Essays from the Weekend

Image from Sports Illustrated I’ve never gotten into the world of sports (aside from must-watch high profile games/competitions like the Olympics) but athletes have always been fascinating to me. The way they train every day with such discipline, the way they push themselves and then take care of themselves when they recover after a game. The way they arrive at the game dressed so well and then on the court or on the field in their headphones, getting into their mental space to perform. The way they have pre-game and post-game rituals. The way they hire and rely on sports psychologists. They know the secrets to peak physical performance and peak rest. Makes one think — should we train like athletes for the daily things that we have to perform well, i.e. our corporate jobs? Glad to have stumbled across these articles today: Headspace’s Mindfulness and the Corporate Athlete of Today and Harvard Business Review’s The Making of a Corporate Athlete .  Sharing some of my notes so that I...

  Image from Apple Once upon a time, a friend of mine, let’s call her Rachel, felt miserable because she got realized that she got sucked back into being hooked on social media for the past few days. She had been on a social media break for months. It felt liberating not feeling that strange and persistent impulse to reach for her phone and mindlessly scroll. It felt like she got a God-given time refund of a couple of free hours each day. It was peaceful. It was peak contentment.  Then she had her last day with her company, and, feeling a little sad she couldn’t say goodbye to her work friends in person, decided to add them on social media so that they could maybe keep a digital connection alive while they wait out delta before having drinks in person. She posted a picture to commemorate her last day too, her first post in almost a year. It had likes. Interesting. The feeling of wanting to check likes came back. People kept adding her. Pretty soon she found herself reaching fo...

Photo attributed to pressureUA/istock Headlines this week: congressional probe sought on a COVID-19 research agency. A certain political tandem was announced. With all these fantastically outrageous news and the public outcry they regularly produce, Carrie Bradshaw couldn’t help but wonder: were we this annoyed pre-social media? I read somewhere just this week that posts and articles which have headlines and/or content that rile up readers generate good income. Logically, social media companies make good money from politically-annoyed people. More posts, more user engagement, more eyeballs, more clicks. Logically, if it makes money, there’s an incentive to encourage these kinds of content and to foster irascible characteristics in social media users. Perhaps it’s not too unreasonable to speculate that the more reactive, knee-jerk, denouncing posts you make on social media, the more you feed money into the machine, the more you do your part to keep it going. In other words, the angrier ...

Image from NYT For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a sort of course from Ateneo on how to be a global citizen. At least that’s what I’m telling myself the course is really about. So far, we have covered history (Philippine, Asian, Western), Philippine public policies and administration, Philippine culture. I’m also taking French classes from Verb Hive every Sunday.  It’s been an enjoyable experience so far, learning so much every weekend, but it’s demanding to keep up with the readings and lectures. Prior to this, I haven’t been into taking weekend classes. I just read a lot in my spare time, and that’s how I learn. Not that I don’t like the idea of taking classes; I do. But in Manila with the crazy traffic? It’s hard to show up to things. My close friends used to live in Muntinlupa and go to Makati every Saturday just to have German classes at the Goethe Institute. Imagine that drive. I’m too lazy to do it. Enter the pandemic. Extremely unfortunate turn of events. It comes wi...

Yesterday, I watched one of the great classic gay movies for the first time, But I’m A Cheerleader. I knew that conversion camps existed, but I had never given much thought as to how the experience would be. For those in the dark, conversion camps are where LGBTQ+-identifying/acting kids, boyish girls, and feminine boys are taken in attempts to convert them to be straight.  These conversion processes are reportedly extremely damaging to children’s mental health in the long run, not to mention unsuccessful, and it’s not hard to see why. There was (is?) an ex-gay movement promoting the notion that one’s gay or queer sexual orientation can be “cured” if you catch it early and then undergo conversion therapy (or just by sheer old willpower). There are many people claiming to be successful ex-gays on the internet. Most, if not all, are deeply Christian. I respect their choices and beliefs; I also think that children should be given the opportunity to make their own choices and beliefs. ...

I’m still shaken over the news of former President Noynoy Aquino’s passing. I admired the man and how he operated on pure integrity of character during his term. His appointees all seemed so principled, full of integrity, incorruptible. “Walang wangwang” - who could forget that, when people with connections didn’t really get ahead of the rest of us? The showstopping economic growth of the country? The “do the right thing” mentality that the government and the citizens rallied behind? I didn’t vote for him when he ran for president but he easily won me over, even though he was imperfect.   The Aquino nuclear family accomplished so much — his dad, incendiary opposition senator whose death sparked the EDSA People Power Revolution; his mom, who led the traumatized country out into a new democracy; and PNoy who again shone a light on the goodness of the Filipino people. The newspapers generally stop there but I’d like to add: Kris Aquino, the top individual taxpayer of the country for s...

One of the newsletters I subscribe to featured this nifty graphic: Sometimes it’s hard to put yourself out there because of the fear of what people will think. Caring about what other people think isn’t bad per se but it’s bad when it stops you from being you. I think we owe it to ourselves to be ourselves in public. The cultural status quo is not the truth without each individual’s participation. We each equally matter. Yes, there are always haters, but there are also always niches. You will always have a market, no matter how offbeat or strange you may seem to others. We have to honor and put forth that part of us inside that is the most natural and autonomous. I particularly love the Spotlight Effect up there on the graphic. Have a good week ahead!