I found this interesting link on life quotes (check this out) --- http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_life.html.
We've heard the more popular ones...
Life is a game, a journey, a theme park --- short, unfair, beautiful, and not easy --- like a box of chocolates or a taxi, or a candle in the wind. Ah, such is life. We'll never get enough of it.
I've listed some quotes below (I don't necessarily agree with all of them; these are my own eclectic selection) - clips of interesting ones to boggle our minds. Or at least make us reflect on what life is... (So read on! My quick comments follow the credits).
Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. (Carl Sandburg)> I think I weep ALL the time when I peel an onion layer by layer. That's why I just slice it.
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation. (Charles Bronte)> Two things - either you always aim high, or expect the worst.
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed. (Corita Kent)> Cheers!
Life is a quest and love a quarrel ... (Edna St. Vincent Millay)> Fight on!
Life is relationships; the rest is just details. (Gary Smalley)> So they say, all of us are connected by six degrees.
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. (George Santayana)> Celebrate, anyone?
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. (Isaac Asimov)> Me too!
But if you're over age twenty-one, your life is what you're making of it. To change your life, you need to change your priorities. (John Maxwell)> Why 21, I wonder...
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. (John Lennon)> Do not over-plan, have a life Gen.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (Mark Twain)> For some people, it takes much less than 20 years to realize that.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. (Oscar Wilde)
> Yeah, most.
Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood.
Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)> These are the basic.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. (Robert Frost)> Another basic.
Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it. (Tom Lehrer) Eew?! GIGO.
Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf. (Toni Morrison)> Mariposa leaving the cocoon.
Life would be much easier if I had the source code. (Unknown) Ha-ha! Good thing, the One up there didn't give it to you; you're just way too brilliant and dangerous to program your own life.
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus. (Wallace Stegner)> Ah-huh, doc.
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. (Will Rogers)> Soo applicable to me?
...Hope you had a fun time reading. Enjoy, live and value life!
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
After Ondoy...
We have been (some of us are still going) through the longest weekend so far. The typhoon 'Ondoy' came quietly to clueless Philippines and caught the entire Metro Manila ill-prepared. The damage and impact is something awfully historic, probably just as bad as or much worse than typhoon 'Frank' which swept Iloilo and nearby areas in 2008.
It seemed like another rainy weekend when I came home last Friday night, except that my lights were out; but the strange thing was that only mine was out in the entire line of apartment rooms of the ground floor (I rent a space in Pitogo, Makati). While this seemed like a perfect trigger that could have ruined my mood and turned me into an irate tenant, I felt grateful that I took that in stride and dealt with it like a test for patience (as what my Mom labelled it then, when I relayed it to her). And indeed, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Looking back makes me see how that saved my life. This "isolated blackout incident" forced me to wake up early that Saturday and iron out the confusion with my landlady, which in turn prepared me for that sudden rise of waters later to flood the entire ground floor. Had it been my typical no-fuss Saturday (as I've described in my previous posts), I would have been sleeping (like a baby) till past noon --- the time when the floodwaters rushed to its peak --- and who knows my chance of meeting a fate much worse than a soaked smelly dirt mud-laden room.
I will forever be grateful for the calm that God gave me for those split seconds that I was able to think logically and compose my second-floor exit strategy. Those very brief but life-saving moments showed me that the really important things are no more than a bag load of basics, memories of your loved ones, and faith in Him.
I remember looking down from the third floor with zero attachment to anything left below. Zero, and that felt soo easy because of His grace. The same grace which guided me through when I went down after the waters subsided and began the post-flood cleanup. It was more than a general cleaning of the mess visible to the naked eye. I believe it was God's way of "cleaning" us all from within. He was very kind to save some things way more than what I expected (even including those which I have assigned to the non-essential category). Or perhaps, I was more resigned to accepting that I may be left with nothing at all.
I have thrown trash loads of stuff away (I lost count, or did not count at all) and have cleaned up, probably five times the effort of a 'real' physical general cleaning (considering that I live by myself). Up till now, I'm still cleaning up, trying to bring back the normalcy in my room (I have asked the help of my landlady to help me in my laundry as my hand's skin condition has recurred, possibly due to the post-flood cleanup, too)and waiting for tons of the salvaged stuff to dry. Considering the size of my room, my drill seems so much trivial compared to the less fortunate ones in Marikina and Pasig, who lost their homes and loved ones. And all the more that I look back at the scheme and sequence of things that Friday night onwards, I feel more blessed than ever.
I pray that we, Filipinos, may see through all the material and physical losses sustained, and feel the very core of this life's lesson. Life is not easy (who said it will be?), and oftentimes unfair. Yet, we climb on and rise again. It does not matter how many times we die through all these cycles of pain and failures. As long as we are graced by God's resurrection, these deaths will reborn us into better souls.
God is good indeed. All the time. And with no fail.
It seemed like another rainy weekend when I came home last Friday night, except that my lights were out; but the strange thing was that only mine was out in the entire line of apartment rooms of the ground floor (I rent a space in Pitogo, Makati). While this seemed like a perfect trigger that could have ruined my mood and turned me into an irate tenant, I felt grateful that I took that in stride and dealt with it like a test for patience (as what my Mom labelled it then, when I relayed it to her). And indeed, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Looking back makes me see how that saved my life. This "isolated blackout incident" forced me to wake up early that Saturday and iron out the confusion with my landlady, which in turn prepared me for that sudden rise of waters later to flood the entire ground floor. Had it been my typical no-fuss Saturday (as I've described in my previous posts), I would have been sleeping (like a baby) till past noon --- the time when the floodwaters rushed to its peak --- and who knows my chance of meeting a fate much worse than a soaked smelly dirt mud-laden room.
I will forever be grateful for the calm that God gave me for those split seconds that I was able to think logically and compose my second-floor exit strategy. Those very brief but life-saving moments showed me that the really important things are no more than a bag load of basics, memories of your loved ones, and faith in Him.
I remember looking down from the third floor with zero attachment to anything left below. Zero, and that felt soo easy because of His grace. The same grace which guided me through when I went down after the waters subsided and began the post-flood cleanup. It was more than a general cleaning of the mess visible to the naked eye. I believe it was God's way of "cleaning" us all from within. He was very kind to save some things way more than what I expected (even including those which I have assigned to the non-essential category). Or perhaps, I was more resigned to accepting that I may be left with nothing at all.
I have thrown trash loads of stuff away (I lost count, or did not count at all) and have cleaned up, probably five times the effort of a 'real' physical general cleaning (considering that I live by myself). Up till now, I'm still cleaning up, trying to bring back the normalcy in my room (I have asked the help of my landlady to help me in my laundry as my hand's skin condition has recurred, possibly due to the post-flood cleanup, too)and waiting for tons of the salvaged stuff to dry. Considering the size of my room, my drill seems so much trivial compared to the less fortunate ones in Marikina and Pasig, who lost their homes and loved ones. And all the more that I look back at the scheme and sequence of things that Friday night onwards, I feel more blessed than ever.
I pray that we, Filipinos, may see through all the material and physical losses sustained, and feel the very core of this life's lesson. Life is not easy (who said it will be?), and oftentimes unfair. Yet, we climb on and rise again. It does not matter how many times we die through all these cycles of pain and failures. As long as we are graced by God's resurrection, these deaths will reborn us into better souls.
God is good indeed. All the time. And with no fail.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)