the road before me bends...

there comes a time in everyone’s life when one has to choose between roads. often it’s a choice between a road we already know too well, and one that’s much narrower, less familiar, bending beyond what your eyes can see. the thing is, you know you must choose—lest you remain a wanderer all your life and you simply run out of roads. each one’s road is different. but all of us are born pilgrims: we are all meant to seek that one road that will lead us home. it’s not an easy task, but don’t be afraid.

if you seek it, your road will find you.

-- johnny go, sj


if the road before me bends, then why am i still here - doing not what my heart desires. my friend G is right....what's stopping me from pursuing what i want to do best...she said that i should at least take a leap...but i figured that the risks are enormous. however, the complancency that i have in staying where i am right now is much much more costly than doing what i really want to do.

the words of fr. johnny go struck me through and through, and although i always have that in mind...im still here, feeling worthless, unfulfilled and worse...mediocre!

lady's choice

i have always been a women's rights advocate. i owe it to at least two of the most influential women in my life...probably two of the boldest and strongest female influences in my life - my mom and my sister. they are a force to reckon with. my mom who moved heaven and earth to raise four stubborn sons and a well-meaning termagant daughter while my dad was in far away america for work, and my sister who stood beside the four boys for almost anything.

as i go through with life, i meet women who inspire and amaze me. they, who notwithstanding life's adversities, still managed to pull it off with flying colors. they are the women who are worth engaging a hearty conversation with, women whose two-cents worth takes you aback, and makes you think, and guess, and engage yourself for yet another worthwhile stimuli of the brain over and over again.

my exposure to the field of development studies, and my work which involves travelling from the busy city to the far flung provinces give me the opportunities to talk to them and find out what it is that concerns them.

i just find it too piteous whenever they sigh and confess that the opportunities left for them are limited and scarce. im talking about the married women and their needs.

it is as if women's limited opportunities is a function of being married. hard as it may seem to accept, this is a prevalent circumstance. in a time when technology shapes almost anything and everything, and when this generation is open to almost all the better possibilities in life, the population of married women who find opportunities limited are getting bigger and the reach wider.

this is a sad plight of women. just because you are married and have kids, or married and was told to stay at home, or married and working for the family, or plain married and content with family life meant that your life should end there. women are i guess a better creature than us men. you have the gift to be who you are, when self fulfillment is innately felt. we, men, never had that security in the first place (coming from a man who is not afraid to say the truth).

you always almost forget that you are first a person before anything else. first a woman before being a partner, a wife, and a mother. you owe it to yourself to be happy. happiness is something that should not be dependent on anything or to anybody.

im the course of a married woman's life, if she fails to feel genuinely fulfilled, the day will come that all these will go back right in front of her face and will strike her in the head...blame will come in next. while we men can always philander and seek clandestine affairs, women always have to think of the sake of her family and her well-being first before engaging into any illicit affair. unfair but true!

it is at this time that blame comes in...for whatever things she thought she deserves to do before is not in any way a possibility. the risk of doing anything is too enormous that even a single thought of it is next to oblivion.

married women, decide! live your life because you wanted it lived, and not because others wanted you to live it. blame comes like a thief in the night....you will never know when its right there behind you...hitting you at your backs!