Cold pizza

I noticed the bright green T shirt in my peripheral vision, and I suddenly realized that he had been waiting patiently for me to finish. Music was reviving me as I stood listening to some discounted CDs in the music shop, with the earphones giving some relief against the driving bass coming from the PA system. While I waited for my youngest daughter to finish watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the unadulterated rock on The Cream of Eric Clapton made me forget everything, and then Lisa Loeb’s Stay made leaving difficult.

Music also revived me yesterday and made me forget the last week filled with hard work. I accompanied my oldest daughter in practicing with Teacher Perpy for the annual vocalist recital next month. My daughter did well, and we also practiced my contribution on sax. Last year I played tenor and alto, and this year I also get to play soprano sax to accompany some of the young vocalists. Perpy’s husband Peter, an accomplished vocalist in musicals and hymns, joined our practice yesterday and helped to tweak our delivery.

After going through Con Te Partiro (Time To Say Goodbye), When You Believe from The Prince of Egypt, Vincent’s Starry Starry Night, and Where Is Love from the musical Oliver, we found that we still couldn’t stop and ended up singing two of the other recital numbers just for fun, The Prayer and Ave Maria. These inspirational songs will touch my heart any time, and when I sing along I feel myself connecting to unnamed powers of the Universe, regardless of what religion is expressed in the lyrics.

Afterwards, loud thunder and heavy rain accompanied us as we ate a vegetarian pizza that had lost its warmth while we were under the spell of music.

As I made way for the music lover behind me and walked out of the shop with three albums for the price of one, Eric Clapton’s line came back to me, I can’t stand it, the fooling around with my heart.

I need music!


Photograph: Tazo green tea in my favorite mug.

Continuous learning

Everyone needs a coach, according to the life coaching motto.

That includes coaches, so I decided to take one too and selected Fiona Harrold, England’s best. I signed up with her and I am now guided by her book Be Your Own Life Coach. 30 minutes per day, I can do that.

Reading testimonials of people whose lives changed dramatically with Fiona's help took me by surprise. And a large mug of Tazo green tea made the exercises even more enjoyable.

Continuous learning is popular nowadays, and it was recently identified by the New York Times as the prime cause of living longer. My past week felt like a kaleidoscope of continuous learning. I studied about networking and collaboration. I learned a great deal from my kids.

I discovered new lessons in leadership, and in pain. I found out that Yellow Tail wine from Australia tastes… just to my liking. From friendship and quiz games, my knowledge of celebrities expanded. I rediscovered the magic of swimming underwater in the early morning.

I saw a friend taking steps to move forward in life to realize unfulfilled dreams, while another friend received a sought-after assignment from the highest authority in the land.

I felt the pressure of writing a column with a deadline, and realized the benefit of getting good last-minute advice. I read about a new type of position, a chief relationships officer.

I was stimulated by being surrounded by friends working on projects and writing papers at the same time, while a good friend was enjoying a break with cycling in France. I was inspired by colleagues in several talks about their projects.

I pondered more on leadership, what it is, and what it isn’t. I asked and received a change of tutor in my life coaching course. I helped my older daughter select a dress for a friend’s birthday party and walked with her in a mall while she was reading a book on Anne Boleyn’s sister.

I coached my younger daughter about reading her lines on life in ancient Sparta. I found out that I have longer breath in the afternoon when swimming the length of the pool under water.

What does this all add up to? No story, just my life.

Photograph: Variety in life – my daughter’s collection of guitar picks.

Morning laugh

Time spent laughing is time spent with the Gods
Japanese proverb


The morning is so fresh
it is perfect

I am reminded
how perfect the present moment is

There is no heaviness, guilt, or expectation
just opportunity

When I stop seeking my identity
in a world of forms
the essence of life comes
in a flash, totally pure

Nothing to do
it is just there

to enjoy
And I can only smile -
that is perfect too

Now I know
that laughing makes me

remember to smile

Life is whole, here and now
It takes silence to see this
to enter the moment -
light hearted, calm, magical

I keep writing
The mistake continues, to miss out
on the reason for existence -
suffering, sin, to miss the target
I am there
it is here

Words cannot describe, yet I write
Laughter reminds me
how wrong I am
Life is right here and now

Nothing to gain, nothing to loose
Yet everything is here
I straighten my spine
and Chi flows
Nothing is better

A sun ray touches my face as I write
and the foot of my young daughter
still asleep
Wholeness is here
I see it

A morning meditation
with eyes open and closed
in silence

I prefer the moment
over editing my lines
Touching the universe
over my To Do list

I hope no one dies
on this Philippine election day

Photograph: Morning rays

The Secret

Liberation is not deliverance.

Victor Hugo

Yesterday on the 5th of May my country celebrated the liberation from five years of occupation and oppression by Nazi Germany, now 62 years ago. In May 1945 American and Canadian tanks rolled into Dutch cities to a rousing welcome by people who had survived the winter eating little more than flower bulbs.

After the liberation, the wounds of war took a long time to heal. In a recent opinion poll, one in two people in Holland said that the two countries should work together more closely in the European Union. However, a large majority said they would now welcome Germans to join the national memorial day on May 4th. As Victor Hugo implied, the journey from liberation to deliverance can take some time.

Meanwhile, violence and oppression continue unabated in today’s world. Only a few days ago, soldiers in Iraq discovered a girls school under construction which had been booby trapped to cause carnage with an intent that was considered inconceivable until now. No day passes in that country without reports of further bombings that violently tear apart the fabric of society.

Across the Atlantic in the US, tales of carnage in schools also continue, yet the thirst for violence remains unquenched. The latest Hollywood product for family entertainment, Spiderman 3, is rated by the Motion Picture Association of America as PG 13 for its “sequences of intense action violence”. In the Philippines, the Movie and Television Classification Board rated the movie GP (for general patronage) without age limit, and when I watched it yesterday, even babies were admitted.

A reader from Africa blamed the editor of Newsweek this week for a negative article on Ban Ki-moon’s prospects as Secretary-General of the UN, saying that “you and George Bush are made from the same material: you find it easier to destroy than to build up.”

Watching Hollywood movies like Spiderman 3, destruction looks easy and spectacular, and the aftermath is made to look inconsequential to the stars shown to occupy the moral high ground.

Now switch your mind to another wavelength...

Simultaneous to what seems to be an unrelenting momentum for destruction, the world is also being touched by waves of positive energy at a scale never seen before.

Gurus and coaches, many of them American or resident in the US, abound with positive messages. The self-help or self-enrichment shelves of bookstores around the world are filled like never before.

Spirituality is making a “comeback” on a grand scale and in all colors of the rainbow. The blogosphere and other new avenues of communication are making a big contribution to this global “new age” movement.

The past weeks have witnessed a spectacular upsurge in global awareness of the need to counter the environmental destruction and climate change that are affecting the planet.

The remarkable news was about the growing consensus for action to be taken. Scientists and government officials have suddenly found more common ground for moving forward with action, and mindsets have changed in ways and on a scale that politicians can no longer afford to ignore.

In Spiderman 3, Peter Parker concludes that in the battle of good and bad, we always have a choice. Adversity can be overcome.

And two and a half thousand years ago, the Buddha told mankind to “be a lamp unto yourself” and he encouraged his followers to “work out your liberation with diligence.”

In the past few days, my daughter discovered the law of attraction from reading Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret.

It’s about the power of positive thinking. According to Wikipedia, this law states that “you get what you think about; your thoughts determine your destiny”. That can work both ways.

That violence begets more violence seems clear. And in the dualistic nature of our world, violence seems to cling to liberation like a shadow. Even so, the world’s gurus and coaches keep reminding us that we can experience liberation when we release ourselves from aggression and fear inside.

In our daily struggle between good and bad, the choice to experience deliverance is ours, at a deeply personal level. Ask Peter Parker and the Dutch – they seem to have found some practical answers. Or read The Secret and focus on positive thinking.

Photograph: Flowering from the mud – one of the most widely circulated photographs in the world (Water Lilies, from Microsoft’s sample pictures)