For 2011: My “Dear Abby” personal advice to you (Dear Kuya Cesar/ Dear Kuya Eddie/ Dear Charo/ Dear Abby advice)
It’s back to work! Hope you’ve been able to get some “active rest” or passive rest in between Christmas eve and New year’s eve; and that in those
“in-between” days, you had some peace and quiet; well, some people like crowds. The whole year round. And big rowdy parties. i don’t. Crowds debilitate me, unless i make a conscious effort in my head to hush them up (like, if you’re preparing for a speech or sumthin’, you have to find a quiet time in your head in the middle of a crowd to get into what you need to say). Sometimes, a crowd for me is a group of ten people or more who are not related to you. If you’re working with them and if it’s your job to look after them, or to listen to their “woes” or “complaints”, that actually causes some of your “energy” to “seep out” and you are not even aware of it. If your job is like that, or if your job in the workplace makes you like a fish in an aquarium (people watching you and intriguing about you), you may not be aware of it but that also saps you of your reserve. And so, getting away even for just a few days is always a welcome respite. i probably am not making any sense to you and you’re probably one of those people who like being in crowds 365 days 24/7; i don’t. i need my breaks. That’s a bit of trivia i learned for myself this year, or last year (2010), the concept of — for lack of a better term, i’m borrowing a term from “psychics” or “spiritual advisers” but not using it in the sense that they use it, but only because i don’t have my own term for it — “psychic vampires” in its scientific and not metaphysical or supernatural sense. The metaphysical or supernatural sense of it is, a person supposedly can suck out your energy just by being in the same room with you, without doing anything to you or without interacting with you. Nope, that’s not what i mean, and people who are metaphysical also speak of energy in an unexplainable ethereal sense; nope that’s not also what i mean. By energy here, we mean in the physical sense, in the sense that it exists in the molecules and atoms of your body and the synapses of your brain, in the sense of the “life force” that is released with every idea that you have, in the sense of that being released from the spark of the synapses of your brain, with every motion that you make, or every word that you speak or write or every image in your head that you conjure and transform into film or art or a petition for certiorari — even an idea that is not expressed but just whirls in your head for a while, is a result of your energy that exists in the molecular level.
Nothing metaphysical about that. When you give a lecture or an interview or when you write, or give advice or even just listen and give comments, or even in your interpersonal relationships whatever you do for or think for the other person, derives from your energy, in the scientific sense, again, in the molecular sense. And so, some people have a good amount of energy (as stated, energy manifested with every insight, emotion, word, motion), and some people have low energy; and naturally, those who have “low energy” want to get their energy from those who have an ample supply of it. Hopefully, your audience or other people, would replenish you; and you would be filled. But if you’re serving many people, it will at some point debilitate you. Sometimes, you end up wondering, why do you get drained just by listening to a person’s petty complaints about his/her lot, or a person sniping at others who had done better than him/her, or someone gossiping about others without any public interest involved? On the other hand, some people amuse you or enlighten you or “replenish” you just by listening to them or being in their presence. Try to find a pattern, when you do, you would be able to break that cycle. Again, by “psychic vampire” we mean not in its metaphysical sense the way psychics use it, of people using up your energy without doing anything — of course, it they’re staring at you, that’s an action; if they’re looking at you so they can gossip or sow intrigue about you, that’s also an action; if they’re getting ideas from you or copying your ideas, that’s also an action. Sometimes, there are people who get energy from you (and i use that again in its physical sense, being repetitive to be clear: in the sense that every emotion, insight, word, derives from exchanges in your molecular level, and not as an ethereal big wave or ethereal glow around you or “circling you” or running vertically across your body, not in that sense) and, well, you don’t always get debilitated from those people; that’s fine (if you’re aware of it however, you might want to bill them) . And then there are the “psychic vampires” – people who use you up in a way that leaves you debilitated. Identify the psychic vampires in your life, avoid them when you can, and you’re off to a good start this new year! That’s my “Dear Abby” personal advice to you for 2011. i learned it last year.
i learned that energy was finite; well, the energy found in confined spaces like your body – that’s finite, kid. Don’t think you will serve and cater to as many people as you can and continue doing that without doing harm to your body. [you’re probably saying, “ano? ngayon mo lang nalaman yan?” roughly translated: “whoa, you learned that only today?”] well, i was able to theorize about it only last year. o sige na, useless ang advice na ito (roughly translated, okay, my advice is useless). But maybe you’re not aware of it! Maybe there are people or “crowds” around you who use you up and you’re not aware of it or not able to identify it in a specific way! (people who leave you spent and you cannot identify the cause in detail except by saying, oh, maybe i’m overworked. if you don’t identify it in a specific way, you keep repeating the cycle. Pretty soon, your immune system might go down from it.) So. Figure it out now, okay, that’s my advice. i was able to do that last year, made some adjustments and… it worked! this works. (fortunately, i never got sick last year, not even a cold, not even my allergic rhinitis.)
And sometimes…. when you’re lucky, like i have been many times over, the “thing” that uses up your energy fills you up; a person or a crowd that uses your energy ironically fills you up.
Sometimes, too, when that energy becomes part of a movement larger than you, or a tide larger than any city, country, or government, it fills you up, and your life becomes larger than you could ever imagine.
Sometimes. (Unfortunately, not always or not all the time!)
And so, in between Christmas eve and New Year’s eve, i hope you’ve been able to find your own quiet time; if you did, you know what i’m talking about here.
I’ll leave you with this article from the New York Times, an interpretive report (more like a commentary) on U.S. President Obama’s vacation.
The lucky color of the day is olive green says the morning show astrologer; that’s metaphysical; you only derive energy from it when you think it’s fun or entertaining or it makes you feel good.
xxx
From the New York Times:
“HONOLULU — President Obama has accomplished something extraordinary during his Hawaiian escape from Washington: his White House has gone dark for more than a week.
“Here on Oahu, where Mr. Obama and his family are staying in a luxury oceanfront rental home in the sleepy town of Kailua, the president is cloaked in the comfort of a news-free zone. The public does not see much of him, except for when he is zipping by in his armored sport utility vehicle, and it does not much seem to care.
“Images of the president at leisure — sharing a Hawaiian shave ice with daughters Malia and Sasha, golfing, dining out with his wife — have trickled out, orchestrated by aides who have also taken care to allow pictures of the president at church and visiting the troops on Christmas Day. His advisers calculate that there has been roughly one photo opportunity every day and a half.
“News photographers are grousing. They were kept at a safe distance and given strict instructions to put away their telephoto lenses when the Obama family went snorkeling on Tuesday at the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, where green sea turtles and fish in all shapes and colors dart in and out of a coral reef. (The president does not want to be photographed with his shirt off, and the preserve is closed on Tuesdays, so the public was not around, either.)
“Mr. Obama spent Thursday on the island’s North Shore, which is famous for its monster waves and the sweet, succulent shrimp that are sold from trucks on the side of the road. But there was no presidential sighting; he was tucked away at the beachfront home of his childhood friend Bobby Titcomb, who throws an annual barbecue for the Hawaiian White House.
“On Friday, the president played golf — his fourth round so far this trip — and he spent a quiet New Year’s Eve at home, a gathering that included a talent show with family and friends, an annual Obama tradition. Again, no photos.
” “There haven’t been many pictures, and there haven’t been many stories,” said Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton. “Part of it is that the allure is gone. The president and his family on vacation are less interesting; the Camelot glow is gone, so people just don’t care as much.
” “And I think the White House is extraordinarily cautious about getting the right pictures out there, not sending the wrong message, because going off to Hawaii two years into a recession when a lot of people are unemployed does not come off well,” he said. “You don’t want the president bodysurfing when the public doesn’t have a job.”
“Mike McCurry, who served as one of President Bill Clinton’s press secretaries, says the one image the public has not seen thus far this trip is of Mr. Obama reading. “Believe me,” Mr. McCurry said, “by the time the vacation is over, you’ll have a picture of him studying some manual.”
“Maybe, maybe not. As has been reported, Mr. Obama brought along Lou Cannon’s biography of Ronald Reagan, another president who was confronted with a divided Congress. But he also brought two novels, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet,” a historical romance by David Mitchell about a Dutchman in Edo-era Japan, and “Our Kind of Traitor,” by the spy novelist John le Carré. The president’s wife makes a brief guest appearance in the le Carré book; in one passage, characters cannot visit the gardens of the Champs-Élysées in Paris because “Michelle Obama and her children are in town.”
“Fortunately for Mr. Obama, no crisis has demanded his attention, as was the case last year when a Nigerian was accused of trying to blow up a passenger jet that was bound for Detroit.
“And the people of Oahu seem content to let the president be. Gov. Neil Abercrombie explained their attitude in a recent interview by describing a drawing by Corky Trinidad, an acclaimed political cartoonist here who died in 2009. It shows Mr. Obama sleeping on a beach next to an endangered Hawaiian monk seal, a creature that Hawaiians know must not be disturbed.
” “There was a little rope around them,” Mr. Abercrombie said, “and people were putting their fingers up to their mouths going, ‘Shhhh.’ ”
“Analysts say Mr. Obama’s Hawaiian disappearing act carries little political risk, in part because the public has just watched him slog through a difficult but productive lame-duck session of Congress. And there is an upside to peace and quiet for a president who is wrapping up one rough year and preparing for another, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University in Maryland who studies the presidency and the press.
” “The amount of time that he has had by himself is important for thinking and long-range planning,” Professor Kumar said. “You can do a type of thinking in these kinds of circumstances that you can’t at the White House. It just gives you time to develop perspective.”
“Advisers to Mr. Obama, who is scheduled to leave here for Washington on Monday night, say he is indeed giving some thought to a range of topics: his State of the Union address, expected in late January; his budget; his legislative agenda; his relations with Congress; and a staff reshuffling that will include the selection of a new deputy chief of staff and a replacement for Lawrence H. Summers, the president’s top economic adviser, who returned to Harvard to teach.
“But Mr. Obama has not risked any public utterances on these or other matters; his announcement on Wednesday that he was bypassing the Senate to make six recess appointments was done with a news release.
” “They have managed to figure out how to really go into what amounts to a full lid on the news,” Mr. McCurry said with a degree of admiration. He said Mr. Obama is smart to lie low, because the public is not paying attention anyway. “I think what’s worse is when they try to make some pretense that they’re actually doing work in between golf rounds.”
