The world is packed with hints on how to live life. To begin with, people just have to be extra sensitive to accept and appreciate the things that happen, that is every little thing, to be exact. Wisdom is learned through the mind, heart and time.
Being in the quarter life makes me realize and reanalyze things I did, said and thought of, of how my perceptions have changed or sustained after all these years since I came to being. I can’t practically be the carefree teenager or a rebel that I used to be, perhaps in all my thoughts and actions maturity should always tag along. There are things you learn and things you want to unlearn, and certainly be sure to know the dividing line between reality and a story you just heard from someone you thought you knew.
To round things up let me itemize what I have learned in my recent adventures and misadventures in life.
A few months ago I have seen a friend suffer from hyperthyroidism which has already led to various internal organ malfunctions. She is in her mid 40s, single but too late to mingle. I have never seen a friend in such situation before and to add to the fact that there was nothing much I could do to help, except for prayers and moral support. She was very sick and went on a coma. While her brother takes care of the financial needs, another friend of hers was taking care of her in all the time she was in the hospital. Having only a few members in her family, and her mom with Alzheimer’s disease, she has no one to take care of her. Her nieces and nephews would sometimes drop by to visit but doesn’t stay much long. Even so, I still find her lucky because she is a Filipino, knowing that the term family and friends can always be synonymic when necessary.
The thought of her fate and the life she is living bring me to ‘what if’ moments and a few reconsiderations in my own life. First, get married. Since I was a kid I was so consistent with the idea that I will be single forever, maybe because I value individualism. But looking at the other side, I see the importance of having a family you’ll put up with, a family who’ll stay no matter what happens simply because of love and care. Second, take good care of your health in all the way you can. Everything you do and you do not do affect your health greatly, so be careful. It may not take effect soon but it will affect you at some point in time. Without a sound mind and body, things around you are useless. Third, make sure that the friends you keep are the ones who are for real. Lucky if you’ll find someone who is willing to wipe your ass when things get messy. Fourth, have children; have more than three if possible. Raise them well, take good care of them and teach them how to take care for others. Teach them to pay forward the goodness other people show them. Teach them how to pray, and to have faith. And finally the fifth live a grudgeless life and absorb optimism. I was watching Spongebob one morning when it caught me how light hearted he is even though at most times he is naïve and others take advantage of him. But no matter how rude others treat him, he never take things to his heart, he shows hurt and disapproval but he picks himself from where he had fallen to see the bright side and put emphasis to what’s right and what should be done.
If I am going to play a song right now, it would be Happiness by Lea Salonga and Smile by Uncle Cracker.
Going back to the friend I told you about, she got out of the hospital and coping up with what seem to be second life. I think life gives us chances, the moment you have it, use it and learn from it.
