Finals Week, Take Three!

The Thinker, courtesy of UKZN University

It's finals week for Philosophy for the third time in my Salesian history! Phew! I just got this chance to blog in between my oral examinations in Philosophy. It seems that our examinations also participates in the Principle of Proportionality. It simply gets better and better. And of course, the summit would be the de Universa.

What my Philosophical studies gave me is not the content of Aristotelico-Thomistic doctrine but the discipline of studying itself! I am a lazy brain and by default I'm deductive, basing myself on few principles and from their expound my knowledge of things. But Scholastic Philosophy doesn't work like mathematics and computer science does. I am forced to memorize, analyze, reconstruct, and argue. It is much mental work that has often been the object of my complaint.

I have to admit, I like the experience even if it is so troublesome. The truth is, the more you understand, the more you learn to love things, indeed many things. As we are inching our way closer to de Universa, I pray I'd be able to meet the demands of knowing and loving Philosophy. Next oral exam please!

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.