iSad for Steve Jobs

I got the news Thursday morning of October 6 that the great Steve Jobs passed away due to cancer. I like the guy because he's a genius innovator and salesman and I don't like him because he sells expensive. But I'd like to thank him for the many ways he has pushed the industry to a higher standard, being able to make Microsoft's heart skip a beat with Apple's competition. Most of all his ingenuity led us to believe in human creativity.

Reading a snippet of his life from Associated Press, I got to realize the humble beginnings of this technology icon. He was put up for adoption, raised by a middle-class working family, dropped out of college, and started Apple in a garage much like the techies of the 70's and 80's who are now on top of big technology corporations like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and others. By pushing for excellence and perfection he was able to drag the world along with him.

There are many lives out there that help us learn the meaning and beauty of life. There are many out there who exemplify humanity in their own ways and fields. All we have to do is believe in ourselves that we can, after all the the setbacks and stumbles in life, be able to rise up again to the challenge. What gift we have we can nurture to become the giants that we are meant to be. We don't need to compare because we already are winners inside, we only have to bring out that champion in each one of us.

Most of all, we realize that we can only do so little despite all our human power. We are limited after all. We will have to pass the gate of death. What can I leave behind for the world as the great Steve Jobs did with all the gadgets we have in our pockets and in our backpacks? How can we improve each other's life for the better? We transcend our limitations when we begin to transcend our own selfish boundaries.

Our humanity is the wonderful union of limitation and excellence, of immanence and transcendence, the interior and exterior life. To say we are gods and forget we are men, we fall. To say we are men and not God's, we despair. Let the life of Steve Jobs who set the standard for human creativity and ingenuity inspires us. Great and cool life, Steve!

What is Love?

I had my catechism class with students from Kapayapaan reflect on the definition of Love. What is love? What is the best definition for it that encompasses the love of man and of God? We abound in so many definitions of the most sought after value in life. Perhaps our own shortcomings in defining it reflect on how much we have misunderstood it. The multiplicity of its definition may also reflect our own confusion and our helplessness in really making love our own.

I take Scott Peck's definition of love as the better than the rest. I stumbled upon it when I was reading The Road Less Traveled. Scott defined it, in a nutshell, willing the good of another. You can read his definition from this Wikipedia entry. Here he distinguishes love, not as a feeling, but a willing. It is an active volition for another's good.

I like the definition because it transcends the popular notion that love is a feeling. For if indeed it is a feeling, then it must be fleeting and temporary as all feelings are. But love stays and commits itself through the years, at best for a lifetime and eternity. It is not driven by hormonal changes but an active decision and indeed it is so.

Transcending further this psychological definition, I echo what the Church has always said, that Love is a Person, in the face of Jesus Christ. For man to know what love is, he must reflect and contemplate the life of Christ which is a complete, perfect, and exemplary testament of superlative Love. Not all men can accept this definition if one has no faith and faith is a gift. But in believing so can we truly see the real nature of Love that has ever since escaped and evaded our best definitions.

I Fever

Ever since I met the "post modern" word and its friends "egoism", "self-actualization", and "self-centeredness", I have become conscious of how I begin my journal entries. Have I used "I" again as I begin this entry? I leaf through the pages of the past days, and, whoa, most of them begin with "I". This would be excusable since it is my journal entry. What if I begin everything with the "I"?

I, here I go again, get tired of people always talking about themselves. The conversation becomes boring and heavy when it could not go beyond the Me-Myself-and-I topic. Talking to people who cannot stop talking about themselves is like being sucked into a black hole. You just want to get out of it. We Filipinos call the most obvious ones as mahangin, but there are those who are more subtle. They start the conversation about something which slowly and silently spirals towards themselves. Yikes! It's pitiable because it is symptomatic of a low self-esteem or the non-acceptance of the self for one two always need the assurance and affirmation of other people.

People, and that includes you and me, are more self-centered now more than ever. We all have this level of self-centeredness, for it is natural to us, but it stinks like fish when it becomes selfishness. Are we not too pre-occupied with our self-image? Businesses capitalize on this in the multi-billion dollar enterprise of cosmetics and fashion. We have to go back again to the True Center of everything.