Another beautiful ending/Another exciting beginning

I only have until Friday; after that I will no longer be a college student.

It feels weird. I feel very happy about it, yet quite sad. It's another one of those journey that is nearing its end so one can start a new one. All of us are now in the point where we constantly reminisce about everything from frosh days to whatever days, and we are all in a very nostalgic mode.

Looking back, I can see how God greatly worked in my life and how He blessed me so so much. With that I sing "Laging tapat/ laging sapat/ ang aking Diyos/ na makapangyarihan...".

I will dearly miss my college days, but even though I am about to close this chapter of my life, I am looking forward to the future knowing that God will always be by my side.

Being Jack-not-in-a-box

I remember my professor asking us a very typical question just to prove a point. He asked us what we want to do in the future or something along that line. Of course, with a typical question you would also get a typical answer. Most of my classmates answered that they wanted to be employed and climb up the corporate ladder blah-blah, be rich blah-blah, rule the world blah-blah, and a whole lot more. The weird thing is, almost everyone wanted the same things, or maybe some just said so because those are the easiest things to say. What made us all say so? That we want those things and that somehow we are sure that it really is what we want? Are we really considering the depth of the question or are we just following blindly what our "ancestors" told us. I am not however trying to spark up hints of rebelliousness here, you can think deeply of the question whether you want to or not. I just want to tell you something about my professor.

Those deep questions about following blindly, those were his words. I guess he wanted us to make a difference, to not be stuck inside a box.

My professor is sick. He has leukemia, although he is getting better (He was found in stage 3 before, now he is just in stage 1) he still is always pale and tired. Somehow we just want him to rest and get better, and he could have, but he chose not to. He just wants to teach.

I am ending my post right here because I believe that I do not need to add anything else.

Building Bridges

Communication is an important part in our daily lives. Being able to share ideas, divulge secrets, open up, or to simply have small talks, these are things that we live with every day. In school we were taught how language plays a role in the whole notion of a community. Simply put, language is what connects us with each other. We know that if another person speaks Tagalog, even if he really is not Filipino, we somehow welcome him into our own little community. In that sense, we create our own notion of a community based on who we understand and those that could not understand is separated from the community. Although this is not applicable to all and this is not entirely the whole picture, lets face it we actually find it easier to communicate with those within our "imagined" community because we have a certain level of understanding.

Now I am not really going to focus on language and its role in the community; I will instead focus on communicating within our own community. I speak of community not so much in the large sense (schools/barangays/countries etc.) but I speak of community in the "imagined" sense, meaning those we feel an affinity to, those who we feel we are somehow connected with. For some finding a community where one belong is very hard, for some a piece of cake, but we all long to be a part of a community. We have this community of friends, community of believers, our family, school mates, and so much more; and we feel a connection with them. Now this connection is based on communication, the deeper level of communication the deeper connection we have with each other. The deeper connection we have, the stronger our bonds become, and our community will be intact for a long time.

As Christians, we are all made for fellowship, with this in mind we understand that it is important for us to take good care of our community. How then do we do this? The most important of all is that we always put GOD first and in the center of our relationships. Next is communication. As I have stated, communication plays a huge role in strengthening relationships; we must be able to trust each other and to remove our masks so that we can open up more to each other. TRUST is very important. Also, we must always be wary of what we say; we must be slow to speak, think clearly of what is it that we want to say. Some might think that what we say is simply just words, but what some do not see is that words can really make or break a relationship. Being wary not only means being careful with your words, it also means NOT gossiping, NOT backstabbing, being careful with jokes, and a lot more. God wants us to build each other up and not break each other apart.

Not only are we made for fellowship but we were also made to bring more people to Christ to be part of God's community. Again, we see the importance of communication. We must share God's word to others, share His hope, His grace, His faithfulness, and everything about Him to others. If we do not communicate with them, then we would not be able to fulfill one of our life's purpose.

Though I may not know a lot about this matter for I am just learning about communication in a deeper sense myself, I know for a fact how important it really is. The best part about communication is that it is a bridge, it connects us with each other, it also connects us with God. Plus, we get to learn more about each other and about other things through communication. We must never stop communicating, stopping would just build walls around us, and I guess that was what God wanted me to learn through all of these things (sorry for just going into circles I really have a hard time making sense of my thoughts) to stop building walls.

Exactly how I expected it to start

It's always the first entry that gets me so annoyed since somehow it always has to be something good and I never have anything good to say at all! Still, since this is not my first blog (since I purposely deleted the one previous to this) and since this is not my only blog (I have another for a different yet unknown purpose: www.eggboodle.tumblr.com) I am rid of the expectation (from myself) that my first entry should be good.

Just today my professor in Economics talked about the Rational Expectation Theory which is basically a school of thought where they believe that the end result depends on what people expect to happen. People generally have an understanding of how the economy works and that affects how they behave now; their behavior now actually affects future outcomes and somehow just makes their expectations come true. A very good example of this is the exchange rate "the value of a currency and its rate of depreciation depend partly on what people expect that rate of depreciation to be. That is because people rush to desert a currency that they expect to lose value, thereby contributing to its loss in value."*

Usually, this would have skipped through my mind, but for some strange reason I can't stop thinking about it. Somehow, this theory is not only true for Economics but also true for most parts in life. We expect that tomorrow will be a good day, and we behave in such a way that would really make tomorrow a good day, a.k.a Optimism. However, we were told that we are not to expect since expectations are usually not met. If we agree to this, then somehow we are expecting that what we are supposedly expecting will not come true. So, if we expect tomorrow to be a good day, yet we act as if somehow there is a possibility that it will not come true, then we in turn may create the possibility into a reality.

I don't really know where I am going, somehow we can see that this will just go in circles if I continue thinking about it (or better yet that I will just lose my sense, which I don't know if I had one to begin with) and with that I concluded not to expect at all. I did not conclude so because people say that we'll just get hurt if we expect and it did not happen, but I concluded so because there really is just no sense in making my brain hurt about such things (like the future) if we can just enjoy our now.

That's looking at it in a worldly perspective of mine, spiritually, I have no idea. Somehow whenever I expect, I go way ahead of what God's plan really is. Maybe I expected right or maybe not, which is totally not the point, but if I do so I am not focusing on what God wants me to focus on instead I am making assumptions and going way ahead of Him. Then again, we are told to have faith in His plans, to believe that it will come to life, then isn't that expecting? Then expecting is a good thing. I guess it just depends on how one defines expecting, or how one really makes use of it. I really don't know, I'm just going through all of these like everyone else, but I guess the best thing to do is to just do what you are told to do. If God tells me to expect, then i shall expect, but only to the extent where I am allowed to expect so as not to go way ahead of His plans.

To conclude all of this, my mind really is weird. :|

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* Sargent, Thomas. (n.d.). Rational Expectations. Retrieved on May 15, 2009 from the Library of Economics and Liberty website: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RationalExpectations.html