You see, there are those of us who claim that we are into a relationship to have an inspiration. That could be dangerous since we are making the person as a representation of what we need than accepting his or her totality. The best thing is to be THE inspiration to the other. We could do that once we attain all the needs that we have and address the things we desire. That is why relationships could be suffocating since a lot of us enslave our partners and label them with what we lack. We make them as the scapegoats of our incapacity and blame them of our weaknesses. We do not like to bend on our knees since we are too proud to accept who we are. We insinuate on our being good only to conceal our being NOT good enough!

And what happens to the children - the “fruits” of our love? Most of them become a consequence of a relationship gone bad. They are not considered since the parents are licking their own wounds and concentrating on themselves rather than others. The parents were not able to reach the maturity of forgetting themselves for others… not even for their own flesh and blood.

The incapacity to love and serve could be traced to FEAR. A lot of us did not overcome the fear of being rejected. We might had the experience of being shortchanged of love and affection from our loved ones when we were young we eventually became emotional vampires. We demand to be served to be pampered and to be always the “apple of the eye” not realizing that these things are so adolescent. We failed to grow up. We forget that the sole purpose of growing up is to SERVE not be served.

The crying graduate is just a micro-representation of the children who became victims of the incapacity to love by his parents. This could be terrifying since it might become a vicious cycle where the child is placed in the future. He might be a harbinger of toxic relationships too.

We might as well look into our own selves and be a positive force to overcome the negative one gnawing in the midst of our society.