Chocolate Diplomat 🍫🏅

Back when I was in college, one of my Theology classes required us to attend a weekly reflection session with a deacon. We were grouped with complete strangers from different programs, and every week we would gather to discuss our reflections on a Bible passage.

To be honest, I loved those sessions. I have always enjoyed talking to myself and minding my own business (kidding xD). Give me a question and enough time to gather my thoughts, and I will somehow find a way to write an essay about it.

The reflection method we used was called collatio. Basically, the methodology was to read a passage four times. The first reading was simply to understand the text. For the second reading, you should identify a word or phrase that struck you the most. On the third time, you ask yourself why that particular word/phrase resonated with you. On the fourth time, you try to reflect what God might be communicating through that experience.

On February 26, 2023, our assigned passage was Matthew 4:1-11. It was the story of Jesus being tempted in the desert. The word that stood out to me was:

hungry.

My reflection began with a Jollibee Breakfast Joy hotdog meal (my guilty pleasure T.T) I ate it for breakfast that day and it was really ironic that instead of feeling joy after eating it, I felt guilty.

I remember sitting there wondering why I had spent money on a breakfast meal when I could have simply eaten bread or something cheaper. The difference was not life-changing. It was not as though I had spent thousands of pesos on something useless. It was literally a hotdog meal.

Yet somehow, I felt as though I had done something wrong.

So I started my collatio, praying for discipline. I prayed for self-control, for thriftiness, to become less susceptible to self-gratification.

At least that was how I started my reflection.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the direction changed. I found myself asking different questions:

When was the last time I felt genuinely happy? Why did happiness looked like it's always followed by guilt? Why did I struggle to enjoy my free time without feeling that I should have been doing something more productive? Why did every small indulgence feel like something that required justification?

Rather than receiving a lesson about discipline, I ended the reflection feeling comforted. It felt as though the answer I received was this:

You do not need more discipline.

You need acceptance.

This is not a preaching session (I don't intend to T.T) but I was not in a particularly good place three years ago.

I was functioning. I was studying. I was doing what needed to be done.

But looking back, I carried certain beliefs about myself that I never bothered to question.

One of those beliefs was that my presence did not really matter.

I remember ghosting one of my closest friends during that period.

Not because he had done anything wrong or I did it out of hate.

I simply disappeared.

My reasoning (if it could even be called reasoning), was that people were probably better off without me bothering them. My absence would not make much difference. Life would continue exactly as it had before.

At the time, this felt obvious (like ghourl, looking back, that was so OA and dramatic of me, it still makes me cringe T.T). It never occurred to me that I might be wrong.

Then, six months later, a mutual friend told me how much my disappearance had affected someone. The last thing I had ever wanted to do was hurt someone, but because of my deep ingrained belief that the lives of the people around me magically becomes better when I am not around, I completely did the exact opposite.

The realization forced me to confront something uncomfortable.

I had been so convinced that my presence was insignificant that I had never considered the possibility that someone might genuinely care, notice, and be affected.

That I can accept my existence in other people's lives.

Three years have passed since that reflection.

I still enjoy Jollibee Breakfast Joy. I still occasionally catch myself feeling guilty over things that probably do not deserve guilt.

But I think I am happier now.

The strange part is that I cannot point to a single reason why. Is it because I became more unapologetically myself now that I have accepted my existence? Is it because I do not need to sacrifice my sleep anymore to chase academic deliverables?

My life is not perfect (and I think it will never be).

There are still uncertainties. There are still disappointments. There are still problems waiting patiently around the corner.

Yet I feel lighter.

Maybe it is because I have slowly gathered enough evidence to challenge the beliefs I once held so tightly.

As I continue to live, I guess I have gathered bits of evidence that accepting kindness is not selfish and that happiness does not always need to be earned.

I spent years treating every act of self-kindness as something that required justification.

Looking back, I am not sure why I believed those things.

But I do know is that they made life unnecessarily heavy. Very unnecessarily heavy (asf)

If there is a lesson hidden somewhere inside this story, I do not think it is about discipline. Nor is it about everyone should try Jollibee Breakfast Joys.

It is about accepting the possibility that you are allowed to receive good things. That you are allowed to enjoy a meal without defending its cost.

That you are allowed to be cared for, either by other people, or by yourself.

And perhaps most importantly:

That you are allowed to accept love when it is offered.

The Breakfast Joy meal lasted fifteen minutes.

The guilt lasted much longer.

But I am glad one of them finally left.

When I was a child, I used to get colds frequently.

My nose would be clogged, forcing me to breathe through my mouth instead. One day, my very young brain arrived at what seemed like a perfectly logical conclusion:

If I can breathe through my mouth, then maybe I can eat through my nose.

Naturally, the next thing I did was place a peanut inside one of my nostrils.

Good thing the ENT specialist managed to remove it without any major complications. Unlike my brother, who also had his own unfortunate adventure involving his nose, but that is a different story entirely (perhaps our fascination with the human nose runs in the family).

Looking back, I sometimes wonder what exactly was going on inside my head. The experiment was poorly designed, admittedly. But the question was sincere.

-----

My mother likes telling another story from when I was around three years old.

She was enrolling my older brother for the upcoming school year and had brought me along. There was a summer class happening at the time, and while she was occupied with paperwork, I was left sitting on one of the armchairs, clutching a milk bottle.

There were students listening to a teacher, writing things down, raising their hands, paying attention to whatever was happening at the front of the room. My mother said I sat there quietly watching them for quite some time, to the point that when it was time for us to go, I shooed them away and insisted to stay. Yes, while I'm still clutching on my milk bottle.

She was relieved. Not because I looked interested in school, but because I did not cry when she left me there. Unlike my father who's always in tears whenever my grandmother had to leave him at school.

-----

I do not think I understood the concept of honors back then.

But I know that what motivated me to study and take my lessons seriously is the curiosity to understand the world around me. And perhaps more importantly, I hated feeling helpless within it. Or let's be shallower: I hate feeling helpless not knowing what to answer to the questions on my exam paper.

-----

Lately, I have been thinking about this because I spend my Saturdays teaching children.

They never fail to amuse me.

I wonder what occupies their thoughts when they stare out the window. What dreams they carry around. What captures their attention so completely that they forget everything else around them.

What principles, however small and unfinished, are already taking shape inside them?

Are they motivated by the same things I was?

Do they attend the program because they wanted to learn? They enjoy the challenge? They want to make their parents proud? Are they forced?

And for those who really seem completely uninterested in studying, what captures their attention instead?

Everyone cares deeply about something. The question is what.

I try to sneak personal questions into classroom exercises whenever I can.

Questions about what makes them happy, what they enjoy doing. What they want to become someday. Sometimes they answer. Mostly they copy their seatmate's work.

Sometimes they write something so brief and indifferent that I learn almost nothing from it.

I am looking for an answer to a question I genuinely care about.

What makes a child curious?

-----

Is curiosity something we are born with or something we develop over time? Maybe it is both.

Maybe some children are naturally inclined to ask questions, while others simply have not yet encountered the thing that makes them realize the world is larger than they thought.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons I joined this reading program in the first place.

-----

Growing up, reading was one of the ways I explored the world beyond what I could immediately see. Books introduced me to people I would never meet, places I would never visit, and ideas I would never have encountered otherwise. Long before I understood what curiosity was, reading gave me a way to satisfy it.

I suppose I want the same opportunity for these children. Not because I expect all of them to become avid readers, but because reading opens doors.

Some might be averse to studying, but what I do know is that every child eventually becomes interested in something.

The challenge is not convincing them to be curious but discovering where that curiosity already exists.

And if it does not yet exist, perhaps our role is simply to introduce them to different worlds and let them explore where they can pour their hearts into.

After all, curiosity rarely arrives as something grand.

Sometimes it begins with a question, or with a classroom full of strangers.

Sometimes, it begins with a peanut in your nose.

If I found a magic wand in the attic, my first instinct would never be to use it immediately.

Most stories reward the person who grabs the wand and starts casting spells. Adventure begins the moment they decide to act. The unknown becomes something to conquer, and they prevail as the hero.

I am not afraid of the unknown. I am not afraid to be labeled the "buzzkill".

But I am afraid of being responsible for consequences I do not yet understand.

Bearing the magic wand means wielding enormous power. With enough imagination, it can solve problems, heal people, transform objects, and change the world. Yet every possibility raises another question: what happens after?

Suppose I turn a lamp into a frog. Can I turn it back? Was the lamp destroyed, transformed, or merely hidden beneath a different form? Did I accidentally permanently erase something from this world through casting the spell?

Some people would see caution as hesitation. "You're not living the life!', they might say. That the only way to learn how to use the wand is to use it, make mistakes, and deal with the consequences later. I do not completely disagree. After all, many discoveries were made by people willing to step into uncertainty.

But I do not believe caution and courage are opposites.

Caution is simply an acknowledgment of limits. It is the recognition that power does not erase responsibility. It grounds you to the fact that owning something out of this world does not entitle you infinite pardon on facing the consequences of your actions due to your recklessness and ignorance.

If understanding the wand will take years, I would not consider those years wasted. I will consult other people who might know more information about the wand than I do. Not because I am unwilling to act, but because I want my actions to be informed by something more than curiosity alone. I would gladly spend my life studying it, even if it means I will only become the steppingstone to understanding it fully and let another curious individual reap what I sow.

We often celebrate those who change the world, but we celebrate little the people who laid down the foundation of knowledge that made them confident and wise to step into what was once unknown to us.

Perhaps adventure is not always found in taking the first step into the unknown but also in spending a lifetime trying to understand what it truly is. Less adrenaline-inducing, but worthwhile endeavor, nonetheless.

If I ever decide to use the wand, I would want that decision to come not from confidence and entitlement, but from respect.

(This DID NOT become a story because I suck at fiction and storytelling in general--)

I keep thinking about the idea that in almost everything we want, there is always a cost.

If you want something that gratifies you quickly, it often comes with consequences that are not visible at first. If you want something better in the long run, it usually requires effort, time, and patience.

You can want and choose to eat something convenient like fast food, but your body needs variety for the microbiome in your gut. It becomes a battle between what is immediately satisfying and what is sustainable, a classic analogy of what you want vs. what you actually need.

In research, we try to improve systems, make processes more efficient, or reduce harm. But there is always another form of cost somewhere else. Making something more sustainable in one aspect can still require more water, more energy, or affect another group of people in the supply chain. Cotton, for example, is considered a sustainable fabric, but it consumes large volumes of water in growing the cotton plant and processing it into fabric.

This makes me wonder if “change” itself is always neutral. We often think of progress as correcting what came before, but correction still creates movement, and movement still creates impact. It becomes a never-ending chain of innovating to address the problems of the past, while re-introducing new consequences.

But even then, it still feels uncomfortable. It raises the question of whether we are actually fixing things, or just redistributing consequences in a way that looks like improvement.

Is the battle between knowing what we want and what we actually need just a question of selection? To select which cost was acceptable, which consequence could be tolerated, and which harm could be distributed instead of removed?

I went outside to look up at the sky and see that it is raining popcorn.

For a few seconds, I just stand there, trying to confirm that what I’m seeing is actually real. I am not even a fan of popcorn; heck, I don’t like how the kernels get stuck in my teeth. Nonetheless, I still go back inside to get a bowl.

If it’s falling for free, I might as well collect some. Maybe for research. Maybe just to understand it better before deciding what to do with it.

I look around me and notice that I am not the only one reacting (I mean of course?).

Some people are laughing, opening their mouths to catch the popcorn directly. Some are already eating it off their hands without hesitation.

That’s when I realized: not everyone is treating this the same way I am.

For some, the popcorn is just food falling from the sky. Hungry stomachs need to eat, and when the opportunity presents itself, why wouldn’t you grab it?

For others, it is something to observe first. To collect carefully before deciding whether it is even safe.

The difference between those two responses feels small at first, but the longer I stand there, the more it starts to feel like something else entirely.

What happens when something unfamiliar becomes abundant?

People stop asking where it came from, asking if it is safe, asking what it means. Once something is everywhere (and normalized), it becomes harder to question.

Moreover, not everyone gets to respond to the falling popcorn the same way.

Some people can afford to be careful like me. I can put off eating it as I have a wide variety of options that I can consume (safely).

Others don’t have that option.

If you are chronically hungry and exhausted and something is falling from the sky that looks like food, you don’t wait for certainty.

You eat. Not because you can't think for yourself, but because you do not have the privilege to refuse uncertainty. Worse, you were not even properly taught the faculties to pause first. When your whole life was spent worrying if you would even wake up tomorrow and working on an empty stomach, you grab any opportunity that is directly handed to you.

It is never about the popcorn.

It is about how quickly people can normalize things simply because they are present and about how differently people move through uncertainty depending on what they can afford to risk.

I look down at the popcorn filling my bowl.

I still don’t like how it gets stuck in my teeth.

But I keep collecting it anyway.

I woke up with a mermaid tail on a random Friday.

All my life, I had two legs. I knew how to walk, run, climb stairs, and how far they could carry me.

Now I had a tail. If this had happened to somebody else, I probably would have thought it was magical.

Instead, my first thoughts were:

Who do I call? Who do I inconvenience? Should I call someone?

I spent years learning how to do things on my own. Suddenly, I needed assistance to perform tasks I had not thought about since I was a toddler.

When I was born, I couldn't walk either. Yet my family carried me, adjusted their schedule around me, and modified their life to accommodate mine. Friends fervently listened to my rants I can't open up to my own family.

I decided to call my family and friends to share my predicament.

Months passed, and I am accustomed to my mermaid tail. We were also starting the investigation on how to get my two legs back.

The strangest part was realizing that none of the people helping me seemed surprised by this arrangement.

People often ask what it was like waking up with a mermaid tail.

I think they're asking the wrong question. The tail was only the circumstance. The real surprise was waking up. One day, you know how your world works, the next day, you don't. Yet, you still wake up.

If you know me, you would know that I love the idea of riding a horse.

I'm not entirely sure where it came from. Maybe it's because I love wearing boots. Maybe it's because I grew up watching series set in medieval times. Maybe it's both.

One day, during one of my doomscrolling sessions on Instagram (we've all been there), I ended up in the equestrian side of the internet. The comment section was full of riders talking about the things they hate hearing from beginners.

One of them was: "Horseback riding looks easy."

Because it isn't.

Many riders pointed out that horseback riding requires a surprising amount of physical preparation. They talked about training specific muscle groups in the hips, decompression of the spine, developing balance, improving posture, and learning how to move with the horse instead of against it. Some even mentioned that certain riding techniques require flexibility and core strength that most people don't naturally have.

The concept was simple: anybody can sit on a horse, but riding well and riding safely? It is a different story.

Then there is the matter of the equipment. Helmets, boots, riding pants, protective gear, the list goes on. These are investments meant to reduce the risk of injury because, at the end of the day, you are working with an animal that weighs hundreds of kilograms and has a mind of its own.

Which brings me to the horse and how much time goes into training them. Horses need to become accustomed to people, their surroundings, commands, and routines. Trust is built over time. Patience is required from both the rider and the trainer. That's why horseback riding lessons can be expensive (starts at PhP 2,500 per hour, btw). You're not just paying for an hour of instruction; you are benefiting from years of work that went into preparing both the horse and the environment for safe riding.

And even after all that preparation, there is still risk.

Falls happen. Injuries happen. The horse is tall. Gravity exists.

Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman, had his life changed after a horseback riding accident. Many equestrians openly acknowledge that horseback riding can be a dangerous sport. Despite training, despite experience, despite precautions, some risks can never be completely eliminated.

So what is the TL;DR of riding a horse?

You prepare your body.

You invest in protective gear.

You spend time understanding the horse.

You accept the possibility that things can go wrong.

And then you ride anyway.

The more I learned about horses, the more I realized that the appeal was never really about sitting on top of one.

It's about respecting the process before earning the experience.

And before you say, "It's just a horse," think twice.