We anticipate a year of writing, though 2015 requires of us only weekly\u00a0Tribune\u00a0articles by the end of January before we call it quits. A decade of \u201copinionating\u201d at ST with a brief stint on the pages of\u00a0Marianas Variety\u00a0next-door (before my attention was called to the serious awkwardness of writing in two competing dailies) was long enough to have stepped on everyone\u2019s toes!<\/p>\n
Don\u203at matter now. To speculate on what might have transpired if I stood my ground on writing in two papers is fruitless, if even possible. In the stoic stance appropriate for the age, I follow the insight of Andrew Bernstein\u203as phrasing in his book,\u00a0The End of Stress:\u00a0\u201cWe are tiny specks of presumption suspended in a vast universe of uncertainty.\u201d Or to the Buddhists\u2019 wisdom that enlightenment happens as an accident; meditation does not make enlightenment happen but makes the postulant prone to the accident. I tend to be accident-prone!<\/p>\n
It is the Year-to-Come that is on our plate at the moment and though prognosticating had not been one of my strong suits, I can at least declare what I intend to do. I take the great celebration of the incredible wellness of being to heart, forsaking Kierkegaard\u2019s image of\u00a0Sickness Unto Death\u00a0that thrives on the losing story that \u201cthe world sucks.\u201d The enabling choice is the awesomeness of life as is.<\/p>\n
Joyce Marshall of the Realistic Living Institute pulled out a set of vows from a Buddhist ritual that she made into her own interreligious spin as Relating to the Mystery of Life. With a tweak of terms, I made it my own as well, my\u00a0Vows to the Wellness Unto Life.<\/p>\n
The past is done. I vow to let it go. The response is not just being cute. It is an affirmation of the cruciality of consciousness of self as the beginning point of wisdom. Deep is the insight of the despair Kierkegaard wrote about in\u00a0Sickness Unto Death,\u00a0but that was against a bias of fear on the infinite, the mysterious, and the real, all writ in capital letters, experienced in dread and fascination, an internal state of being. \u201cThe Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,\u201d the psalmist of old chanted. Foisting \u201cFear Not\u201d is Bishop Spong\u2019s message this season.<\/p>\n The self of our beginnings is located in space, bookended in time, measured at 86 turns of the planet around the sun on mine. At the center of it is the aware self who deigns to choose the fullness of its finite awareness; temporal but known, and tangibly real in its concrete relations with other bodily incarnate beings.<\/p>\n The self is that creature experienced by a body\u2019s \u201cfive senses,\u201d with a reflexive capacity to emote in the poetry and poesy of the feelings they entail, then discourses in words and numbers from a mind that communicates to others as well as relate to its own integrated system of cognition, and then intentionally develop patterns and processes of behavior that encourage the reflex to be protective of survival, and the consciousness of relations to others. I am talking about many layers of consciousness that makes a self conscious of itself and conscious of the process of being conscious of itself.<\/p>\n \u201cThe self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self,\u201d wrote the Dane.<\/p>\n Not clear yet? Well, me knowing me is an occasion of awe (the network of nerves alone beats anything AT&T can put together) on the awesome (86 years of history, mystery, and the sheer gift that I am) that may gather a group of awed ones (folks who also know themselves to be \u201cone, unique, unrepeatable gifts of life in history, of which there has never been one like each before, and never be another one again\u201d) to ritualize that sense of awe-full-ness. We can do this\u00a0sans\u00a0extrapolating an external reality with capital letters\u00a0deus ex machina, requiring a redeemer to save us from the debilitating case of being at a disadvantage\u00a0(dejado)\u00a0at the gate of beginnings! We anticipate a year of writing, though 2015 requires of us only weekly\u00a0Tribune\u00a0articles by the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21,250],"class_list":["post-188520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-life","tag-network"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe future is coming. I vow to open it.
\nThe present is a gift. I vow to receive it.
\nMy life is given. I vow to embrace it.
\n\u00a0
\nIllusions are inexhaustible. I vow to forsake them.
\nThe deluded are numberless. I vow to liberate them.
\nInjustices are rampant. I vow to rectify them.
\nEarth restoration is critical. I vow to enrich it.
\n\u00a0
\nSpirit practices are plenty. I vow to know them.
\nThe sound of silence is deafening. I vow to trust it.
\nAwesome fullness is overwhelming. I vow to love it.
\nRealistic living is miraculous. I vow to choose it.<\/em>
\n\u00a0
\n2015 marks another turn in my journey. January is more than the end of this column. It is a serious choice to go fulltime on my seven-year itch\u00a0of writing an 86-year journey experience before I go quietly into the night. \u201cOn what?\u201d a friend asked. \u201cOn a single, solitary selfie trek into\u00a0wellness unto life,\u00a0silly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nLife and the world do not suck; but relating to it is awesome, llamado en la puerta! That\u2019s realistic living in the Year to Come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"