www.soriano-ph.com

LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) – 1 July 2007 Issue

Many people treat life as a race. And depending on the individual motivation or personal ambition, it could be a race for fortune, a race for fame, a race for excellence, or a race for affection or a combination of any of these.

The truth is, in every race there will always be someone who would get to the finish line ahead of the pack. And they are very few. Someone will always run faster, climb higher or fly farther. Certainly, it takes a lot of determination and great personal to be on top because not every one could take the limelight or be number one all at the same time. That spot belongs to the fittest.

And the irony of it all is that some people who made it first in the race would just eventually find out for themselves that after all it is still lonely to be at the top, most especially if along the way the winner either purposely forget that there are other more important things in life than the race itself or take a scheming or shrewd advantage of other people, situation and events utterly disregarding the basic rules of decency, compassion and humanity. In this sense, victory is not always sweet, many times it is bitter.

But it does not mean that a person should take a back seat and stop working on his or her dreams. Every individual is endowed with the gift of opportunity to finish the race regardless how far or how lowly is his or her starting line. The fact that someone will always be better or that it is lonely at the top is not an excuse to quit or get laid back.

Every person who dreams of success in their pre-determined endeavors, big or small, should find encouragement, inspiration and motivation from those who achieved ahead their own dreams with flying colors.

Perhaps the better way to treat life is to treat it as a journey.  It should not be a matter of who finishes the race first.  It should not even be a matter whether the person finishes the race or not. It does not also matter much who is good, better or best particularly if the person makes other people lose just to win.

Treating life as journey should mean making a good difference in the lives of other people along the way towards the finish line. Life is more meaningful for the person if he or she consciously helps other people succeed and not when he or she make others fail or fall to achieve his or her own success. Personal victory is measured not when the individual tells other people that he or she did but when other people say he or she does.

Making a good difference in the lives of others means taking good care of all those people who are part of the journey. In the process, these people would give back the same amount care, support and concern, and more often than not, much more. Feel proud of their achievements and they would also share the same pride because everyone becomes part of each one success.

If life then should be treated as a race, let it be a contest of how others can make others succeed.

Real heroes and champions are never born. They are made by the unsung heroes and the unknown champions who lived and traveled with them in the course of their lives because they too felt that their heroes and champions also took care of them along the way.

Making a good difference in the lives of others therefore also means making a good difference in one’s own life.

Unfortunately, people tend to disregard others and even oneself in a race. But in a journey, there is much time to be significant and meaningful in this fast pace world.

PUBLISHED: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 3 June 2007 Issue

Individual success or failure is often measured in terms of the state of prosperity or fame that a person attained.  This is a poor and myopic standard though.

Success is relative and thus would vary from person to person depending on his or her personal goals in life. These goals may not even fall within the ambit of the ‘prosperity or fame’ frame.  Everyone, and not only celebrities, the rich or the powerful, has the right to claim his or her own success. Everyone has the equal opportunity to succeed.

The road to success should always begin with the first step of finding out personal goals. One may have several goals that would lead to one big goal. But the most important thing is to clearly define what that goal is. Not having a goal is like jumping off from the starting line of a race without any clear direction in mind where to go or where the finish line is.  In this situation, there is no way to gauge success for sure. And the ultimate effect is failure.

Failure is a fact of life.  No matter how much or how well one prepares, there would always be some events, conditions or extraneous circumstances that would stand as a barrier towards personal success. The one good thing about having smaller and short-term goals is that sporadic failures in meeting them do not necessarily prevent a person from succeeding. Sporadic failures in fact could be vital factors in the attainment of the ultimate goal. They could make success sweeter and fuller in a sense.

Some goals are set too low and some to high. It really does not matter. Goals are driven by individual motives and capacity anyway. The only difference is that the higher the dream, bigger and greater efforts are required.  Life coach and motivational speaker and author of “If Success Is a Game, These Are the Rules”, Cherie Carter-Scott, aptly said: “Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible.”

Once that goal is set and clearly defined, a person needs at the minimum – focus, determination and motivation – to move closer to the realization of his or her dream.

In this busy, complicated and crazy world, there is a lot of stuff that really generates, attracts and entices special interest and challenges to make a person deviate from the things that need to be done to achieve a purpose. And a conscious effort to stay focused, could spell the difference in knowing how soon a person could accomplish a goal, or whether or not the person could attain it after all.

Determination is also critical factor in achieving one’s goals. The lack of determination would always put the sense of focus in great jeopardy. Without determination, small and sporadic failures become a major hindrance and a source of discouragement. “It is the ‘follow through’ that makes the great difference between ultimate success and failure, because it is so easy to stop”, said American scientist, social philosopher and a 1933 cover of the Time Magazine, Charles Franklin Kettering.

Of the essential ingredients to succeed, motivation is perhaps that most crucial.  Without motivation, it is extremely difficult to stay focused and determined. Motivation is always the source of inspiration and incentive to do something mirthfully or oftentimes with least effort even if it is very difficult or when everything seems to fail.  

But what if the person still failed in accomplishing his or her preset goals? 

That is still success because all the small and big efforts devoted toward it are never wasted. Remember that a person who failed in his or her goals may still become the trailblazer, the pioneer, the innovator, the groundbreaker, or simply a model, an inspiration or example for others to emulate.

Certainly, a purpose-driven life would never lead to failure regardless of its outcome.

For me, to live life sensibly means having to act in a manner that would sustain our well-being and spending our lifetime without having to regret about anything, its ups and downs notwithstanding.

For instance, we eat to live.  Ironically, the root causes of many of our physiological maladies today (i.e. high blood pressure, blood sugar swing, intolerable uric acid, arterial block, malignant growth, and the like) are also brought about by the food we eat. It’s either we eat less of what we need to eat for better nourishment or we indulge more on what our body should take less.  Some even seem to live to eat, in fact.

Life is short.  If an average person dies at the age of 70 years old, it means staying in this physical world only for 25,550 days or a total of 613,200 hours.  If we sleep an average of only 6 hours a day during our lifetime, it means that we are only awake for a total 459,900 hours to do everything that we need to do during our existence.  If we take away the time we need to spend for our childhood, or up to 6 years old when we do not have to worry about anything except to eat and play, that leaves us approximately 420,000 hours to make full use of from the moment we start schooling – that is if we would live up to 70 years old. Many would not be as lucky.

As we go through with life, we are enmeshed in a myriad of activities and endeavors involving our family, our neighbors, our friends, our workplace, our faith, our country, ourselves and even the world we all live in.  How much of our time should be devoted to each one of them is of course a matter of personal discretion. How we conduct our lives is often dictated by urgency and our sense of priority. Consequently, there is always the tendency to spend most of our time lopsidedly on one thing while we conveniently take other equally important things for granted.  And when our time is up, we can only look back to blame ourselves for the things that we did not do. But should we?

We are all driven by instant gratification. Gambling, smoking, drinking, nightlife, sensual escapades, shopping spree, addiction and even excessive fellowship are typical examples of guilty pleasures that make us feel good almost instantaneously.  Since personal satisfaction in these cases is always short-lived, there is the natural urge to do them over and over again until they become nasty habits that make a fool out of us. Unfortunately, these bad habits are hard to break. Slowly but surely, they either diminish our well-being or make us consume a good part of our lives for nothing.  Oftentimes, we do break our bad habits only when it is too late to do so.

To do anything excessively therefore, even if it is good or pleasurable, would never contribute to a sensible life. Rest and work for example are both desirable. But too much of either could also jeopardize the way we live.  Life on earth itself is sustained because nature works in perfect harmony and balance. Any extreme condition that disturbs nature’s state of equilibrium could spell the end of this world, or part of it. So it is with life.

To live life is never simple.  If we want to live life sensibly, I am not sure if there is any other sure-fire formula other than to sustain and spend it in moderation, as the first rule.

Obviously, moderation will never guarantee us an easy life. But a keen sense of it could make the way we live life worthwhile.

Like most of us, I could only wish I did.

LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 29 April 2007 Issue

Sometime in 350 B.C., Greek philosopher Aristotle said in his work ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ that happiness “is a first principle; for it is for the sake of this that we all do all that we do.”

The pursuit of happiness is a constant aspiration since the beginning of mankind and has been the subject of continuing discussion all through out world history. People seek success, fame, wealth, health, gratification, acceptance, love and affection because of the state of happiness that they thought these human desires would bring them.

Daniel H. Pink, author of the book “A Whole New Mind”, observed that since the time of Scottish philosopher and political economist, Adam Smith, the wealth of nations is used as a proxy to determine the well-being of the nation. Whether life is better is measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, and similar economic tools. He noted that every American is three times richer today judging from the per capita GDP of the US, which is represented by the total value of goods and services that the country produced, divided by its population. But Americans do not feel one jot happier. He argued that there is ample evidence to prove that material wealth and broader happiness are no longer in sync in post-industrial societies.

Almost a year ago, BBC News Home editor Mark Easton reported that the science of happiness poses huge questions to politicians. Governments have succeeded in delivering greater wealth that has not translated into extra happiness. He cited the 1999 statements of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair that money is not everything but in the past governments have seemed to forget this because success has been measured only in terms of economic growth, or GDP alone.

They say that the idea that politics should be about ‘creating the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ dates back to the 18th century when British philosopher Jeremy Bentham advocated his principles of utilitarianism.

In 1972, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan coined the term Gross National Happiness (GNH) in an attempt to define the quality of life of his people in a more holistic and psychological terms as distinguished from GDP.  The King wanted to build an economy that would serve his country’s unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual value.  When he abdicated his throne on December 14, 2006, Bhutan’s economy grew by 14 percent and its standard of living is one of the best performing in South Asia.

They say that conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective. GNH, on the other hand, is based on the idea that true development of human society would take place only when both material and moral development is achieved by complementing and reinforcing each other. They further say that there are four pillars of GNH, namely: promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development; preservation and promotion of cultural values; conservation of the natural environment; and establishment of good governance.

In 2006, British think-tank, New Economics Foundation, released its Happy Planet Index (HPI) based on the rationale that the ultimate aim of most people is not to be rich, but to be happy and healthy. In that index, Vanuatu, Columbia and Costa Rica were ranked as the first three countries with the highest HPI. The Philippines placed 17th while Bhutan ranked 13th. UK and the US were on the 108th and 150th spot, respectively. Zimbabwe was at the tail end.

The index seems to show that being rich is not the end all to attain happiness. People are happy for as long as circumstances of stability, peace, love and fairness exist in their midst. 

British Conservative Leader David Cameron is probably right when he said: “We should be thinking not just what is good for putting money in people’s pockets but what is good for putting joy in people’s hearts.”

In the end, government’s determination towards progress and development would lose all its sense when people are not happy after all.

LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 4 February 2007 Issue

Getting old means retirement to a lot of people. But for others it is just the beginning of a better, rosy, fulfilling or successful life. 

Ray A. Kroc was 52 years old, had diabetes, incipient arthritis, and already lost his gall bladder and most of his thyroid gland on the day he affixed his signature in 1954 on a lopsided contract in favor of brothers Maurice and Richard McDonald to franchise a copy of their hamburger operations in the United States. Undeterred by earlier business failures and despite his financial handicap, Kroc made McDonald’s a 25 million dollar business in less than five years. At the time of his death in 1984 at the age of 82, sales approached $9 billion. Today, it is one of the biggest and most successful fast food chains in the world.

Sidney Sheldon, an American writer, Broadway playwright, a television and movie screenwriter, did not begin writing his best-selling novels like The Other Side of Midnight, Master of the Game, and Rage of Angels until after he turned 50 years old. He almost committed suicide at the age of 17, struggled to fight manic depression for years, and died at the age of 89 a couple of days ago.

Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a Bengali-Indian writer, wrote and published his masterpiece The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian in 1951 at the age of 55, and authored thirteen other English books after that. Prior to his death at the age of 102, Chaudhuri wrote his final work Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse when he was 99 years old.

Taikichiro Mori founded the Mori Building, a leading property developer and one of the most successful real estate management companies in Japan. Before his death in 1993 at the age of 88, Forbes magazine ranked him as the richest man in the world in 1991 and 1992. Before starting to build his business empire in his mid-50s, Mori had been a professor of business in Yokohama, Japan.

Richard Buckminster Fuller, American inventor, designer, and visionary, became famous with his geodesic dome project that revolutionized engineering. In 1949 at the age of 54, he erected the first geodesic building in the world.  At the age of 32, Fuller was bankrupt, jobless and saw how his young daughter Alexandra die of polio and meningitis complication. This drove him to drink and almost commit suicide. But later he decided to embark on, as he declared, “an experiment, to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity”. He died at the age of 87.

Ronald W. Reagan, the 40th and the oldest ever elected US president, though a movie and television actor did not enter politics until the age of 44. The Great Communicator, as he is known because of his quotable speaking style, became governor of California at the age of 56 and ascended to the US presidency at the age of 69. On his death at the age of 93, Reagan left a good mark in US history.

Julia Child was a famous American cook who introduced the so-called French cuisine and offered her cooking techniques through her best-selling books and popular television shows. They say that she did not learn how to cook until she was in her late 30s. She was already 50 years old when she first appeared on television to mesmerize her audience on how to cook the omelette. A recipient of the French Legion of Honor in 2000, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003, and honorary doctorate degrees from Harvard and other universities, Child was almost 92 years old when she passed away in 2004.

The list and the heartwarming stories of renowned late bloomers can go on and on. But the message seems clear – there are no deadlines, or no such thing as being too late, when it comes to starting one’s life.

For as long as we breathe, we will never be spared of human difficulties, troubles and pains along the way. Life is a constant struggle.

Some of our problems are innate, while others just occur without any rational explanation as if we are doomed by fate. But many of our predicaments are actually the result of our erroneous disposition, miscalculations and human frailties.

Some take even the slightest difficulty with a very heavy heart as if it’s the end of the world. Others who are put in a graver and more serious situation take them with a pittance. Ironically, many times our own reaction to our personal difficulties becomes the root of even bigger and deeper difficulties.

During our trying times, it is always best to accept things or situations as they are, first and foremost. If the solution to our problems is within our control, by all means, let’s do our best and put consistent efforts to resolve them. Otherwise or if our best is not enough, let us not forget to live in the thought that nature or fate have always the means of resolving them sooner or later.

Don’t despair. Instead, let us always appreciate what we have and not, what we do not have. Let us count our blessings and be thankful for them because I am pretty sure that there will always be another person whose situation is much more pitiful, unbearable and unfortunate than us, and yet continues to have the fortitude and faith to move on with life. Think about them. Gain inspiration and derive strength from them.

Take every problem as challenge to our human existence because this is what makes life beautiful and meaningful, especially when it is time for us, or others, to reminisce, or even laugh at, what we have been through. But if we opt to fall into the trap and the attitude of defeat and surrender, it is almost certain that we will be buried in oblivion as we dig our own graves.

Our Creator did not promise us a rose garden on earth. All He has given us are our options.

As usual and obviously like many other people in this world, I will begin the year 2007 with a renewed hope that it would be a better year than 2006.

For a while I had this strange feeling of uncertainty as I was traversing apace the highway from Castillejos, Zambales all the way to Subic with my wife and my kids to rush my youngest son, Jimbo, to the hospital after having a bad head fall at 3 pm of December 31.  All we could hope was nothing serious would happen to him. I know that his situation was entirely in God’s hands. I even started to prepare myself to spend the midnight of New Year’s Day with him in the hospital.  Except for the occasional talk inside the car to keep Jimbo awake until we reach the hospital, I actually felt the unusual concern and anxiety from my wife Pam and his elder siblings, James and Bea.

Fortunately, the initial findings showed no cause for serious worries. But we were told to keep watch of Jimbo for the danger signs within the next 24 hours.  And this kept me more anxious because after going back to Castillejos, I know, as I was told by SBMA Dr. Asean R. Briones, that the nearest hospital where my son could have a CT-scan in case of an emergency is in Pampanga.  I could not wait for New Year’s day to come to pass without my son experiencing all those unwanted physical manifestations. The ticking of the clock for me was like waiting for a time bomb to break loose.

We had our media noche at 10 p.m. and sensing Jimbo’s improved condition went immediately to the Bay Walk Area of SBMA to watch the New Year’s countdown, the fireworks and the concert of the Flintstones.  As I gazed through the almost 30-minute display of fireworks, I could not help but thank God for the good graces I received in the year 2006.

The past year was not exactly what I expected it to be. There were several professional hitches, personal disappointments, and at least two close members of the family (my father and sister-in-law) went back to our Creator. But I must say that the year ended up as ‘good enough’.  Thanks to people like a client and dear friend, Eduardo R. (’Nonoy’) Lopingco, who put up some year-end surprises for me to catch up with some of my predicament.

Jimbo’s accident and full recovery at the close of the year was the exact representation of what my life had been in 2006. Now more than 24 hours had passed and I am almost certain that everything is alright with my son as he enters the first day of the year. In the same vein, I know that this coming year would definitely be a better year.

If there is one good thing about the New Year, it is the fact that it offers new hope to people who think that they live in a hopeless world.

One of the most important faculties of the human mind is its ability to remember.

It is a great source of wonder what this world would be if human beings have no memory of their immediate past. Perhaps, life would be peaceful because every frustration, antagonism and difficulties would be buried immediately after they occur. When everything is forward looking, there is absolutely nothing to keep, no ax to grind, and no excess baggage to worry about.

It sounds utopian but I really don’t think it is. Without memories, good or bad, life also loses its meaning and significance outright. Feelings and our sense of being would also not matter.

During our lifetime, people spend much time recording the past. Development of better tools and technology to perpetuate and preserve human events and interaction is a never ending quest. When people look back, it gives them their sense of being, their sense of belonging, and their sense of humanity.

It is our natural gift of mental and emotional faculties that makes us human beings and the real attribute that distinguishes us from other creations. And the human memory rightly serves their purpose.

Inevitably, our entire journey in life is the building block of our own memories in this world for others to keep after our time is up.

In the end, it is not so much whether we lived a life in misery or a life of fortune, a life of constant struggle or a life of ease, or a life of helplessness or a life of strength. It is when people constantly capture a vivid imagination of you at whim just to remember how you made a good difference.

And the best thing about building good and pleasant memories is it does not require a special skill or talent or possessions, all it needs is a sincere and true heart to love and care so that others could keep you in mind till the end of time.

There will always be a better person than each one of us and this truth we must accept. Someone will always run faster, climb faster, and reach their goals earlier than the rest.  But this is not a valid excuse not to reach the destination we have set for ourselves. If others made it, there’s no reason why we can’t.

The achievement of others should serve as an encouragement, inspiration and motivation for all of us to move on. But if for some reasons, we failed to join the finishers at the finish line, don’t despair.

I believe that life is not a race but a journey. It is not a matter of who finishes first. It is not even a matter of whether you finished your own race or not. At the end of the day, it is not really so much about who is good, better or best, particularly if you make others fall just to win. They say that it is lonely to be at the top.  But should it be?

Since life is not a race but a journey, we have to make a good difference in the lives of those people who travel with us. Life is meaningful because we helped others succeed, not if we make others fail to achieve our own success. The success of a person is measured, not when he tells other people that he did, but when other people say he does.

Making a good difference in the lives of others means taking care of those people who are with us in our journey. In the process, we also let these people to take care of us. We don’t feel envious or the angst when others succeed because we know in our hearts that we are a part of that success.  In the same vein, other people feel good of our success because they know that they are part of it. And there is no reason to be lonely at the top in either case.

If we have to treat life then as a race, let it be a contest of how we can make others succeed.

Heroes and champions are never born, they are made — by the unsung heroes and the unknown champions who lived and traveled with them in the course of their lives because they too felt that their heroes and champions also took care of them along the way.

Making a good difference in the lives of others also means making a good difference in our own life.

In the course of my journey in life, I find it almost meaningless to reach my destination but leave behind all those who should have been with me in the first place.  And I am talking about our personal priorities.

We live in a very complicated world under a myriad of human activities that we have to take care of a lot of things. But which and how much of the things that we do day in and day out really matter at the end of our day? Some activities that others find trivial may be important to others and vice-versa.

Understandably, no one else would be able to define what our priorities in life are, except ourselves. Some people would set their priorities according to urgency. Others would act on the basis of relationships. Some would react according to duty while some would on the basis of the things that please them most.  

But regardless how one sets his or her priorities in life, I find it ironical, if not cynical, for some people to strive for fortune at the risk of their own lives or by bringing about the misfortune of others, or seek fame and recognition from others when they could not even command the honor and respect of their own children. Many people engage in charity when charity has not even began in their own homes. Many people make it appear to show so much love for others when it truth and in fact they are only meant to satisfy, or even cover up their own desire for, self-affection.

Some suggests that of the things we do in life, the order of precedence should be for God, country and people. But I do not believe that we should define our priorities in life in this order. On the contrary, we have to measure every decision we make or any action we take whether or not it satisfies what is good for God, country and humanity, concurrently and not successively. Anything less is unacceptable because it brings about a rift in the world we live in.

In the end, I believe that we should take our respective families, especially our progenies, at the center of our priorities in life. Personal success is nothing if we are all alone to relish it; what is worse is when our own family curses us for the neglect they suffer as a consequence. We say that the family is the basic unit of society and so whatever is good for them is also good for the country.  If we all raise our children well, we can rest assured of a better breed of the human race and I am sure our God would be pleased. I believe that we exist to make this world a better place to live in and the easier route to achieve this purpose is to make our own family our own disciple by following our own example.

There is nothing wrong with drive, determination, and ambition to realize our dreams and expectations. But make sure to bring with you your family in your journey. Do not leave them behind. We have to realize that in times of grief, solitude, heavy trials and tribulation, sickness, or even death, no one else would be there to comfort or be with us the way our own family would.

Whether you accept it or not, I strongly believe that as we travel through life our family should always define, set and be the underlying basis of our personal priorities. If we do so, I am almost certain that we will not leave this earth for another life in vain, even if we do not achieve what we please for ourselves.