Giving Food as Alms

When we hear that the people begging for alms at every street corner are pawns of crime syndicates who use these unfortunate souls to earn money, whether it be true or urban legend, it gives us pause whenever a person (whether hungry child or adults) begs for alms or sells garlands of sampaguita on the street. We are unsure whether the alma we really helping them or further perpetuating their enslavement to the syndicate they might be part of. Furthermore, we are torn because we wonder whether giving them a few coins would encourage them to be lazy and reinforce begging as a way of life; yet at the same time, compassion moves us to want to help them.

We can not be sure what their stories or motivations are. As far as we know, it’s safer to not get mixed up in such messy situations. Every time a street kid/person comes by to sell me garlands of flowers or beg, I am torn between turning her away and giving a few coins. I eventually stopped giving coins because they can easily go and buy addictive substances like cigarettes, rugby (glue), alcohol or whatnot. For a while, I just tried to ignore them and turn them away whenever they came by to beg and it was not an emotionally pleasant experience and every stoplight refreshed the experience.

I finally decided I cannot live with feeling helpless every time a street person comes by for ams and brought some snack food (biscuits, chips, etc.) to place in the car so when someone comes knocking on my car window, they don’t leave empty handed. And it has been a satisfying experiences to a least share some food with them somehow in my own little way.

Feel free to give it a try. Perhaps we might not solve poverty
in one fell swoop but at least somehow we are doing our part in sharing our blessings with people in need.

(c) Niconica 2012

Proper Recycling to Prevent Disease

There is much talk about going green and being eco-friendly in the context of recycling and as much as people are aware that it’s ‘good’ to go green, this campaign talks about a more distant future and lacks the immediacy which would appeal to more myopic and self-focused beings such as ourselves.

We complain about the air being polluted and epidemics going around–even if it is as common place as the cold or the flu, yet we continue to dispose of our waste unthinkingly, knowing that the lower echelons of society would be going through the trash bins and exposing themselves to the rotting food and bacteria just to salvage some recyclables (bottles, plastics, paper) which they can sell.

We are inconsiderate of what happens to our rubbish after it has been removed from our premises and we think that it would not affect us in any solid way except for perhaps some flooding which happens every few weeks or months due to the clogged sewers and yet we have become so immune to this that we don’t think of it as our problem or even so, it’s always the responsibility if the city government.

It is precisely this sort of thinking which escalates the problem and it manifests more concretely as disease which we complain about should our loved ones especially our children get sick from contagious viruses even as ubiquitous as the common cold or flu.

If we just took a few minutes to think about it and think back to the people we see around the neighbourhood or the city scouring the rubbish for what items they can sell for a pittance, disregarding the risk to their health… We can further realise that these people wander around quite a bit and do come in contact with many people on the street in many parts of the Metro and whatever bacteria or virus they might have come across can easily be transmitted to the commuters and pedestrians who may happen to be neighbours or relatives with people we come across daily or even just randomly in malls and this, ladies and gentlemen, is how disease spreads and affects us.

Granted, it may not be the Ebola virus but anyone who has had their schedules altered or their body debilitated even for a few days by the common sore throat, flu or cold will agree that it is not a pleasant experience, adding to the fact that it is even more unpleasant to watch our housemates or family catch these common illnesses after we do.

It’s not to say that vitamin C and B-complex will not help boost our immune systems, but when we are more responsible with disposing our rubbish and recyclables, we create less causes for disease to spread. We cannot prevent people from going through the rubbish because poverty is quite rampant here and the few pesos they get from selling the bottles, plastic, or paper might mean the survival of their families.

What we can do is to rinse out used sardine/tuna/canned goods cans, plastic containers, and bottles, let them dry on our dish racks and then place them in a designates big black (or whatever coloured) garbage bag together with empty medicine bottles, boxes, paperbags, paper leaflets, newspapers which can be recycled too and give it to people in the neighbourhood who would benefit from selling them.

It can be as simple as selling the recyclables at the local junk shop, or of we are feeling more altruistic, I’m sure we know people in the neighbourhood who would be willing to take the clean recyclables and sell them.

We need not be insensitive to the others while we help them. It is not considerate to think that they will be selling it so it’s their responsibility to deal with the almost decayed food or unhygienic possibly recyclable garbage after they have been unthinkingly mixed with biodegradables since they would be accessing the rubbish long after the waste items are fresh.

They are fellow human beings too and deserve our consideration, but if this line of reasoning does not appeal to our more self-centered fellow human beings, then the health scare and possible diseases to be communicated should be enough reason for everyone to hygienically recycle and separate their recyclables from the biodegradables.

Properly cleaning, drying, separating, and disposing recyclable materials is in your best self-interest. (Benefitting others by preventing the spread of disease is a good bonus/motivation). Start doing it now–today.

(c) Niconica 2012

Christmas Anxiety Syndrome

Let’s all admit it, as much as we look forward to the Christmas Holidays and everything it’s supposed to represent to us–good tidings and cheer and what not… We have to also deal with the other things it represents to us such as having to deal with finding the perfect gifts for our loved ones, and finding the appropriate obligation gifts for people we don’t really like but have to give gifts to.

It’s the time of the year when relatives or even friends who are not speaking to each other or actively avoiding each other might possibly bump into each other in gatherings and have to endure each other–at best it will be awkward and at worst it would be excruciating.

There’s also the pressure of being the epitome of happy and joyful during the Christmas season, which presents quite a challenge for some of us who aren’t particularly having a good year or season thus far or even for some of us who are just naturally dour and melancholic.

It can also be that for even normally cheery people, the pressure to be constantly jolly and giving all the time would lead to tolerating more stress and difficult people and circumstances than usual and thus turning oneself into a scowling sack of potatoes.

Sometimes it’s unrealistic to expect that just because it is that time of the year to be happy and jolly that we should be so because putting undue pressure on ourselves would just lead to further stress and with all the factors swirling around in the cosmos–maybe even a meltdown.

Maybe it’s time to consider Christmas Anxiety Syndrome and be kinder to ourselves and others during this hectic time.

(c) Niconica 2011*

*does not apply to image/s

Coming of Age

One of the hardest things about being in high school aside from the emotional instability brought upon by raging hormones and going through unfamiliar territory in discovering who we are is finding a sense of belonging.

It’s definitely not a good sign when one feel likes one belongs in a fictional world as opposed to the real world and in a sense, that’s what what books have been to me–and in particular the Sweet Valley series–a safe haven during the tumultuous coming-of-age period.

Now that we look back, we can easily categorize movies, TV series, or books into genres such as the coming-of-age novel or film which appeals to our sense of nostalgia, sentimentality, or escapism. Watching a coming-of-age novel is a vicarious thrill since it has all the excitement and the pain at a safe distance, without having to go through “all that” all over again.

If we were to be honest (and if we are one of those popular golden people in high school) coming of age is often a bittersweet experience and tends towards more bitterness than sweetness and we would not wish to go through all of that fear, uncertainty, and chaos once again–unless of course, we were one of the so-called ‘In’ crowd.

For remarkably average people like ourselves who did not have everything that we encounter turn into gold during our teenage years, the awkwardness and the confusion would be too much to go through again and there is some solace in being an adult safely a decade or more away from those gawky years.

If we think about it, we all just wanted to fit in, to be accepted, and to belong way back then but then again, as we can say now from a safe distance, ‘Kids can be so cruel.’ Hardly anyone leaves high school unscarred–except for the top 2% who probably inflicted all the scarring and the other 1% who are just plain lucky.

We did not have mobile phones, laptops, or internet back then, but it would be safe to say that coming of age does not get any easier in this era of Facebook, Twitter, SMS and Instant messaging.  Suffice to say, it probably makes it more complicated.

Coming of age is probably one of the most universally difficult experiences which transcend culture and country.

At the core of it is the need for a sense of community and we can only hope that with all the cutting edge technologies invented by science, that there would be some way to be able to–at the most basic level–enhance and aid the fragile and unstable psyches of our adolescents if only to make the transition from being a child to a “grown-up” (whatever that means) easier…

In doing so, we can eventually be a step closer to making the world a better place.

(c) Niconica 2011*

*does not apply to image/s

Is All Fair in Love and War?

They say that it’s all fair in love and war perhaps maybe because with both situations we all tend to lose our heads and more often than not, our better judgements… However, despite the fact that we might all like it to be true–that all be fair in love and war–perhaps because it is often the case that we would like to think that ‘everything goes’ in these situations–it is more of an excuse or a justification for not thinking or behaving in a civil manner.

It might seem or be apparent that all might be fair in love and war even if it is not.  There are casualties with both love and war and how do we justify the cruelty and the violence in both these cases?  Saying a million times that all is fair in these cases does not make all the pain, cruelty, and injustices more ‘fair’.

We must call a spade a spade.  During periods of incivilities where our passions rule our logic, and we end up acting in horrific ways towards others, the fact remains that damage is done and there is no amount of clichés or saying which would change the reality and consequences (read as: harm/damage) of what we have done.

I would urge everyone to think twice before they invoke this inapplicable but eloquent cliché and apply it to their daily lives.

(c) Niconica 2011* (**)

* does not apply to image/s

**This is in response to Daily Post Topic #260

Cruelty is Contagious

Let’s admit it, as we walk down further on the road of life and accrue more experience, we come across our fair share of characters and there would at least be a handful of these which are comprised by cruel people. Cruel people, and their victims, would oftentimes claim that they are not cruel per se but they are just misunderstood.

The defense usually goes like this, “I/He/She/It am/is not cruel, it is simply what I did that is cruel.”  What a way to deflect and blame it on something else. It has often been the case that when the act is proven by public consensus to be cruel and there is no way out that the person committing the cruelty admits to the cruelty of the act, but detaches from it by maintaining their pure white innocence.

It does not take an expert psychiatrist to figure out that there is something wrong with the disconnect in how they think and how illogical they are–or perhaps they are not illogical but just expert at deception to both others and themselves, and this is how they continue their cruel existence, inflicting their manipulative and disturbing presence upon others, while all the same time maintaining a self-image that they are right or even worst, that they had no choice but to perpetrate the psychological/physical/emotional/verbal cruelty upon others.

It is not about suddenly becoming an agreeable doormat or being as meek as a lamb, but it’s about being able to get one’s point of view across without causing harm to others.  There is a way to communicate and exist in the world that is not at the expense of others’ sanity and well-being and this possibility has clearly not been conveyed or accepted by them. The zero-sum game where one wins and the other loses is a thing of the past and there is such a thing as a win-win situation, if only these people could open their eyes to it.

However, if they are already adults, it might be a bit too late or at least very difficult to rectify this cruelty–short of lobotomy.  Somewhere along their personal histories was someone who was very cruel to them as well and this produced wounds which reached far into the future with far-reaching consequences, damaging these people enough so that they themselves become the monsters which once victimized them, as much as they don’t want to admit it.

It is in these series of complex cause and effects that it can be claimed that cruelty is contagious to a certain extent–albeit only with people who have weak emotional immune systems.  The cruel treatment in their childhoods or formative years resulted in a scar or trauma so deep that the person never recovers from it and spends many years in the future reacting to the trauma and making other people pay for their pain.

This being said, people who stronger and more resilient immune systems, even after being afflicted by cruelty in their vulnerable years, do not turn out to be the monsters who harmed them and prevail to be better, wiser, and more understanding people.

Therefore, it’s not really an excuse when people blame their past experiences or people for how they turned out to be, you don’t blame the monsters for turning you into a monster–you have turned into a monster because you have allowed them to get the better of you–more to the point, they got the best of you.

There are people who have been through even worst and have not turned out to be the equally or more cruel than the people who have preyed on them, it is not because they have some magical capability–they are as human as you or i–it is because they choose to remain human and not turn into an unspeakably horrid human being.

How about you? What do you choose?

(c) Niconica 2011*

*does not apply to image/s

The Mystique of Murder

"Murder Most Foul..." --Shakespeare "Hamlet"

The rampant and popular shows on the television involving the crime genre reflects our preoccupation with the morbid and the macabre–psychologically and not in the more overt sense, which would tiptoe towards the horror genre.

There is something intriguing and captivating about the idea of unimaginable murder and the implied psychological state of the people who commit them.

Humans are explorers by nature and the murder/crime mystery genre offers an avenue to explore one of the last frontiers–the darkness of the human mind.  This genre offers a vicarious indulgence in the taboo of killing and the circumstances which surround it.

Murder mysteries touch upon the primal urge towards the other end of the spectrum: death; and the ever-present human proclivity for curiosity and the draw towards the unknown.  It is through the crime genre that we witness and become part of something which both fascinates and horrifies us…

(c) Niconica 2011*

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For The Love of Vampires

There’s so much stories about vampire love nowadays that it has become mainstream. Now that the vampires are exceedingly popular, they are fast losing their dark, brooding, and mysterious appeal.

Gone are the classic vampires of old in the tradition of Anne Rice‘s Interview with the Vampire.  They used to be ageless, timeless, and elusive.  Now they are being portrayed to be as everyday as the corner Starbucks.

There was something interesting about the idea of vampires being accessible, but with the rampant TV shows and literature about vampires among us, they are now in the danger of becoming mundane.

One can’t help but wish that the mystique and rarity of vampires that we grew up with back in the 80s would have been preserved.  There’s something about the vampires who have that unreachable quality which really draws the imagination to a new level.

However, this is probably also the reason why many artists, writers, and creative people have gone to this new level and taken the next step and created worlds were vampires were more among us than they had been before.

(c) Niconica 2011*

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The Childless Revolution: Options Open Up

Reading the right books certainly opens up our mind to all the different possibilities and options in life.  Stumbling across this book in a bookstore, the catchy title The Childless Revolution caught my eye.

Author Madelyn Cain shares with us the experiences and situations of women who are childless or childfree by choice, by chance, and by happenstance.

Of course there’s the classic story of women who are unhappy and felt that they have missed their calling in life by not having children.

However, on the other hand, it may seem as a surprise for many people who seem to be caught up with the popular vote that some women choose to be childfree and are the happier for it.

This book recognizes and heralds a new dawn for women, opening up their lives (and minds) to fact that one is not less of a woman just because one did not choose or happen to become a mother.

This is the next step in women’s revolution: that women be able to choose for themselves consciously (and be accepted by the general population–those this has yet to happen) that it’s OK to be childfree and to choose not to be a mother despite having the equipment for it.

It seems that many men and women alike harbor the thoughts that just because women have the biological equipment to be a mother, that they are obligated to use the said equipment and bear children.

It’s admirable that there are people who choose responsible parenting and recognize that even though they are women and have the necessary equipment to have children, that their temperaments or preferences does not suit having children and they stand by their decision to remain childfree.

Recognizing that for various reasons one does not suit or does not want to be a mother is one of the more honest and commendable things that these women have done since it saves bother the would-be mother and child a lot of heartache.

This not a book that speaks against women who choose to have children, but it simply calls for equality and acceptance to women who choose to not or happen to not have children, since we are more than aware that there is a stigma that is attached to being childless.

It also tells women who are in the closet about their unsuitability or lack of desire to be a mother that it’s OK, there are people who are like you, and the number is increasing as the challenges of life grow exponentially and women become braver about their own needs, wants, and rights.

This is definitely a step forward in opening up our options (and our minds).

(c) Niconica 2011*

*does not apply to image/s

Public vs Private: Status Updates

With the advent of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, among many others… It would not come as much surprise if there comes a day that the very public nature of status updates may start wars.

As much as it can be argued that free press and journalism can be controversial by nature, public social networking and status updates take it to a whole other level of complicated and/or controversial.

To be able to connect more with others via social networking certainly empowers us, however it also tends to embolden us to tend to  think that every other thought we have might be relevant enough to share on cyberspace, which is really mostly not the case.

There are people who are extroverted enough to not mind sharing various aspects of their life with the many via status updates and uploading photos and there are some who balk at the idea, it is at the crosshairs of this penchant for a more public or private cyberspace presence that complications may arise.

Updating one’s status is not a group conversation… in many ways, it has a performer-audience feel to it and there then arises much room for misunderstanding and judgement without the opportunity to clarify to defend one’s position.

As much as one may be comfortable enough within one’s skin to share facets of one’s life with others, it may not be the case with one’s friend who, for reasons entirely their own, might not want other people to know what they discussed nor where they went and what they did.

It is not simply a case of the more private person having something to hide, but perhaps it is just a matter of preference that personal interactions need not be displayed for the public or at least, many, to witness.

This topic then encroaches upon netiquette and there would undoubtedly me as many debates on this as there are daily status updates. However, it might pay to be aware of one’s friend’s threshold of being included, tagged, or referred to in one’s status updates.

It can be surmised though that people who updates their status updates regularly, publicly, and openly have a more extroverted and trusting temperament and might view the world as a safe place for their personal thoughts, information, and ideas to roam freely.

On the other end of the pole, people who deactivate their Wall on Facebook to prevent random and unsolicited posts on them view the world in another manner and it might be that they prefer to keep to themselves and avoid further gossip, entanglements, or complications, and/or that they go by the saying, “Less talk, less mistake.”

As much as that we may all agree to differ, and as much as the right for free speech exists, we must duly remember to consider whether or not our friends, colleagues and loved ones have the same inclination for having a more public internet and/or social networking presence before we casually include them in our posts or status updates.

Applying this much overlooked but necessary courtesy would indeed result in more harmonious relationships, and thereby, via a giant leap, might make the world a better place.

(c) Niconica 2011*

*does not include the images