Bahaghari ng UP : UAAP Cheer Dance Competition 2014

The UP Pep Squad’s performance yesterday at the UAAP Cheerdance competition is worthy of the championship, if not for everything that is technical but for the much louder statement that was made. “Pantay-pantay” was UP’s battlecry along with the BAHAGHARI as its visual representation.

Everyone says that we are proud to be from UP and others assume that this is because of the alleged intellectual superiority that some, if not all, feel when they are able to pass the UPCAT - but for me, what makes me proudest to be an Iskolar ng Bayan is the community’s ability to embrace you, as an invidividual, without regard for who you are and what you have come to believe in. In UP, I learned to question my own faith, build it and make it stronger while acknowledging that how I choose to live my life is no better than how others choose to live theirs. In UP, you find yourself because no one will tell you who you are and who you should be. You can be you and UP will still welcome you with the Oblation’s open arms.

This is why being a part of Team Equality tugs our heartstrings. We know that to be a true blue Isko and Iska, you should practice what the campus teaches you – tolerance, acceptance and open-mindedness. We are a campus that does not impose. We are a campus that understands.  We are a community that celebrantes individuality and equality.

A Series of Unfortunate Daily Cyber Heartbreaks

Social media makes you suffer little heartbreaks each day. Don’t get me wrong, I like all types of social media in all its privacy-invasive glory but as a person who has acquired the hobby of checking “What’s up?” in my timeline, I must admit that this hobby has also turned into a daily source of heartbreak for reasons that couldn’t have existed back in the day. 

1. The heartbreak of not getting “liked” by someone you like. This is not the “you’re-kinda-cute-I-like-you” type of like. By now, we all have been accustomed to associating the word LIKE with that teeny-tiny button with a thumbs-up / heart sign that, in your heavily-infatuated mind, says a lot when you like someone.

Pros:

a.       He has gone to your profile. I seriously believe that the “VIEW AS” option was made for a person who wants to be looking at his/ her profile in the eyes of the other person that he wants to be viewing it.

b.      He has, at least, taken the time to read whatever useless link (or in my case, witty-without-seeming-to-be-trying-so-hard status message / comment because if I’m not witty, what else would I post to counter that other girl’s pretty / sexy / fancy / picture that she just posted on her page?) that you’ve posted and has also taken the time to manifest his appreciation of such post by clicking on like.

c.       He knows you exist, or that you’re friends in Facebook / Instagram and has no problems with that. (Ok, this is quite stretching it. But it pays to be optimistic these days, right?)

Possible heartbreak scenarios:

Minor: He has never liked any of your posts.

Major: He has never liked any of your posts but has liked every single post of the other girl that you feel may be his type. WHY?! WHY?! WHY?

Cure: Look at some random picture of a sleeping Panda and move on.

2. The heartbreak of seeing him having a life without you also known as posted pictures. So, you’re Facebook friends and you do go out once in a while (or not)… with friends and there was this one time when you invited him to hangout and well, he said he was tired (or insert other plausible excuse). BUT the next day, you see a tagged picture that you suspect was taken on the same day that he rejected your invite. Yeah, yeah, maybe he was just too tired to go to where you wanted him to go, there is that.

Pro: He is an independent person who knows how to live without you.

Possible heartbreak scenarios:

Minor: He was not in the mood and the idea of hanging out with you was not enough to change his mood.

Major: He doesn’t want to hangout with you. PERIOD. He’s just not that into you.  

Cure: Go to Thought Catalog and read an article entitled, “8 Guys You Must Never, Under Any Circumstances, Fall In Love With”, make him no. 9 and move on.

3. The heartbreak of seeing his chat indicator to be online and radio silence. It’s not like you expect him to always initiate the conversation. You have, in fact, initiated quite a number of random chatting which worked out in the end. But today you have decided that enough is enough – You are a traditional woman and you want to be voluntarily chatted with! - and then he goes offline.

Pro: Silence means yes. (That does not even make sense!)

Possible heartbreak scenarios:

Minor: He is not that excited to chat with you. Not after you told him a hilarious joke the other day that obliged him into replying the carefully crafted message that is, “Haha!”

Major: He is still online and has just opted to hide this fact from you. Yes people, there is an option to be invisible to a select few.

Cure: Watch a video from Buzzfeed teaching weirdos about “How to Ask If Someone is Single” and move on.  

4. The heartbreak of not being able to like all his posts even if you want to because well, you don’t want to be the weird girl who likes all his posts and writes an article about social media heartbreaks like you’re stalking him or something. Res ipsa loquitur.

There is no cure.  Move on. 

A Cluttered Mind's Reflections on D. handler's Adverbs

Attraction

“Love is hourly, too. There are stories about people who have loved someone forever after laying eyes on them for a few minutes and then nevermore, but these stories have not happened to anyone we know.” 

The magic of loving someone forever after one moment? I think it happens everyday. These stories never get told because they’re embarrassing. It’s like submitting to the idea that love, really, is illogical and uncontrollable. And that, my friends, is the plot of catastrophe. Love is a decision, right? A commitment that you get into when you’re ready, and sure and unafraid anymore? Right?

Seriously, haven’t you had that one day when a stranger catches your eye for merely walking right in front of you and you silently tell yourself, “He could be the one.”? Haven’t you had that weird moment when someone you've been spending time with, a friend, literally transforms right before your eyes and at that weirdest of moments, you acknowledge that you are, indeed, in love? Isn't it a common thing to be smoking with someone while you secretly wish for the universe to conspire and make that unintelligible shape that the smoke from your cigarette and his combine into the mushiest heart-shaped form?

The truth is, love happens - everyday, every breathing second, every regular minute – whether we acknowledge it is a different story.

Falling “Deeper” in Love

“No, when you love someone you spend hours and hours with them, and even the mightiest forces in the netherworld could not say whether the hours you spend increase your love or if you simply spend more hours with someone as your love increases.”

Oh, the mystery that is loving because you’re needing or needing because you’re loving. Does love really increase? Or does it seem to increase by the level of dependence that you develop for the other person? This is exactly how over thinking things can ruin the greatest of love stories.  Because if we find the answer to the question, what does it really result to?

If the answer is that love is directly proportional to the time you spend with the other person, then time and proximity become significant factors in the relationship. But isn't love supposed to be a thing in itself? A feeling, a commitment, a decision that conquers all? How much faith must one put in love?  When does one draw the line between loving unconditionally and conditionally?

On the other hand, if love remains constant but the need to be near your partner increases with time, aren't we depicting a picture of love as selfish and discontented? Doesn't it go against the premise that love makes you a better person? Isn't a better person someone that is more capable of a more mature and selfless love?  

Finding the answer yields to doubt either way. To be honest, I think falling deeper in love makes you feel a lot of new things that make it hard for you to cope. If you have been dependent all your life, you need to rise above the pressure of doing things on your own to ensure that your partner can grow, too. If you have been independent all your life, you need to surrender some freedom to be part of a couple that grows together in a relationship.

So, this is my answer: You can ask all sorts of questions about love but the main question is, “Do you still want to be loving the other person despite all the possible logical answers?”

I sure hope the answer is a yes or a no – because being a maybe says a lot about you than about your relationship. 

Regret

“And when the love is over, when the diner of love seems closed from the outside, you want all those hours back, along with anything you left at the lover’s house and maybe a couple of things which aren’t technically yours on the grounds that you wasted a portion of your life and those hours have all gone southside.”

Let me just say that when “love” does not work out, I almost always feel so cheated. Not the third-party kind but the “how could you give your love to someone else and share your dreams with me” kind. It’s the curse of the blessed extroverted introvert. People have become so comfortable in sharing their dreams, thoughts, secrets and innermost desires to me that I have wrongly imagined these confessions to be promises of building a future together. God knows I become so emotionally, intellectually and physically invested that when it doesn't work out, I feel like I have given up so much.

But that’s the thing – all these “investments” that I think I have contributed to the non-relationship only happened inside my head. From the outsider’s point of view, I was just being me – a really good friend slash emotionally-detached listener who always says the right things.

Ok, I got lost in my thought.

The bottom line is this, most of the time, the things that you give in a (non)relationship have been freely, voluntarily and lucidly given by you and have not been explicitly asked by the one that you love. Fine, discreetly asked and expected by the partner but YOU made the decision to give them because at that exact moment that you were giving up your time, hell, your life… you felt that what the other was giving you was worth it, or so much more than what you were giving up. It is always a calculated risk based on the hope of mutualism. That empty feeling after things fell apart is not regret – it’s loss. It’s not wanting to turn back time and make different decisions but wanting to profit from a sunk cost[1].
  

Moving Forward

“And so you sit like a spilled drink, those missing hours in you like an ache, and you hear stories that aren’t true and won’t bring anyone back. Things happen and you never get over them…”

The other night, I was having quite an interesting discussion with a friend / officemate over beer (for her) and iced tea (for me) and I remember her saying, “I choose moving forward over moving on because when you move on, it seems like you are trying to forget everything, including the pain and I don’t believe in that – but when you move forward, it’s coming to terms with pain and deciding that life goes on, and that you just have to live with that pain because it has become a part of you.” I’ve said it before and I will say it again, everyone must accept that there is honor in pain. In a former blog entry, I said, “… you realize that pain, really, is just a wonderful front act. You get hurt, once in a while, with some periods more painful than the others.”

Move forward because your main act is happiness. Move forward because the stage is wide and everyone is waiting for you to perform the greatest act of your life – to love and to be loved in return.

You’re ready.

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[1] In economics and business decision-making, a sunk cost is a retrospective (past) cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered.