internal conflicts

people always discuss things with themselves. i believe that this what makes us human. also, i believe that if we do so, it makes us psychologically healthy. a lot of activities are springing out nowadays and they say their purpose is to "maintain a healthy well-being".

i don't believe we need such activities in order to have peace with the self. why? well, i believe we can do away without yoga or therapy or the other activities they say is for self-improvement or a way of maintaing a healthy well-being. it's like saying "yes. I'm crazy." the problem nowadays is that we lose sight of the values passed on to us by our ancestors. by doing so, we corrupt our minds and become our own enemy. i have observed that there are more internal conflicts today rather than positive thinking. the difference between back then and now is that we wallow in our misery and forget that resolution is just around the corner. back in the day, people knew how to deal with the problem rather than just burying it and running away.

gender relations and love generation

1. there has been an on-going issue between men and women. many believe that men are the dominant ones and others believe that women are. this issue is dated back to the generation of the first people who walked this planet. so many issues between men and women have gone down history that it confuses us all. what i picked up from our historical background is that never was this argument resolved. but what we fail to understand is that men need women as much as women need men. we have Yin Yang, Hercules and Hebe, Da Vinci and The Mona Lisa and a lot more to prove that. probably we already know it, but we just fail to understand it. with the simple examples i have given, we know that these tandems went hand-in-hand down history. gender relations? we truly are interdependent.

2. aside from oil price hikes and minimum wage on a minumum, the difference of love in the 19-something and today has not changed a tad bit. we may have been spoiled by the wonders of modern technology, but all in all it's just the same sweet, wonderful thing. it's just that people do not take it seriously anymore and take it for granted. i don't blame this generation for thinking what an overrated thing love is. why? because we just can't prove the value of it anymore. the word love has been overused that its meaning and value is something foreign to us. aside from that, we do not hear our special someone tell us they love us in person anymore. we have phones and text messaging to do that for them/us. it has become so superficial. the saddest thing about modern technology is that it robs us of the simple yet wonderful moments we encounter.

on bulosan's work

1.the stories, however comedic they were, were written in the most Filipino way I know. one would understand the meaning of a true filipino in a Filipino setting once they read these stories. we know Filipinos as family oriented and light-hearted and the first story showed just that. also, we are known to say what we see in the most literal sense and we call it being "pilosopo". this is one trait that the Filipinos have and are good at. i myself have my "pilosopo" days which shows how Filipino i am. although this does not necessarily mean that Filipinos are short of intellect or impotent. this just shows that our being light-hearted in heavy situations creates an environment easier to be in. the second story explained to us how a Filipino man introduces a wife to his family. in tradition, we call it "pamamanhikan" or asking permission from the woman's parents for her hand in marriage. although in the story, the woman did all the "pamamanhikan". of course, the family gave her a hard time but eventually gave their blessing. this really happens in Filipino setting. Filpinos, being family-oriented are especially meticulous in having strangers marry their kids. time to get to know each other is a requirement needed to be able to get the hearts of the parents.the authors were able to capture a Filipinos traits and values in its truest sense.Having been born in a Filipino household, I believe that what was said in the stories holds true. I saw that the authors wrapped the story with the basic Filipino values basing it on family ties. Family ties which mold us into becoming the Filipinos we are today.

2.We have different perceptions of what a Filipino truly is. Being immersed in Filipino values and traits, I understand that we value family and religion. We believe in a supreme being and an eternal life and we strive to live according to this. We manage to keep our families in tact despite the extreme changes in past, present and future generations and lifestyles influenced by other cultures which is truly different from our own. Having been raised in these ways, we are molded into the Filipinos we know – conservative, loving, hard-working, able to smile amidst difficult situations and a million more wonderful things.

divide the mats

1.i think that how the author of The Mats mirrored Filipino's attitude is as real as it could get. Filipinos, being very family-oriented also have tendencies of not being able to let go of their dearly beloved and is sometimes at the expense of their living relatives. In this story, we saw that the father had conflicts with himself and difficulty in moving on. in class, we were not able to identify who the 3 girls were in his life, but what we figured out is that he and his family lost them.letting go of someone who passed away is a very difficult feat for us Filipinos. although we know in our hearts that God has welcomed them in his kingdom, missing them and not being able to spend time with them is some sort of torture for us. there is no explenation for this; or if there was, the only explanation there could be is that it would seem that they are no longer part of our day-to-day lives. It is as if we are forgetting them whenever we smiled or laughed or had dinner with the family or did something really amazing and that they could not be there to take part in it. for Filipinos, it takes a lot of time before a loss sinks in, let alone to recover from it. but what we must all know is that, not because we lost someone means that someone is not there in our lives. it is just that that someone decided to watch over and wait for us in a place we all call home.

2.women are women. no matter what the culture, what the nationality, raise or color, there is one universal truth that defines what a woman is. it is that they are life-giving, nurturing and loving. from generation to generation, this has not changed. women grow and become stronger; strong enough to endure what this generation feeds us.comparing this with the story, i think that being high context is what both men and women are. we dig deeper into the problem-at-hand that we cease to see the bigger picture. this is not a problem with Filipino women, or for all women for that matter. it is a problem given to us by modern relationships. couples today argue about senseless things and things that used to not matter. these arguements flourish because we allow it to. i also believe that women are natural born naggers. it is in our nature to nag and that is because we see that things that should be done aren't being done. if both men and women work together and satisfy both their needs then i don't see why we have to compare or live up to the story.