IT IS ALL BY CHOICE

How would I describe my regular days lately? I start my day with prayer (char lang hehe). Actually, still wrapped with my blanket...i would start to pray ...hehe until i would doze back to sleep ( i could imagine how my guardian angel struggles with me haaaaaaaaahhh). At times i would jump out of bed with the shock of the time on the wall...getting late...but I tried to pray...(that's what i thought huhuhuhu did I really pray?). What follows would be bath, iron clothes ( if i need to), breakfast, magpagwapa, feed Tobby ( akong iro nga feeling imported hahahahaha askal baya but eating dog food hahahahhahhah). Then the traffic. And ayha pako mag pray talaga .....aray ko po (got my daily assignments in my 19th annotation retretat)!!!!

I don't want to go farther from my point. I have to go straight by saying... I am actually stressing here all the complains that i hear from people everyday including myself. These are the usual ones :

1. grabe ka traffic

2. ka init ba oi

3. hahay late na pud ko

4. wala pako nag breakfast

5. gamay kaayo ko sweldo

6. ngano tambok man ko oi

7. ngano niwang man ko oi

8. gamay kaayo ako baon ba

9. mahal kaayo palaliton

10. cge lang ko ug kaon ug utan kulang money to buy classy food (char!)

11. ngano mao man ni ako trabaho oi

12. katulgon pa kaayo ko

13. ngano dili ma ako na promote

14. ngano isog man kaayo ako boss

15. wala man ni klaro ako bana / asawa

16. kabadlungon ba sa ako mga anak

17. gamay ra kaayo ako pagkaon

18. dili na jud ko kapalit para sa ako kaugalingon kay paingon sa ako mga anak tanan

19. ka bati ba ug batasan nga pari oi cge man lang pangasaba

20. kagubot ba jud sa kalibutan...

...well the list can go on and on and on... in fact you and I may add as many as we can. And we would be able to enumerate all and endless items to include just to express our dissatisfaction with life. A lot of these situations that we are complaining...they happen... we see them or perhaps we create or fabricate them ourselves creating endless misery in our lives.

The fact and truth is , we cannot do magic by changing the situation. But we can do something with our character.

I would like to share with you a kind of awfully painful statement that brings in a lot of truth about us written by Dr. Wayne Dyer, a Psychologist from New York (from the book MANIFEST YOUR DESTINY).

"The complainer always feels shortchanged and deprived, and consequently becomes envious and bitter toward those who seem to have been blessed with what is missing in his or her own life. The complainer feels isolated and separate from goodness and joyfulness. Because the fullness of life seems to be occurring elsewhere, the complainer is full of ingratitude.

...Complaining is an expression of the absence of love in your inner world. When you feel love, there is no room for being upset with God for not delivering your ego's demands.

The ego constantly instructs you to need and to want more, and tells you that complaining helps. The problem with this is that the ego is never satisfied. No matter how much you feed the ego, it will give you a new list of demands almost immediately after being satisfied. If you give it alcohol until it buzzes, and sex until it collapses in ecstasy and drugs until it is flying high and money and cars and anything else that you can think of, the next morning it will have an even longer list of demands. The egos is never satisfied and lives with the slogan 'the more is always better', and more does not arrive precisely, when the ego is feeling the need, then you have every right to complain."

And so complaining reflects our not having seen blessings that we have and allowing deprivation to dominate leaving the feeling of bitterness when others seem to be blessed ("nganong sila haskang datu-a ug ako wala jud ...ka malas ko ba gayod").

EXPLAINING...is something that we need to deal with also. Sometimes when we are asked about why things are the way they are in our life or when asked about something that we missed to do, we tend to enumerate ...explain our side or point. But I realize from experience that explaining reveals the following:

1. rationalizing certain actions to make "palusot" and so they would appear to be right to temporarily relieve us from guilt

2. sometimes would include some information that are not really us and so we appear as if we are that (leaving us again guilty after why we said them)

3. just to get in the circle of friends and be accepted, we keep on explaining something about us to blend with the group

4. reality wise...it can be tiresome to keep on explaining to everyone we meet about us

Dr. Dyer's book has been one of the bests collections I had in years. There are painful truths that he stated that brought me ...I mean pushed me hard to see things the way he presents them in his book. According to him he uses the motto DO NOT COMPLAIN, DO NOT EXPLAIN to help him overcome the obstacle to an attitude of gratitude (being grateful or thankful to everything about life).

He made his readers do something like that of an assignment. The activity is to try a day without complaining. To be watchful and assess at the end of the day how we feel about the whole thing. Then we can extend another day or 2 until it reaches a week and see how we feel or how our attitude changes and how we affect others in this manner. We need to be conscious and watchful. If we like the result then perhaps we can operate on the same motto "DO NOT COMPLAIN, DO NOT EXPLAIN"

Kindly check the conversation below as an example on not explaining...

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Sample Conversation :

Boss : why are you late again today?

You : I am sorry...i will do better next time... (you no longer explain ...the traffic, my kids are sick, my husband had diarrhea, i had fever last night...i needed extra rest, I had dysmenorrhea etc....etc.)

Note : your boss may lecture you with so many things about what you have been doing. When we were young we hear some of our parents lecture us with so many things ...heheh this can be it.. You start responding with your silence...and really listen hard. Even if the approach used by your boss may not be that pleasing...this can be your moment of insights and learning...Listen and you will learn ...no matter the pain... :-)

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When Dr. Dyer stressed his point regarding DO NOT COMPLAIN, DO NOT EXPLAIN, he mentioned further on how he dealt with it himself. Shutting up...not saying anything...silencing the self from all these noises and internal clutters prove to be the best.

In silence we hear more of us...and Someone's voice speak. In silence...we would even see more and that the more we let things pass as they occur..in silence...we get the answer... (I am having the feeling at this time that i need to stress further some important points here such as tackling the topic on SILENCE next time and a lot more).

Lastly, I would like to bring Bishop Fulton Sheen in the picture, in his book The Angel's Blackboard. He stressed that others make happiness apart from them.

Happiness is a very personal decision of choosing such everyday and do things that make us or other people happy. But, there can be also situations that may call us to sacrifice our own happiness in order for others to be happy. It is all BY CHOICE. Whether we continue to complain everyday (and keep on explaining our lives to many) or strive to be happy despite life's painful realities or else one day we would be like those persons that are overcome by bitterness and anger until death overtakes them (Bishop Fulton Sheen)... Kind of sad huh...:-(

It is all by choice friends...:-)