First of all, well,......I'M BACK!!! But not for long, my exams are still coming up and I really need to review if I wanna pass...

Anyway...hmmm...Ok, someone asked me to write an entry with this title. I'm not so sure though if it was 'meant to last' or 'made to last'. Sorry hehe...

Anyway, for me to come up with an entry with such title, I had to wait for the right moment which included thoughts or experiences that made the title meaningful and coherent. So here it is.

Well it's a fact, everything is so temporary. So fast and fleeting, from the breaths we take to Time itself. The moments we futilely try to hold on to, the people we try so hard to keep, thoughts that keep racing through our heads, emotions that are just so volatile.

Maybe, I'm in the best position now to talk about impermanence. The kind of impermanence that involves the uncertainty of what I'll be doing hours from now, days from nows, months, and even years from now. Everything is just hanging so precariously. Like in Limbo.

 And the unpredictability of Tomorrow drives me crazy! Reflecting on the how Time can be so hypersonic and how change is so inevitable, I realized that we're powerless to change certain situations and cirsumstances but we CAN do something within the context of time, the attempt to encapsulate, to capture moments and make them real, to make them count and not allowing them to become some hazy blur of color, perhaps artistically beautiful yet remain undefined and muted nonetheless. We try to hold on, I try to hold on. Like I wrote in a prayer for **** "Teach me to let go of both what I have and don’t need that open palms receive Your blessings"...there is bound to be something or someone who'll make you see the moments that are spectacular and alive and not as something transitory and vanishing. Instances that'll teach us that letting go is not a sign of helplessness or inability but a mark of courage and our capacity to hope and have faith.

"Change is choice" goes this month's Metro magazine editorial. I couldn't help but nod and grin upon reading that line. To an extent, we still have the capacity to choose what we change unwilling to let the uncertainty of the Future get to us.

Maybe tomorrow...

I'll bag the best job ever

Maybe tomorrow...

I'll discover a hidden talent of mine

Maybe tomorrow...

I'll fall in love

...because I choose to see what the maybe-tomorrows may bring over the bland impossibility of despair.

I choose to act lest hope becomes half-hearted possibility.

I realized how judgmental and shallow I was.

I felt really bad. And mean and so grrrr...It wasn't the giddiest of feelings, Im telling you.

And I thought about it more, being the overanalytical geek that I am. I realized that I envied them. Because they had courage and dignity, and because they were being real, I guess. In a way, I wish I had the guts and the confidence to parade in a awkward looking get-up and pass out flyers to students reputed to be snobs or "rich kids" or "super smart kids"...blahh blah blahhh...I wish I could be real sometimes. You know, the kind real of you are when you're in the shower singing at the top of your lungs. The kind of real you are when you're with your best buds, holding burp-fests and pigging out. Or the kind of real when you're sitting alone and taking it all in.That kind of real.

No pretentions, no facades.

Definitely no exceptions.

Those people, WOW, I envied them and that they went through whatever humilation, rejection, or ridicule thrown at them to earn for a living. I envied the fact that they didn't give up or give in. That they still managed to smile. The fact that they somewhat let go of whatever apprehension they had.

I don't know if I make any sense. I'm weird that way.

But this day made me realize (ok, this part may be irrelevant) that nothing should hinder us from being who we want to be, from being who we want to be with, or doing what we want to do as long as it's dignified and proper.Bottomline: As long as it's right. And yeah, I've learned a lot about integrity and about being strong. And these thoughts today, they came in handy.

But, as someone has once so pessimistically told me, at the end of the day we have no one but ourselves to count on. And maybe it’s not just some bitter bout of words but a stingingly cynical reality. Or for the optimists out there, a genuine opportunity for self. A time for “me”. Which ever way you’d like to put it.

And these past few days, I’ve been so caught up in my activities and in all my school work that when my world suddenly stopped spinning for just a nanosecond, I found myself alone in the middle of all the noise and the hustle and bustle and people. And I felt sad. For no apparent or logical reason. That made me think whether I can actually be lonely in a sea of people I know quite well, whether I can actually be lost in the familiarity of my everyday. It felt so blah and well, s**tty. I felt like a drone and I realized that I’ve been feeling this way for the past weeks. Sloppy and so dead. True, I’ve been so tangled up with the things I do and chose to do but I couldn’t help feeling an indistinct hollowness. I realized that I missed being busy with the things I enjoy doing. The sheer high I get, for that giddy feeling, the adrenaline rush, and the contentment you can’t get from doing a chore in a to-do list. I miss jogging under the stars, I miss late night calls, I miss talking to mom about those crushes of mine, I miss reading a good book of my choice (not some class requirement), I miss playing video games with my sister. And being busy with those things is unlike any other busy feeling, it’s a kind of busy that you’d rather be busy with always. I miss being un-alone.

Today, I walked home (another thing I love doing) and I felt aimless. Like I wanted to do something, like go to the mall, or hang out with a friend yet I didn’t feel up to it. Weird. I ended up texting a good friend of mine and things got a tad clearer. A jog also helped. And maybe there are times that we are meant to feel alone because somewhere in that lost feeling we get to understand little by little ourselves and what is and who are important to us.

We've become so used to things. Life becomes all too predictable. The mundane. But what I've come to discover that the mundane isn't so bland and so ordinary, after all. In the mundane, we find the out-of-the-ordinary. Try spotting a dot or even a speck in a sea of lines. Lines seem to go on forever, well in fact, they do just like the experience of the mundane but once that speck finds its way into the world of lines, it'll instantly stand out. And it is precisely because of the everyday things that we learn to distinguish and identify what's so noteworthy. It is because of the mundane that we learn to appreciate the beauty of things.

In retrospect, you'll realize something you've probably known all along, perhaps in the back of your head, that yesterday wasn't at all like today although you've done the same things, the same chores, the same errands, the same schedule. But the difference lies not in what you do but HOW you do it.

I'm a fan of making moments count.

I think life's too long a trip. Too long that it simply gets boring after a while. Same old stuff. And that's where the challenge lies, finding ways to make the trip a tad more fun.

The mundane. Who would've thought that because of it life becomes even the tiniest bit meaningful.

She loved simplicity found in the most intricate of designs. The irony in it and the swirl of unbounded possibilities found in a solitary and swift pattern of awkward strokes and blurred vivid colors made her marvel at how such complexity could seem so simple yet infinitely so beautiful. She had sought solace in such things of “simplicity”. In a throng of people, she would stare at crevices or at filth in the concrete pavement, deep in thought. Seemingly an escape from the reality of human life. But in truth it is not an escape. For the fact that she knows that such refuge does not exist. It is a mere pause. A breather. Nothing more. Eccentric she may indeed seem to you, but aren’t we all? Unknowingly. Unconsciously. Unaware. You may see her as a person of depth or of great philosophical intellect or you may see her otherwise. Either way, she is simply a person who questions the “what ifs” and “how comes” and the difference between great love and simply love, why happiness is irrelevant to wealth and its relations and the truth behind altruism and if such a phenomenon truly exists. In her fleeting sense of silence granted to her by her listless face and unwavering eyes, a state of ostensible blankness. She gathers her thoughts and wraps them up, tucking them away for next time. She clutches her favorite, worn out, supposedly old-school bag and heads to her destination. With a hurried pace and big strides, she is obliquely aware of her surroundings. But her senses are keen. Yet she knows all too well that sight or sound is not enough without intuition. In the bustling streets of the metro, camouflaged as innocent city-goers and passer-bys are the sly and quick pickpockets and the devious murderers and fellow sinful men. Yes, our world wouldn’t be our world if it weren’t for those people. She passes beggars and tattered stands and shops that used to look like shops, she spots jeepney conductors shouting out indistinguishable names of places and tricycle drivers waiting in line for their next passenger, she passes convenience stores and eventually passes by fast food chains like Mc Donald’s and Jollibee, she passes a bookstore and a posh beauty shop and expensive coffee cafes. The view of the former tattered stands fade into the distance and high rise condominiums loom into view, casting shadows on the stores below. Flashy cars are parked in the pay parking areas and coffee shops. All the hustle and bustle are muted as she thoughtfully looks around and gives out a sigh.

She makes herself comfy and gets her favorite music device out of her cluttered bag, puts on the earphones and flips it on. She drowns herself in the sounds of “Hands Down” and hums along. To the dismay of the person beside her who looks on disapprovingly at the so-called ghastly and unbearable already muffled sound her music device emits. But she pays no heed to the person’s glare. She knows that she does no one any wrong by playing music with earphones on. The rhythm pulsates through her ears and soothes her frayed nerves. The loud noise of the outwardly distasteful and blatantly lurid music of her player drowns the loud noise of the dissonant and discordant music of the world.