LIFE AMIDST IN THIS WORLD

Let’s face it: most of us (if not all) have had this moment of meeting somebody somewhere, and bam! You were convinced that you have found the man of your dreams or the queen of your heart. Cupid’s arrow hit the spot, and you simply couldn’t take your eyes off of the person. Then you blinked, and by some horrible cosmic joke, you realized that your future life partner was already in the arms of another person. You actually believed that love at first sight can happen to you, but soon discovered that it can only happen again and again to the likes of Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and so others stories of Hollywood or somehow in our own Philippine Actors and Actresses.

The problem is, they have one thing that you don’t– The fantasy world of Hollywood or in general in showbizness that’s what— and you, learned the hard way. A lot of people are guilty of this, but it doesn’t mean that nobody believes in it anymore. Men and women alike can be a deep lover—a person who falls head over heels at first contact—and strongly believe in love at first sight. He/she believes in it so much that just about every person they fancy becomes their “meant-to-be with”. Often, this kind of person has a distorted sense of what an on-the-spot true love really means.

Many can be blinded by the dangerously sexy curves or the manly physique, while ignoring the possibility that she can turn out to be a clingy and dominating gal, or he can be a manipulative and self-centred player. The thing with love at first sight is this: if every man or woman you date is your true one and destiny after only a single encounter, then you significantly diminish its effect. On the other hand, the feeling can probably have more permanency if a person encounters this feeling once in his/her entire life. Women are usually wary in the early stages of a relationship, but eventually warm up to the idea of falling in love and commit with much more eagerness.

Since they have a tendency to fall more easily than the men, they are by far faster to commit. Maybe women are just wired to be committed, or it could be the effect of watching too much chick-flick where the knight is always brave and the damsel is always in distress, waiting to be rescued. This fairytale-like kind of thinking often hinders a woman from knowing a true love from a make-believe one, and so she falls for the next guy every single time. However, there are men who are hopelessly romantic, too—and of course there are those who are just plain hopeless. Sort of!!!

You know, the type who calls repeatedly every day, writes poems with the most romantic prose, and plans the typical hand holding walk on the beach with the stars twinkling by. Men can fall hard, too, especially with a beautiful woman. They are just as susceptible to love at first sight as the women, and can be very blinded by attractiveness, even if she can be as annoying as a wart on the foot. Just keep in mind that having a crush on, being attracted to, and falling in love are all very different things, whether you’re a man or a woman.

THE PLAY-FUNCTION OF SEX

   WHEN we hear the sexual functions spoken of we commonly understand the performance of an act which normally tends to the propagation of the race. When we see the question of sexual abstinence discussed, when the desirability of sexual gratification is asserted or denied, when the idea arises of the erotic rights and needs of woman, it is always the same act with its physical results that is chiefly in mind. Such a conception is quite adequate for practical working purposes in the social world. It enables us to deal with all our established human institutions in the sphere of sex, as the arbitrary assumptions of

Euclid

enable us to traverse the field of elementary geometry. But beyond these useful purposes it is inadequate and even inexact. The functions of sex on the psychic and erotic side are of far greater extension than any act of procreation, they may even exclude it altogether, and when we are concerned with the welfare of the individual human being we must enlarge our outlook and deepen our insight.

   There are, we know, two main functions in the sexual relationship, or what in the biological sense we term “marriage,” among civilized human beings, the primary physiological function of begetting and bearing offspring and the secondary spiritual function of furthering the higher mental and emotional processes. These are the main functions of the sexual impulse, and in order to understand any further object of the sexual relationship — or even in order to understand all that is involved in the secondary object of marriage we must go beyond conscious motives and consider the nature of the sexual impulse, physical and psychic, as rooted in the human organism.

   The human organism, as we know, is a machine on which excitations from without, streaming through the nerves and brain, effect internal work, and, notably, stimulates the glandular system. In recent years the glandular system, and especially that of the ductless glands, has taken on an altogether new significance. These ductless glands, as we know, liberate into the blood what are termed “hormones,” or chemical messengers, which have a complex but precise action in exciting and developing all those physical and psychic activities which make up a full life alike on the general side and the reproductive side, so that their balanced functions are essential to wholesome and complete existence. In a rudimentary form these functions may be traced back to our earliest ancestors who possessed brains. In those times the predominant sense for arousing the internal mental and emotional faculties was that of smell, the other senses being gradually evolved subsequently, and it is significant that the pituitary, one of the chief ductless glands active in ourselves to-day, was developed out of the nervous centre for smell in conjunction with the membrane of the mouth.

   The energies of the whole organism were set in action through stimuli arising from the outside world by way of the sense of smell. In process of time the mechanism has become immensely elaborated, yet its healthy activity is ultimately dependent on a rich and varied action and reaction with the external world. It is becoming recognized that the tendency to pluri-glandular insufficiency, with its resulting lack of organic harmony and equilibrium, can be counteracted by the physical and psychic stimuli of intimate contacts with the external world. In this action and reaction, moreover, we cannot distinguish between sexual ends and general ends. The activities of the ductless glands and their hormones equally serve both ends in ways that cannot be distinguished. “The individual metabolism,” as a distinguished authority in this field has expressed it, “is the reproductive metabolism.” Thus the establishment of our complete activities as human beings in the world is aided by, if not indeed ultimately dependent upon, a perpetual and many-sided play with our environment.

   It is thus that we arrive at the importance of the play-function, and thus, also, we realize that while it extends beyond the sexual sphere it yet definitely includes that sphere. There are at least three different ways of understanding the biological function of play. There is the conception of play, on which Gross has elaborately insisted, as education: the cat “plays” with the mouse and is thereby educating itself in the skill necessary to catch mice; all our human games are a training in qualities that are required in life, Then there is the conception of play as the utilization in art of the superfluous energies left unemployed in the practical work of life; this enlarging and harmonizing function of play, while in the lower ranges it may be spent trivially, leads in the higher ranges to the production of the most magnificent human achievements. But there is yet a third conception of play, according to which it exerts a direct internal influence — health-giving, developmental, and balancing — on the whole organism of the player himself.

This conception is related to the other two, and yet distinct, for it is not primarily a definite education in specific kinds of life-conserving skill, although it may involve the acquisition of such skill, and it is not concerned with the construction of objective works of art, although — by means of contact in human relationship — it attains the wholesome organic effects which may be indirectly achieved by artistic activities. It is in this sense that we are here concerned with what we may perhaps best call the play-function of sex.

   As thus understood, the play-function of sex is at once in an inseparable way both physical and psychic. It stimulates to wholesome activity the entire complex and inter-related systems of the organism. At the same time it satisfies the most profound emotional impulses, controlling in harmonious poise the various mental instincts. Along these lines it necessarily tends in the end to go beyond its own sphere and to embrace and introduce into the sphere of sex the other two more objective fields of play, that of play as education, and that of play as artistic creation.

   It may not be true, as was said of old time, “most of our arts and sciences were invented for love’s sake.” But it is certainly true that, in proportion as we truly and wisely exercise the play-function of sex; we are at the same time training our personality on the erotic side and acquiring a mastery of the art of love.

   The longer I live the more I realize the immense importance for the individual of the development through the play-function of erotic personality, and for human society of the acquirement of the art of love. At the same time I am ever more astonished at the rarity of erotic personality and the ignorance of the art of love even among those men and women, experienced in the exercise of procreation, in which we might most confidently expect to find such development and such art. At times one feels hopeless at the thought that civilization in this supremely intimate field of life has yet achieved so little. For until it is generally possible to acquire erotic personality and to master the art of loving, the development of the individual man or woman is marred, the acquirement of human happiness and harmony remains impossible.

   In entering this field, indeed, we not only have to gain true knowledge but to cast off false knowledge, and, above all, to purify our hearts from superstitions which have no connection with any kind of existing knowledge. We have to cease to regard as admirable the man who regards the accomplishment of the procreative act, with the pleasurable relief it affords to himself, as the whole code of love. We have to treat with contempt the woman who abjectly accepts the act and her own passivity therein, as the whole duty of love. We have to understand that the art of love has nothing to do with vice, and the acquirement of erotic personality nothing to do with sensuality. But we have also to realize that the art of love is far from being the attainment of a refined and luxurious self-indulgence and the acquirement of erotic personality of little worth unless it fortifies and enlarges the whole personality in all its aspects. Now all this is difficult, and for some people even painful; to root up is a more serious matter than to sow; it cannot all be done in a day.

   It is not easy to form a clear picture of the erotic life of the average man in our society. To the best informed among us knowledge in this field only comes slowly. Even when we have decided what may or may not be termed “average” the sources of approach to this intimate sphere remain few and misleading; at the best the women a man loves remain far more illuminating sources of information than the man himself. The more one knows about him, however, the more one is convinced that, quite independently of the place we may feel inclined to afford to him in the scale of virtue, his conception of erotic personality, his ideas on the art of love, if they have any existence at all, are of a humble character.

   As to the notion of play in the sphere of sex, even if he makes blundering attempts to practice it, that is for him something quite low down, something to be ashamed of, and he would not dream of associating it with anything he has been taught to regard as belonging to the spiritual sphere. The conception of “divine play” is meaningless to him. His fundamental ideas, his cherished ideals, in the erotic sphere, seem to be reducible to two: (1) He wishes to prove that he is “a man,” and he experiences what seems to him the pride of virility in the successful attainment of that proof; (2) he finds in the same act the most satisfactory method of removing sexual tension and in the ensuing relief one of the chief pleasures of life. It cannot be said that either of these ideals is absolutely unsound; each is part of the truth; it is only as a complete statement of the truth that they become pathetically inadequate. It is to be noted that both of them are based solely on the physical act of sexual conjunction, and that they are both exclusively self-regarding. So that they are, after all, although the nearest approach to the erotic sphere he may be able to find. Yet still not really erotic. For love is not primarily self-regarding. It is the intimate, harmonious, combined play — the play in the wide as well as in the more narrow sense we are here concerned with — of two personalities. It would not be love if it were primarily self-regarding, and the act of intercourse, however essential to secure the propagation of the race, is only an incident, and not an essential in love.

   Let us turn to the average woman. Here the picture must usually be still more unsatisfactory. The man at least, crude as we may find his two fundamental notions to be, has at all events attained mental pride and physical satisfaction. The woman often attains neither, and since the man, by instinct or tradition, has maintained a self-regarding attitude, that is not surprising. The husband — by primitive instinct partly, certainly by ancient tradition — regards himself as the active partner in matters of love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity. His wife consequently falls into the complementary position, and regards herself as the passive partner and her pleasure as negligible, if not indeed as a thing to be rather ashamed of, should she by chance experience it. So that, while the husband is content with a mere simulacrum and presence of the erotic life, the wife has often had none at all.

   Few people realize few indeed have the knowledge or the opportunity to realize — how much women thus lose, alike in the means to fulfill their own lives and in the power to help others. A woman has a husband, she has marital relationships, she has children, she has all the usual domestic troubles — it seems to the casual observer that she has everything that constitutes a fully developed matron fit to play her proper part in the home and in the world.

Yet with all these experiences, which undoubtedly are an important part of life, she may yet remain on the emotional side and, as a matter of fact, frequently remains — quite virginal, as immature as a school-girl. She has not acquired an erotic personality, she has not mastered the art of love, with the result that her whole nature remains ill-developed and unharmonized, and that she is incapable of bringing her personality — having indeed no achieved personality to bring — to bear effectively on the problems of society and the world around her.

   That alone is a great misfortune, all the more tragic since under favorable conditions, which it should have been natural to attain, it might so easily be avoided. But there is this further result, full of the possibilities of domestic tragedy, that the wife so situated, however innocent, however virtuous, may at any time find her virginally sensitive emotional nature fertilized by the touch of some other man than her husband.

   It happens so often. A girl who has been carefully guarded in the home, preserved from evil companions, preserved also from what her friends regarded as the contamination of sexual knowledge, a girl of high ideals, yet healthy and robust, is married to a man of whom she probably has little more than a conventional knowledge. Yet he may by good chance be the masculine counterpart of herself, well brought up, without sexual experience and ignorant of all but the elementary facts of sex, loyal and honorable, prepared to be, fitted to be, a devoted husband. The union seems to be of the happiest kind; no one detects that anything is lacking to this perfect marriage; in course of time one or more children are born. But during all this time the husband has never really made love to his wife; he has not even understood what courtship in the intimate sense means; love as an art has no existence for him; he has loved his wife according to his imperfect knowledge, but he has never so much as realized that his knowledge was imperfect. She on her side loves her husband; she comes in time indeed to have a sort of tender maternal feeling for him. Possibly she feels a little pleasure in intercourse with him. But she has never once been profoundly aroused, and she has never once been utterly satisfied.

   The deep fountains of her nature have never been unsealed; she has never been fertilized throughout her whole nature by their liberating influence; her erotic personality has never been developed. Then something happens. Perhaps the husband is called away; it may have been to take part in the Great War. The wife, whatever her tender solicitude for her absent partner, feels her solitude and is drawn nearer to friends, perhaps her husband’s friends. Some man among them becomes congenial to her. There need be no conscious or overt love-making on either side, and if there were the wife’s loyalty might be aroused and the friendship brought to an end. Love-making is not indeed necessary.

The wife’s latent erotic needs, while still remaining unconscious, have come nearer to the surface; now that she has grown mature and that they have been stimulated yet unsatisfied for so long, they have, unknown to herself, become insistent and sensitive to a sympathetic touch. The friends may indeed grow into lovers, and then some sort of solution, by divorce or intrigue — scarcely however a desirable kind of solution — becomes possible. But we are here taking the highest ground and assuming that honorable feeling, domestic affection, or a stern sense of moral duty, renders such solution unacceptable. In due course the husband returns, and then, to her utters dismay, the wife discovers, if she has not discovered it before, that during his absence, and for the first time in her life, she has fallen in love. She loyally confesses the situation to her husband, for whom her affection and attachment remain the same as before, for what has happened to her is the coming of a totally new kind of love and not any change in her old love. The situation which arises is one of torturing anxiety for all concerned, and it is not less so when all concerned are animated by noble and self-sacrificing impulses.

The husband in his devotion to his wife may even be willing that her new impulses should be gratified. She, on her side, will not think of yielding to desires which seem both unfair to her husband and opposed to all her moral traditions. We are not here concerned to consider the most likely, or the most desirable, exit from this unfortunate situation. The points to note are that it is a situation which to-day actually occurs; that it causes acute unhappiness to at least two people who may be of the finest physical and intellectual type and the noblest character, and that it might be avoided if there were at the outset a proper understanding of the married state and of the part which the art of love plays in married happiness and the development of personality.

   A woman may have been married once, she may have been married twice, she may have had children by both husbands, and yet it may not be until she is past the age of thirty and is united to a third man that she attains the development of erotic personality and all that it involves in the full flowering of her whole nature. Up to then she had to all appearance had all the essential experiences of life. Yet she had remained spiritually virginal, with conventionally prim ideas of life, narrow in her sympathies, with the finest and noblest functions of her soul helpless and bound, at heart unhappy even if not clearly realizing that she was unhappy. Now she has become another person. The new liberated forces from within have not only enabled her to become sensitive to the rich complexities of intimate personal relationship; they have enlarged and harmonized her realization of all relationships.  Her new erotic experience has not only stimulated all her energies, but her new knowledge has quickened all her sympathies. She feels, at the same time, more mentally alert, and she finds that she is more alive than before to the influences of nature and of art. Moreover, as others observe, however they may explain it, a new beauty has come into her face, a new radiance into her expression, a new force into all her activities. Such is the exquisite flowering of love which some of us who may penetrate beneath the surface of life are now and then privileged to see. The sad part of it is that we see it so seldom and then often so late.

   It must not be supposed that there is any direct or speedy way of introducing into life a wider and deeper conception of the erotic play-function, and all that it means for the development of the individual, the enrichment of the marriage relationship, and the moral harmony of society. Such a supposition would merely be to vulgarize and to stultify the divine and elusive mystery. It is only slowly and indirectly that we can bring about the revolution which in this direction would renew life. We may prepare the way for it by undermining and destroying those degrading traditional conceptions which have persisted so long that they are instilled into us almost from birth, to work like a virus in the heart, and to become almost a disease of the soul. To make way for the true and beautiful revelation, we can at least seek to cast out those ancient growths, which may once have been true and beautiful, but now are false and poisonous. By casting out from us the conception of love as vile and unclean we shall purify the chambers of our hearts for the reception of love as something unspeakably holy.

   In this matter we may learn a lesson from the psycho-analysts of to-day without any implication that psycho-analysis is necessarily a desirable or even possible way of attaining the revelation of love. The wiser psycho-analysts insist that the process of liberating the individual from outer and inner influences that repress or deform his energies and impulses is affected by removing the inhibitions on the free-play of his nature. It is a process of education in the true sense, not of the suppression of natural impulses nor even of the instillation of sound rules and maxims for their control, not of the pressing in but of the leading out of the individual’s special tendencies. It removes inhibitions, even inhibitions that were placed upon the individual, or that he consciously or unconsciously placed upon himself, with the best moral intentions, and by so doing it allows a larger and freer and more natively spontaneous morality to come into play. It has this influence above all in the sphere of sex, where such inhibitions have been most powerfully laid on the native impulses, where the natural tendencies have been most surrounded by taboos and terrors, most tinged with artificial stains of impurity and degradation derived from alien and antiquated traditions.  Thus the therapeutically experience of the psychoanalysts reinforces the lessons we learn from physiology and psychology and the intimate experiences of life.

Sexual activity, we see, is not merely a bald propagative act, nor, when propagation is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended vessels. It is something more even than the foundation of great social institutions. It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied.

Nothing, it has been said, is as serious as lust — to use the beautiful term which has been degraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure — and we have now to add that nothing is as full of play as love. Play is primarily the instinctive work of the brain, but it is brain activity united in the subtlest way to bodily activity. In the play-function of sex two forms of activity, physical and psychic, are most exquisitely and variously and harmoniously blended. We here understand best how it is that the brain organs and the sexual organs are, from the physiological standpoint, of equal importance and equal dignity. Thus the adrenal glands, among the most influential of all the ductless glands, are specially and intimately associated alike with the brain and the sex organs. As we rise in the animal series, brain and adrenal glands march side by side in developmental increase of size, and at the same time, sexual activity and adrenal activity equally correspond.

   Lovers in their play — when they have been liberated from the traditions which bound them to the trivial or the gross conception of play in love are thus moving amongst the highest human activities, alike of the body and of the soul. They are passing to each other the sacramental chalice of that wine which imparts the deepest joy that men and women can know. They are subtly weaving the invisible cords that bind husband and wife together more truly and more firmly than the priest of any church. And if in the end — as may or may not be — they attain the climax of free and complete union, then their human play has become one with that divine play of creation in which old poets fabled that, out of the dust of the ground and in his own image, some God of Chaos once created Man.

THE FRIENDSTER STATUS

Married,” “Single,” “In a relationship” or “It’s Complicated?”

One of the telling signs that relationships nowadays have gone digital is through the little detail at the beginning of Friendster profiles. The one that indicates the status of the person you’re interested in.

Nothing is what it seems. Some people use these descriptions as weapons or as a means to hide from reality. Your analyzing and/or stalking skills should be put to work double-time if you’re ever going to understand what it all means.

The rule of thumb is when someone puts “Married” on his or her status, you don’t automatically believe it. You check if there are wedding photos or pictures of babies. Otherwise, it could mean a lot of things.

It could be that they’ve found the love of their lives and now consider themselves committed. Or they’re trying to scare someone off. Or they recently broke up with someone.

Some people change their status to “Married” when their relationship ends bitterly. I have no explanation for this phenomenon, except it must be therapeutic to see that the online version of them selves have moved on.

When someone says that they are “single,” there’s a big chance they’re telling the truth. Some are so real on Friendster that, as soon as they decide to break up with someone, they update their status even before informing their partners.

Being “In a Relationship” is as honest as being single. It’s just a matter of knowing with whom.

New area

Last but not least is the “It’s Complicated” status. This has added a whole new gray area to the dating game, and the phrase itself has gained endless speculations and theories.

Maybe they’re involved with someone committed, so this would make them single but no longer looking. Or maybe they’re in that stage of deciding whether to cross the line between friends and lovers, and are unsure of their own status. Sometimes it could be a transitional phase from being “In a Relationship” to “Single.”

There are people who opt for the “It’s Complicated” status because they don’t want to admit that they are single. They are the same people who think that being single is synonymous to being a loser.
They try to take care of their reputation among their peers. Perhaps, they think that projecting the image of being in a messy relationship is better than having no relationship at all.

Somehow, they just can’t bring themselves to admit that they’re scared. Scared to do things on their own and unsure whether they can find happiness without being with somebody else.

Some players also opt for this status because this will not confirm or disprove anything. It’s just too complicated to explain to their numerous potentials.

Of course, there are always exceptions. Maybe some people would just like to keep everybody else wondering.

Whatever the case may be, remember that these are just appearances and what’s important is that you always know where you stand in any relationship.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH TO HAVE A GOOD LIFE?

Over the years, we’ve met many people who are in the same place that somehow who seems to be our mirror as what happens to them as it happens to us which basically we can relate it through the start of the film in a movie in some circumstances.  They’ve lost their smiles.  There’s little or no joy in their hearts.  The days ahead look flat and repetitive, as boring and monotonous as high school class.  Faced with this prospect of endless replication, people “lose their edge.”  They feel dull – and dulled.  They feel trapped, insulated.  They “through their motions” of living, but there’s no life in their lives.  We hear their dissatisfaction expressed in a couple of different ways which is “I am so overwhelmed these days”.  I don’t know how to have fun anymore.” Or “It’s just the same thing day after day.  I never do anything that’s fun.”  That’s not quite true. 

Most of these people have lots of fun.  They’ve got their garages filled with all kinds of fun stuff to which I refer as golf clubs, jet skis, mountain bikes, you name it, and they have it all.  For many of them “fun” has become an addiction.  But as with most addictive substances, people build up tolerance.  So despite all the “fun” things people do, they’re still not having fun.

What’s really missing is a sense of joy.  People no longer feel an authentic joyfulness in living.  Despite all the fun stuff they have or do.  And this is the case whether they’re male or female, young or old, rich or poor, or at any stage of life.

What’s happened to people is that they’ve lost a delicate, but critical, component of aliveness and well-being – they’ve lost their eccentricities.  It happens too many of us as we grow up and make our way in the world.  We fit in.  We see how other people survive and we copy their style – same as everyone else.  Swept along by the myriad demands of day-today living, we stop making choices of our own. Realizing that we have choices to make.

We lose the wonderful weird edges that define us.  We cover up eccentricities that make us unique.  Although some of us consider these eccentricities a vital part of a happy and fulfilling lifestyle.  Ironically, the very term we do coined – lifestyle - has come to imply something almost entirely opposed to eccentricity.  It’s turned out to mean a preconfigured package, formatted for easy consumption. 

Lifestyle now relates to things that we buy – someone else’s idea of what we need to be happy.  But is anyone really satisfied with these mass marketed ideas of happiness?  Us anyone really nourished by a Mclifestyle?  It’s no wonder so many people feel they’ve lost their smiles.  But more poignantly, how many would even notice if they found them?

The lifestyle of choices around us tends, to beckoning from glossy magazines and flashy commercials.  Yet despite all these choices, few of us really feel much freedom to choose.  There’s little sense of creative expression, it’s always going somewhere, never being anywhere.  As soon as we do opt for something, it begins to chafe because it never really fit us in the first place.  We get trapped into thinking we’ll be happy if we behave a certain way, live a certain lifestyles, and purchase all the products that go along with it. 

Everywhere we look we see people pursuing people happiness, as if it’s something they could capture and cage.  But pinning happiness down only destroys it.  It’s too wild for that – it needs room to roam.  You have to give it time, let it wander, surprise you.

It’s not just glossy lifestyles people grab for.  Instead, some of us try to appropriate slightly more tarnished images – but with just as predictable results.

Prepackage lifestyles let someone else - usually someone fictional – do our living for us.  The promise, which is also the curse, is that we can slip on a new lifestyle, including the emotions that go along with it. Easily as slipping in a new item of clothing.  The images that go along with the prepackaged lifestyles are always successful ones.  Models in catalogues are always smiling and laughing.  There trim and fit.  Characters on our television shows are – if not always glamorous – at least funny and sure of themselves. 

The message is that their prepackaged lifestyles works, so when for us, it doesn’t, we don’t questions the lifestyle, we question ourselves.  We think, “Oh, I need something else, one more thing, and then I’ll be happy.”  It is a catalogue-shopping approach to the good life.  The problem is that every few weeks or around the holidays, every other day there’s a fresh crop of new catalogues.  So we’re kept in a constant state of unfulfilled desire.  The things we buy don’t satisfy us, but we keep grabbing for more.  Were addicted to accumulation, but our tolerance level is so high that enough is never enough.  The problem in us as people today is that we have never really developed our own vision of success.  We do assume that if we just bought into someone else image of what it means to be happy.  It as if they think they can find their smiles by buying a clown mask.  But that doesn’t change anything. And as the old songs say, it doesn’t hide the tears when no one’s around.  Laughter has a way of breaking down that control.  It’s subversive.  Nothing like a pie in the face to bring a big shot back down to size.

There are some tips for refining our smile in which we know the feeling we get when we look over old high school yearbook?  It’s an odd mixture of relief and regret coupled with a certain disbelief that you ever could have been there or done that.  As we repack our bags we’ll probably have similar feelings.  What will sustain you though, and make it an enjoyable as well as rewarding experience, will be our ability to see the lighter side of the choices we made.  If we can hang on to our smile, we’ll do a better job of repacking and just as importantly, have more fun while doing so.  First is Prime your smile.  It is easier to keep laughing than to start.  So treat yourself to things you find funny as means to get your laughter engine going.  Laughter has its roots in shared experience.  Secondly, Do play with kids in which kids are funny and they know it.  If we spend some time with them – playing, as opposed in trying to make them clean their rooms or whatever – we are certain to find a laugh or three. Thirdly, re-

kindle a romance to which we prefer as our own specifically when we are in love. 

For example in which it’s easier to laugh off a traffic jam or missed connecting flights when you are sitting next to someone you really care about.  To take the opportunity to rediscover your core connection to the person or people you’re most attached to.  Spend some time alone and recall some of the best laughs you’ve had together which I mean literally.  Act them out.  Re-tell the old jokes.  Share the wonderful absurdity of caring deeply for one another.  If you can find the humor in your closest personal relationships, you can find the humor in anything.  Fourthly, take something incredibly seriously which means the hardest you ever laugh is when you are not supposed to.  Used same strategy in your life today, preferably something thats pretty absurd to begin with.  If you can see the seriousness of something silly, it can help you turn things around and see the lighterside of something really serious too.Fifth, learn to tell a joke.  Basically lots of people claim they can’t tell jokes which means they dont’t.  But it doesn’t  take any special talent to be funny.  It is just you had to have some practice or somehow you can be able to see some of the books that is been sold in the bookstore and grab one of it then try to imitate things out what is been written in there then practice it.  For sure they’ll groan when you treat them to a clunker, but you know they’ll be telling the same jokes to their friends first chance they get.  Another thing is that Call in well which means there’s nothing quite so delicious as playing hooky.  So “call in well” to work one day and just take it easy.  Thats it.  Lastly, is that of being “deviant”.  Why be normal?  Dare to be different. Way different.  Resolve  to do one out of the ordinary things every day for the next couple of days.  It can be mundance as taking a different route to work.  Or somehow making scared your officemate or your co-worker by dressing up into something very scary.  The point in here is that to shake things up.  Deviate from your norm.  Get out of the usual routine.

  See how it feels to do things in a new and different way.

The good life is a process, not a state of being.  It is a direction, not a destination.

How do you define a good life?  Basically, all of us have its own meaning and its own interpretation to what really is a good life.  It is just only on us on how we can be able to have some identities or something that we can be able to narrate with or naturally share it to others the kind of experiences that we acquire.  Its up’s and down’s that tend to help us to go deeper and discover its core of reality.  Based on the book that I have read which is entitled Psychology of Happiness is that it defines or conclude that the conditions of life which really make a difference to happiness are those covered  by three sources – social relations, work and leisure.  And the establishment of a satisfying state of affairs in these spheres does not depend much on wealth, either absolute or relative.  You may have a success in life, but then just think of it – what kind of life was it?  What good was it?  What is it that you have never done in all your life…goes where your body and soul want to go?  When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off.  For most people, some of the many then without letting anyone throw them off.  They wanted time to feed their souls.  Often, the search for the good life is depicted as a fleeing the rat race back-to-the-land scenario or as spurred by a crisis psychology neither of which suits our purpose here.  For us, the solution is not to be found by running from the rat race or from ourselves but rather, it is unpacking, repacking and lightening our day to day loads.  I think some would say or have that thinking that it is an affirmation.  Perhaps it has to be considered that way.  They saw the good life as a way of conducting themselves of looking at the world and taking part in activities so as to provide for the values they considered essential to the good life.  For them as few of the many these values include simplicity, freedom from anxiety or tension, an opportunity to be useful and to live harmoniously.  When we ask people to envision their ideal futures or ourselves much, we almost see images of nature.  More than enough percent respond that they see a greater degree of daily contact with the out-of-doors basically it refers to parks, oceans, mountains, forest, gardens, sunshine.

            As we do travel along the way, we tend to basically see or hear people talk about their vision of the good life.  We are amazed at the number of people who are conscious about how to simplify their lives.  We tend to have that idea that they might have the feeling of out of control.  Finding them driven by a deep urge to find more time for the important things in their lives.  Many, however, don’t know where to begin.

            In my own definition of a good life is walking through the path of integrity.  As I do recall on my math subject that relates into an integer it is a whole. It is a quest in us people to do a good life because that does matter to what is called wholeness as well.  The later period of our lives tends to be a time of great inner tension between hope and despair.  Somehow others observe it that eventually we will look back on what we have done and how we have loved.  How we have demonstrated “integrity” in our lives will determine what we will feel – hope and despair.  In some versions, the cure of boredom is not a diversion, it is to find some work to do, something to care about. 

Since how we live the next phase of our lives is not just a question of personal lifestyle but of what we care about, we define the good life as an integration of Place, Love, Work and much more Purpose.  Simplifying these things it should be “Living in the Place you belong, with the people you Love, doing the Right Work on its Purpose.  You may ask what does this mean.

            Above all it means that as mentioned in relation to integrity or integration it is a sense of harmony among the various components of one’s life.  For example, the place you live provides adequate opportunities for you to do the kind of work you need to do.  That your work gives you time to be with the people you really love.  And that your deepest friendships contribute to the sense of community you feel in the place you live and work. 

            The glue that holds the good life together is purpose.  Defining your sense of purpose which means the reason you get up in the morning that enables you to continually travel in the direction of your vision of the good life.  It helps you keep focusing on where you want to go and discovering new roads to get there.  We understand the good life, therefore, as a journey.  It is not something we achieve once and hold onto forever.  It keeps changing throughout our lives.  The balance among place, love, and work is always shifting.  At some stages, we’ll be especially on work issues.  At other, we’ll become concerned with developing sense of place, putting down roots, building a home for ourselves.  And all of us know what it’s like to have loved as our number one concern which maybe all too well.

            When we are clear about our purpose, though, it is easier to establish and maintain the necessary se se of balance.  Purpose is what keeps us from getting too far sidetracked by issues related place, love or work.  Purpose provides perspective and a beacon to keep us on the path we’ve chosen for ourselves.  And a way to find ourselves if we started getting lost.

            Oddly enough, we find that people who have achieved a harmonious relationship among the the three areas of work, love and place become increasingly less anxious about each of them individually.  Their concerns about status usually diminish.  Their self-confidence and faith in them seem to grow.  They tend to see the universe as a more benevolent place and one in which they can exercise a satisfying degree of autonomy.  Some others do describe the good life as a “moving from anxiety to faith to release.”  Somehow they see it as shifting from constant worry about their job, their romantic life and home to finally a point where they can let go of their anxieties and frustrations, confident that what they are doing, where they are doing it and who they are doing it for are all in accord.  If this sounds a little bit on a spiritual side, that’s because it is.  As we mature, our underlying spiritual concerns cannot help but begin coming to the fore.  Thus, scored of mid lifers are choosing to trade some of the current externally focused definitions of the good life for something that comes more from the inside.  They are giving up gadgets and baubles in exchange of integrity and wholeness in their live.  They are pursuing good works – a right livelihood that enables them not just to make a living but to create a meaningful, sustainable live.

            We know lots of people and not just baby boomers but plenty of their kids too who have recently committee or made a renewed commitment to a particular place.  They’ve bought land or moved to a part of the country that has always meant a lot to them and are making a go at living there despite complications like distance from work or lack of similar services.  Or else they have decided not to move from their current home even tough peers and contemporaries are leaving in droves.  For some of the many, the internal sense of place is too important a part of what the life means to be ignored.  Similarly, many people we know are making work choices that may not be so great for their “careers” but that are exactly what they need to do for themselves.  And it’s a truism, but it’s certainly true these days, people generally are not looking for more relationships, they are looking for more out of the relationships they already have.  Love is a remarkably delicate commodity, one that seems more precious than ever before.  We see a renewed interest on the part of partners and friends we know in making things work which is an increased appreciation fir the value of the connection and more willingness to do whatever it takes to grow together rather than grow apart.  People are turning inward to develop a new understanding and appreciation for a vision of the good life that takes into account place, work and or love.  In developing this vision, they are quite naturally unpacking and repacking each of these bags.  And in doing so they are also quite naturally overcoming the fears that hold so many others back from their own vision of the good life.

            Establishing and maintaining long – term loving relationships keeps us from feeling alone. More than I know that a life without love, without the presence of the beloved is nothing but a mere magic lantern show.  We draw out each slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each and pushing it back to make haste for the next.  Finding our home, creating a sense of place which enables us to stop feeling lost.  Designing the good life becomes then, the simple matter of finding and keeping adequate space for love, place and work in your life.  Creating the good life is a similar process.  Life can never be adequately discussed or conceptualized, but only created in a way of living our own questions, on our own way of continuous unpacking and repacking of our own back pack or luggage’s.

            People who are “artist at living” which I mean they are much on the kind of person that tends to make such beautification of their own are bold enough to questions the status quo -  which is it to accept that someone else’s truth could be a lie for them.  In some ways they are also willing to recognize when their own truths have became a dead end in which case they demonstrate the courage to let go.  Which somehow they accept what they can from an experience and move on.  Basically, that’s what makes a man move to look forward.  Generally speaking, people do not always make breakthroughs because we refused to quit in some under in any circumstances which that depends on the kind of situation indeed when realizing that enough is not enough.  That old patters are not serving them, that even its time to repack their own luggage’s and baggage’s.

            We have defined the good life as living in the place I belong, with the people I love, doing the right work on purpose.  As we see its place, relationships, work and purpose are the corner stone’s of a well – lived life.  Although we have tried to present this as clearly and creatively as possible, there’s always nothing all that groundbreaking about our definition.  Many of the thoughtful people or educated with the highest degrees of courses as to their titles for the most part their answers are not all that different than our own.

            Perhaps we wonders about the biggest of the big questions that we tend to find some answers to which it is somehow unexplainable in a certain way questioning in general terms what is the meaning of life?  With this kind of question that we tend to realize and reflect needless to say and absolutely we do have different answers as to its perspective.  Indeed, since everything everyone does is ultimately aimed at happiness, that the meaning of life the reason we are all here is happiness. Of course, if this is the case, we still have to define what happiness really is.  Although, we define it in a way we understand happiness as pleasure, honor and wealth still the life of pleasure is not authentically happy. Why? It is for the reason that if all we strive for is sensual pleasure then perhaps we are really no better than beasts, human clearly have greater potential for meaningful lives.  A life of pure pleasure is unworthy of what’s best about us.  Another reason maybe is that as we all know, the single-minded pursuit of pleasure is self-defeating.  Overindulgence in the sensual pleasure always leads to hangovers of one sort or another.  We end up feeling worse and less happy than we did before we started seeking pleasure.      The pursuit of honor doesn’t yield authentic happiness for its honor depends so much upon what people may think.  if we think being famous will make as happy we’re constantly going to be at the mercy of other people’s opinions and is undoubtedly a recipe for unhappiness if not downright disaster.  Another bet in here for such reasons is that of wealth.  Wealth can’t be the definition of happiness although it is being conceptualized by many of us because if you have the money you can have everything you wanted to have but let us not forget that money may too also cause something that we might regret in the end.  Sometimes, we do tend to argue or make some inner and deeper examination  that money can’t be synonymous with happiness because unlike happiness it is not something we aspire to as an end in itself or it is not something we attain rather happiness is an activity ultimately it is an exercise of moral and intellectual virtue.  In simple words, happiness is going to be doing what we are meant to do in the best way possible.  It is not something you get but it is something you do.  It involves living, relating and working on purpose.  It is not something about what we have or what people think of us but it is about how we live our lives.  Real happiness comes from setting our own lives within a larger context.  While it is certainly the case that our own happiness flows out of the fulfillment of our own individual interest and desires, it’s equally obvious that there’s something more, something bigger than our particular perspective on things.  There are of course, innumerably different modes of living, all variables in themselves.  But at the same times it is clear that every life, however it is lived, need s to have certain elements within it’s for an individual’s satisfaction and happiness.  A life lived without connection to this larger context is missing something, something deeper and ultimately, something to real happiness.

            Identifying the connection between an individual’s vision of his or her own good life and the good life in general is difficult but we strongly believe that the connection needs to be made.  The key to value is to expand diversity while at the same time maintaining unity.  For instance, we can imagine a life that’s much unified, that is in which the person has clear ideals, but in which there is very little variation.  Conversely, we can imagine who has an incredible diverse range of experience, but whose life is not very well organized in terms of purpose.  Neither of these lives is apt to be as satisfying and meaningful for the people living them as a life that is rich in experience but coherent of purpose.  As for me an effective way to enhance diversity while maintaining unity is to connect our interest and desires to something bigger.  This larger context can be made manifest through all sorts of approaches which is a heightened sense of community, a commitment to the overall environment, a spiritual practice that places our own lives within fuller perspective even a sense of purpose from an organizational standpoint.  What is important is that we have a sense of place regarding the source of our conception of the good life.  While the manner in which we express ourselves is going to be highly individual.  The central core of what we aspire to needs its seems, to be grounded in something other than our own individual inspirations.  We make the meaning of our own lives in other words but that meaning apparently depends on something outside them.

            As we negotiate the ages and stages of our lives, we continually give us parts of ourselves. We somehow unpack and discover new parts that somehow we tend to pack up.  People who stay packed out of fear or unwillingness to let go gain only a false sense of security.  By covering up, wearing masks and shutting down they eventually experience a death which not literally I mean but a death of self respect.  Unfortunately, very few of us have anything in our development that provides us with the knowledge and skills to unpack and repack our bags.  The self-awareness required to know what to pack and the discipline needed to realize what to leave behind typically come totally as a result of trial and error.  With little skill even less direction, how is it possible to know how much to carry?  It’s no wonder that so many of us are burning out from carrying too much.

THE BREAK UP FEELING………..WHY DID I?

The breakup of an important love relationship is the most traumatic of human experiences and we have all suffered through at least one I am sure.

In many ways we can more easily cope with the death of a loved one. Although we don’t understand death, at least we understand its finality.

With the breakup of a relationship, days and weeks of lingering and haunting "ifs" often follow. The pain can penetrate every fiber of our being.

In the days following the breakup we think of little else than the one we loved and trusted, the one we had so much invested in. Everywhere we go we are reminded of them–a face in a crowd, the flash of a familiar shirt, a distant voice, and a song.

In an effort to get away from things we may take a trip, only to find that in some way it reminds us of a special place we visited with our loved one. We struggle daily to force them from our thoughts only to find we are spending all of our time doing so.

Confronting My Own Self-Doubts

And then there are the haunting doubts. As the breakup came after a long and painful decision on my part, I may constantly "replay" conversations and constantly re-evaluate the "evidence." Possibly my decision was too hasty; possibly the culprit was my pride? possibly a really honest and open discussion would have cleared things up?…and on and on and on I question my decision.

There are thousands of "ifs," "possibly’s" and "maybe’s."

As for the fact that it is me the person who made the decision to break off the relationship, in addition to my pain, I had left this feeling of helplessness. Possibly I was misunderstood to something? maybe I would had change my mind if I could only explain?; possibly I had heard something that was untrue? Or I think totally it was my real fault.

Indeed, honestly I was the cause of the break up and I do realize that I was weak in a moment to cause the breakup, I may then be left with the extra pain and burden of remorse and guilt piled on top of the pain of separation.

And then there are my well-meaning friends with their misguided efforts and trying to cheer me up by saying I am better off without them.

Dealing with the Hurt

While struggling with the pains of separation I might envy those "swinging singles" who seem to have an "easy come, easy go" attitude about relationships which somehow in one way or the other I had. It may come as some consolation to know that I am fortunate in having the ability to feel both the love (and pain) of separation.

Base to what I heard and perhaps as what Psychologists say base to what I do experienced that despite my vulnerability, and despite the pain I may regularly suffer when I lose love, I am much better off than the people who are unable to develop deep and meaningful relationships.

I think and I guess that without the ability to truly know love they are forced to remain "outsiders" and "observers" to life’s most important human experience.

Even so, the pain of separation hurts, and it hurts very badly.

Never the less I had witness the endless parade of heartbreak songs that have been published, review the writings of poets and I think I suppose so that novelists over the centuries or look at the popularity of psychic advice lines. My experiences have been shared by millions who have preceded me, and I think those people hurt will be experienced by millions more who will follow.

If you only knew it, there are thousands all around in these worlds right now who are feeling the pain of separation and the emptiness of lost love.

Some in anger say, I will never allow it to happen again. That’s just another way of saying, I will never love again.

Sure, for a while it may be necessary to withdraw while healing takes place. But shutting ourselves off from the possibility of love over a long period of time stagnates our life, and it may even eventually send us into a slow, spiraling descent of general withdrawal and despair.

It is said that women take the breakup of a relationship harder than men. But I doubted it so cause in my case it is me that who made the break up as I said a while ago from the beginning of my realization and reflections which somehow I would say that its not only girls know how to make a break up

Ways of Coping with the Loss

There is no one best way to cope with the breakup of a relationship. Each of us is different.

Some people find that it helps to lose themselves in the company of friends. Some don’t want to be around people. Some people find it helps to get away to an entirely different set of conditions. But this didn’t work in my behalf.

Some immediately try to look for a new love interest. Most who try this find that until they get over a previous love, a successful new relationship is impossible.

Nevertheless, there are some important guidelines for coping which somehow I do know from a book been published and it said in here that first, don’t try to immediately repress the hurt. You may only succeed in pushing it beneath the surface where it will eventually make itself manifest in some undesirable, hard-to-uncover form–a general mistrust of affection, a lowered self-concept, general hostility, or whatever.

If you feel like crying, cry. If you feel like ripping up a pillow, rip it up. If it feels good to tear the person’s pictures in a thousand pieces and then set fire to them; do that too. As long as you know that afterward you can live with whatever you do, fine.

So the first step is to accept your hurt as normal and expected. Confront it openly and honestly, but in small, manageable doses.

It’s perfectly all right to feel totally miserable. I am not weak. It is just that I have to apologize or explain to anyone. In short, acceptance in me should taken my hurt as normal and expected, and allow myself of the opportunity to openly work through it.

If I feel that the fault or failure in the relationship was mine, then I guess there is no reason for me then to be afraid to accept the responsibility. So I made a mistake, I had to acknowledge my failure and resolve that it’s one mistake I won’t make again. Contrary to everything I may be feeling it’s not the end of the world.

Specifically, I try to overcome the emotional dependency represented by the relationship. If possible, I do make such plan that is somehow full schedule of things that will give my personal sense of accomplishment and adequacy. I do manage to try to avoid wallowing in sentimentality, pining over love songs, reading old love letters, or reminiscing old times but you know what I can hardly bear in it, in which I do love music and which is something helpful in me not because I want to reminisce but for the fact that still those songs that I had heard are particularly the kind of songs that I am longing to which somehow as I said would help me a lot in moving on.

The Value of Distractions

Distractions can help you deal with your feelings in tolerable stages. A distraction may be the company of friends, a long trip (which obviously I was in HONGKONG and CHINA) or the launching of major and maybe physically-demanding, spare-time project (that if you I can force myself into one).

I do keep myself occupied. Physical activities–jogging, swimming, tennis, badminton or gym. And, l probably also help my sleep. As many people know, just making it through the night is often the most difficult part of each passing day.

I think I don’t need photos or gifts around her that will constantly remind me of the person. Pack them all up and put them away–far away. In a year, or maybe two or three years, I might go through them and keep the things I want and throw out the rest. But to be honest with you, I couldn’t get over with this feeling that I have for her.  I was just much on the words but on the deeds that I had to make seems to be not on the same lane.

“My Fiends Advice”

As to my good friend in life and a brother to me tells me that always remember, as time passes you will have an entirely different perspective on things. But for right now avoid the reminders. If it’s obvious that the relationship is (or should be) over, take the "cold turkey" approach. Don’t constantly "replay" or reexamine conversations or arguments you may have had.

Yes, you will want to evaluate the relationship–to honestly admit its good points and its bad points, its rewards and its problems. But unless you know that a major error was made, something that can and should be fixed, walk away from the relationship and leave it behind. Make a clean and complete break. Wounds will heal faster if you don’t risk constantly reopening them.

Although you may believe at this point that you will never love again, try to remember that there is not just one, "right person" in the world for any of us. In time you can love again. And next time you will be a wiser person, a person who has benefited by experience and is now more capable of a successful relationship.

One final word. I said earlier that in surviving the breakup of a relationship we need to work through feelings of "emotional dependency." Most of the pain we experience after breaking off a relationship is centered in that dependency.

In working through the end of a relationship, most people find, or are forced to find, a new inner strength and adequacy. Although people are important to our lives and happiness, no one person should be allowed to be absolutely essential to that happiness.

If you feel that you "can’t live without someone," know that such dependency betrays your own innate worth and sense of adequacy. By divesting responsibility for our own welfare, we make ourselves vulnerable and we can be easily manipulated.

Above all, we must assume responsibility for ourselves. A truly solid relationship can only result from the blending of two truly solid people.

When a relationship ends very painfully, you may have to face your need to assert and build your own adequacy as a separate, adequate human being. Five years from now you may realize that the pain you went through only marked the beginning of a new sense of strength and personal adequacy. There is always a reason for everything and although we can’t seem to see it at the time, as we go forward and analyze our past experience, a glimmer of recognition as to WHY will slowly form if you heart is open to the lesson.

Replying to this words of encouragement as I would call it, all about this stuff of breaking up it seems that I couldn’t resist the possibility that it is still until now in every beat that I had in my heart in which I am totally longing for her presence keeps me wonder all the time as days pass by.    I can’t be a man of my word when I said all those things which somehow being precise to the feelings that I had before for it is so unexplainable to what can I truly describe her.  I couldn’t measure as to the thickness and the wideness of my desire that I want her back again.  Yes I admit that I am that selfish before as to the demands and needs of a relationship but I learned to what it is truly be in love.  And I think you would say and approved that it really hurt much when you truly love someone unconditionally.

As the saying goes"LOVE IS SWEETER THE SECOND TIME AROUND" I can honestly say and prove to you guys that its totally true.  Why?  It is for the fact that i do experienced the kind of hardships that i am going through when all of a sudden I felt something deep inside in me that i wanted her back.  I know you would say to me and call me such being stupid cause why does it happen and for all the the times that had passed by why is it that it is only now that i felt this which is somehow I would say there is no reasons to take seems to be much unpredictable.  As far as I am concerned with, me either doesn’t have such any explanation nor anything that I can be able to truly reason out why am I having this experiences that I have never felt before.  I would just say and tell myself that maybe it is just something to be called TRUE LOVE.  To be much honest with myself, I haven’t experienced this kind of situation, till this past few days I was into such major trouble.  Having sleepless nights, pain in my head, much more even pain in the heart to the extent that I can hardly take a breath. I felt being so down that i carry all the problems in this world which somehow it is something just to do with my personal life.  Meaning all of the opportunities that i have to enjoy living in this world makes me think that I just wish I had never been born to this kind of life.  I mean at that time I was totally depressed to the extend that all of the people and my friends that who is so close to me and so supportive in me seems taken me for granted cause at that time they knew that when I am a bit lonely and a bit into such realization I will get mad if they make teased on the kind of relationship that I had and the kind of girl that I am wanting back after all that I did.  Which is somehow I do dump her and now wanting her back…..so ironic isn’t it?  Maybe or perhaps you would ask me and tell me  why does it happened?  Why did I dump her?  For what purpose that I dump her?  I know for those questions that you are asking me there’s a total explanation on it. And i guess I have to answer it for you to know and for you to be able to learn a lesson out of what I did that seemingly it isn’t good enough that you would dump a girl especially the one that you love most cause it is just only then that you can realize that you truly love that person when he or she is away in you.  So, that’s it….better think it over before you have to conclude such break up.  Now, going back to the kind of feeling that I have for her is totally at that time we are doing great.  For just 3 months of being lovers we are doing great until all of a sudden I break up with her. Why?  What s the reasons behind?  Well, at that time that we are lovers yeah we are okay and doing great but what makes it complicated is because of the time that somehow I was been pressured in which she is so demanding to me to the extent that I have to be there not taking any such considerations that I had explain to her.  Much more even I was preoccupied - occupied with the things that I was been busy with especially the kind of work that I have which is my small business of retailing and wholesaling sort of a general merchandise store.  I was too in demand with my parents to do such help especially at that time that in the establishment that we had lots of things to be carried from one place to the other cause of the customers buying some goods that has to be delivered by me cause at that time we don’t have sales boy.  From one establishment to the other I am the one in charge of the delivery, packing the goods that the customers bought from us, then after, that I have to go to the other Establishment which is my own which the same procedure, the same thing that I have to do until I was not in good mood cause of the reason that thinking I am still young and somehow to enjoy the kind of life being a teenager.  Many of my friends who are my playmates in tennis and badminton and my gym buddy in work out encourages me to have some fun and time for myself as well as they wanted me to be with them too but I just said to them that good for you that you are enjoying your life being as a cool teenager or somehow being a good adult might as well as I can describe them, cause in my part I have lots of things to do which, most especially the debt that my supplier gave me some stocks to be sold that it is only good for a month then after that i had to pay to them in cash the stock that is been sold or not which is according to our agreement before getting and been delivered to the establishment that I have.  So it is a kind of pressure in me, really it is, cause I have to make some sales talks in order for the customer that I can encourage that they can buy it cause of the quality and the quantity of the product that I am selling to them specially that it has to be taken directly after being cooked.  From a long weekend of working and striving hard of greater sales, Sunday comes which is the time that I can totally spend with my girlfriend(actually my X-girlfriend by now). Before the time that we agreed upon and the place where we can meet we do already had this agreement on the day before but what makes me feel irritated is that she keeps on texting me which somehow in one way or the other I have this kind of feeling that she doesn’t trust me as to the agreement that we had.  So, never the less much after upon our meeting still she confronted me why is it that I haven’t replied to her messages, why is that I am too late to be there, and why is it that I wore such polo shirts that somehow seems not good to look at or why is it that I haven’t take my lunch or snacks.  To be totally honest with myself, I am the kind of person in which I don’t like repetitions to the extend that it would irritate me.  Repetitions in me would be okay 3 times only but beyond that then I think there is something behind on it.  Another thing is that, when I met someone or just make a nod or a smile to a certain girl, there are so many questions that she would ask as to who,what and why that girl is smiling at me which somehow having doubts to the relationship that we had. She is so demanding on me in the sense that she wants me to be there 24/7 a day.  So, seems that you do know the whole story in me which i relate in you as to the question why i dump her I think you got the answer of it. 

As time passes by, years to come suddenly i was been stabbed by a knife in my heart which it suck into the deepest part of it that somehow it creates and make a scar and it leaves a saying I want her back again but that I can’t tell why I am having this kind of feeling of wanting her back again? Perhaps, it would be much greater if I should had given this before and besides it is an enormous feeling that had happened if I just did it right before.  So much waste in me that I did it.  I was so being so rude and so stubborn and much more being ridiculous ashole jerky bitch.  I was in deep shit to this kind of feeling that I couldn’t imagine that this had happened to me.  I mean I don’t really expect of this thing called KARMA. Indeed, totally it happened to me and believe me or not I was in tearful eye thinking that I had to end my life but thanks to all my friends that somehow care for me especially my good best friend MR. Jesse seems advices me that its not the end of the world.  There are still many girls out there waiting or somehow trying to help you out but you know what, my answer to this was there are maybe many fishes out there in the sea but my lover is my sea.  So, at that point in time my best friend calm down in me and tap my back saying its okay.  Time would just tell if you are really meant for each other.  Until I remembered something out that the grand essentials of happiness are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.   I know for a fact also that in the midst of my loneliness and despair in life still I manage to be happy for happiness is not a destination but it is a method of life.  I think I cannot question love when it has its own reasons for love will always be as it always has been silent,mysterious and deeply profound and I believe that love is forever.  That love never dies only to be disillusioned in the end when I shall find my hands empty and my hearts longing.  But I know that love is only a gift given to me and as for that I should not hold it in my hands for I may never find the strength to let it go when it decides to leave.  I should only embrace it warmth and glow while it last and then freely open my arms when its time to say GOODBYE.  I believe that when I fall in love with someone, I don’t want that feeling to end, for it is everything I am and everything i wanted to be and as for that I pray that love will stay and grow in my heart.  But if it doesn’t , then I should not be taken by it for life not end my heartaches begin.  And I think there’s always a reason then that I have to move on.  I know its hard for me then to say goodbye to the feelings that I have for her but still I don’t want to wave my hand for  heavy heart for love will set its wings free and find a place where it belongs.  I may lost it but again when I close my eyes and listened to the echoes of my heart, I will hear that feeling resounding silently forever.  Then I’ll know that it has never left me for the good that it had become because of love that will always stay.  It will always be there reminding me that i should be thankful and happy not because I have lost love…lost my X-girlfriend but because for once in my life that feeling live in my heart and make me happy.