#sasthoughts101

So this is it. The last content of this sasthoughts101 Blog Series.

For my last entry, it will be a brief discussion of myself and the competitive world around me. The society that we live in is changing and in the context of labor and employment, we are all part of the circus where the people in higher ranks enjoy and the one doing the job gets to be squeezed out. Ironic I should say. But as someone who is still in college. I always ask myself, “Am I gonna do it after graduation? Is there a company that is going to accept me?”

The anxiety has never been at an all time high as I approach my last year or two in college.

It is always hard when someone asks, “Ano work mo?” or some very ignorant person asking “May work kana?” This, for me, all hits so bad psychologically, mentally, and emotionally. As individuals, we tend to have the idea of getting work as a symbol of being productive and eager to get our way through the current life that we have. Asking someone’s work can be very uncomfortable.

Image credits from Pinterest.

Having a stable job is not purely a way of getting paid and having the means to feed yourself and buy things that you want. It is an essential human activity, as well as being a responsibility, that transforms the self, sustains organizations, and empowers the country. Our role in our country being citizens is not only limited to being contributors to the nation’s economy as consumers but being producers, too. Our contribution to the world of work and the productive economy is an expression of our citizenship and connection to the larger and greater community.

As I get through college, I sense that the landscape of labor and employment in our society is rapidly changing and moving forward. Due to the advancements brought by technology, more competitive individuals are being raised and surge themselves in a global scene of success and transformation. in the contrary, becaus of the rapidly changing information and communication technologies, increasing globalization, labor flexibilization, financial crisis, and intensified competition, many promising jobs of the last decade are no longer in demand, leading to work dislocations. This is so sad that sometimes, humans are replaced by Artificial Intelligence robots and computers.

Here in the Philippines, jobs-skill mismatch is often touted by government agencies as a big driver of unemployment. A reason for many Filipinos not to stay and work here but go and venture opportunities abroad where, in all fairness, Filipinos are recognized because of the quality of work they do. How much more if these passionate people are well-compensated, well-accepted of their skills, and well-trained, be utilized here in their local lands? What could have been a more productive labor environment could we have?

I cannot blame people in the workforce for going to rallies and voice out their concerns about compensation and regularization issues. The country has to step up its game in providing quality benefits among its professionals so that we can maximize the skills and abilities that they have in our own land.

At the end of the day, may it be here or abroad, given this complex environment and culture of work, we need to be adaptable, dynamic, innovative, flexible and resilient to accommodate and thrive in workplaces to create work worthwhile and fun for ourselves.

For this module, we were tasked to do a profiling of the ideal and not so ideal leader that we want to have. Reflected in this cute output that we made, the comparison was quite obvious and the message of this infographic is pretty straightforward.

We all have our own ideals and standards in terms of choosing a ruler of our community. But, how were we able to come up with this set of standards and expectations? Why do we have to be particular about it? Why be very critical in choosing who to lead us? Before going through that briefly, it is important to understand our individuality, citizenship and solidarity.

As an individual, we are part of a vast population of humans interacting with one another. Each one of us is placed in an extended social and physical environment. Everyone holds certain basic rights and, also performs fundamental duties towards this expanding world.

In a continuously modernizing and ever changing world, our individual self or our mature versions are all intertwined to not only the physical and societal environment, but we belong to a set of interconnected worlds - our families, our church, our institution, our community, our society, our nation. These worlds affect the individual inasmuch as the individual, through his or her own actions and inactions, affects them.

Talking about our citizenship, this refers to a social construct pertaining to our rights and responsibilities to the society that we live in. Our citizenship is embedded in the concept of people interacting with each other forming a civil society. This interaction entails giving consent of submission to a common authority and giving up certain freedoms while being assured of fundamental rights such as the right to life, liberty, possession, or happiness. This is also a core idea as to why do we have a government system in our country and why do we have to be so critical in choosing them.

It's because we should be assured of our right to live, liberty, and happiness.

Lastly, another concept to understand is solidarity. This refers to an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity. It refers to the ties in a society that bind people together as one. This emphasizes the interdependence between individuals in a society, which allows each of us to feel that they can enhance the lives of others. This concept has been deemed essential to the realization of our rights as individuals.

Going back as to why we should be particular on who to choose as our leader, one thing is for sure: our lives are all interconnected at certain points and the decision of one affects the many.

For this one, I think this is by far the most relatable topic that I can really connect myself to up to the most personal level. Self-care is really one important thing to me even before the start of this pandemic. I feel like I want to carry myself out of a very exhausting situation.

It’s true that most people perceive the word health in the physical sense only. But obviously, there is more to health than just physical health. The World Health Organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO 2001, p.1).

Mental health clearly is an important aspect of health as it includes one’s emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It influences how one thinks, feels, and behaves.

As part of the generation where social class seems to be the standard of life, this clearly took so much toll on my mental health. I feel like people do this and that just to please other people around them. The impacts of social media, for me, has really elevated in the sense that people are so bothered in how they look based on what they post and what they see on their screens.

This, for me, gives so much pressure mentally to the person seeing these posts in the manner of also wanting to keep up the looks and class from other “Social media figures”.

Sometimes, I want to take a break from what I see on my social media.

There is a lot to absorb and comprehend and people keep on ranting about this and that and bashing him or her yet ending up sharing a post on social media “etiquettes”. Really, the hypocrisy is so much alive and stress burns me out.

That is why, everyone should be responsible on how to use these platforms in order to take care of our well being.

There are a lot of factors to consider when one is thinking about mental health. There are social or environmental factors where unfavorable social, economic and environmental circumstances, inter-related with gender, ethnicity and disability, increase the risk of developing mental health problems. There are also psychological factors that include personality traits, thoughts, emotions, and attitudes that could make a person more likely to develop a mental health problem.

And lastly, biological factors that are patterned to having genetic predisposition. This means that a person has an increased risk of having a mental disorder when one of his or her family member has been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

All in all, our ability to deal with our thoughts and feelings and how to manage ourselves in daily life, as well as the capacity to deal with the social world all contribute to our mental well-being.

Right now, in the context of the Philippine culture, there is a lot of education going on promoting mental health because in our country, individuals with mental health problems are discriminated. Some issues concerning mental health are still not taken seriously and even made fun of because of lack of awareness and proper education. Like the battle for SOGIE, mental health still has a long way to go in the hearts of every Filipinos. For me, we have to be knowledgeable of these ideas because this has been causing too much weight and pain for many and they still choose to carry those baggage on their own due to ignorance.

I feel somehow relieved when the Republic Act No. 11036 or the Philippines Mental Health Law has finally been signed and will soon be implemented. This law will help in providing mental health services that are affordable for those with mental health concerns and promotion of quality mental health care in the country will be strengthened.

I consider myself to be one with people having mental health concerns. Growing up, I believe that keeping things to myself will give me a fruitful relationship with my friends and family by not letting them carry my excess baggage. In the long run, I realized how important it is to have someone who you really trust with, that, not only listens but, understands and accepts who I really am and what I truly feel. It may still be a long run for me, but I hope that everyone fighting the same battle as I am will find their confidants in this world full of judgements and lies.

Another module is another set of things to discover about myself. For this one, we talked about relationships, people, and interactions around us. To be honest, I find it a little interesting and quite difficult at the same time to understand the readings for this because of the complexity of knowing deeply - and sociologically - people and others. The feeling of interacting and conversing with peers is always great and surreal but being so technical and digging into it required me more time to comprehend. Nevertheless, I still want to situate myself in a place of reflection and query because I want to have a little retrospection on this area of learning about myself.

Image taken from Pinterest.

In shaping our own thoughts about who we really are and how we feel about ourselves, our culture, family, and peers play a huge role. Cultural values and ideologies shape our development of being in adolescents or as young adults’ development of the “self”. Social institutions help us learn all these values and ideologies. And since we humans start our growth at home, our family serves as the very foundation in which all of these mentioned factors are all learned.

I think that being a Filipino, we all share that common idea of having very diverse ideologies and principles rooted from the different colonization events in our history. The ideologies and principles of Filipinos are our armor in dealing with socio-political issues which are trying to challenge our national identity.

In the same way, all of these things that we learn from our everyday life influences our relationship towards others; how we treat them, how we talk to them, and even how we establish a connection with them. Being a young adult, I have really experienced being in a situation wherein I make decisions pronto or sometimes just being so indecisive. This happens all the time. I tend to weigh things based on my experiences and from the lessons that have been taught to me growing up.

I think this also helped me figure things out on my own. Being able to encounter different people, I feel like I have my own way of dealing with them.

Especially when I am with peers, I get to evaluate my decisions on how I am going to treat them and understand the dynamics of our friendship. I find this exploration process really life-changing because aside from understanding the people around me, I get to know myself more and be able to inculcate the values that I have from these experiences.

Another one, a complicated, yet exciting feeling of interaction and relationship is through love. I always find it intriguing how someone feels different towards the other person.

Setting aside preferences, I think that love is a force that is really hard to defy. We talk about love through songs, poems, movies, literature, paintings, murals, and a lot more. Love is really depicted in so many ways.

According to Hoogenboom (2016), he said that love is a pervasive part of humanity where art and culture are filled with references from. And I think that statement could have never been more accurate. Being in this generation, most of the things that I hear and see on social media and mainstream television is mostly about love - may it be love for friends, family, and partners.

Lastly, I also agree that we have our own definition on what love is. It is a concept or a feeling that we describe based on how we experience it and not how it is being written in journals or books.

Love is a condition where we find ourselves more vulnerable and sometimes strong and full of emotions. Love can be a state where we find ourselves at the worst portions of our lives because someone left us and dumped us after a year-long relationship. Love can be whatever we want it to be.

And being able to be fully founded by the concepts from this module, I tend to define the love that I have based on the reality of my life.

YASSS QUEEEEEN! We love slayin’ things in our ways! And, we don’t f**k things up!

Halt!

Before getting into that drag vibes there, let me first show you how this module has become a very interesting moment to study and understand things about sexuality, our body image, gender, and rites of passage.

Growing up will always be a roller coaster of emotions.

Changes that we see, hear, feel, and touch will always be new to us because we feel like everything is just transforming. And really, some changes aren’t really for good. But, understanding it on a deeper level makes me realize how my personal growth molded me and shaped me to who I am today. It helped me raise awareness regarding the things that are happening around me. Being more mature sure does take a lot of experiences but it’s all part of a great journey of adolescence that I will never ever regret.

Adolescence stage is a period of changes and transitions. It is the start of seeing physical transformation that we often neglect. Our “puberty hits” moment brings about a lot of ups and downs not only to our body but also to our feelings, emotions, beliefs, characters, and behaviors towards oneself and the people around us.

I must say that, most, if not really all, feel that adolescence is a period of human development that can be exciting, because we are continuously and oftentimes simultaneously navigating through various changes in our body and to our own identity. It can be very challenging and tough for some young people. It is therefore important for us, adults and young adults to develop a better understanding of these certain changes.

Recently, numerous heated debates on SOGIE have been all over the place. Some knew what it is and what it’s all about yet most are still under the cave of understanding the essence of it. But for me, one thing is true: EVERYONE HAS A SOGIE. It is not exclusive to people who are considered “different” by this hypocritical society but everyone that undergoes growth and adolescents also experiences a continuous process of knowing their SOGIE.

Talking about SOGIE, I want to share this piece of entertainment that we made while learning this module. Our drag queen performance! Yaaaas, b*tch! You heard it right. We all did that drag thing and lip sync our hearts out.

Kidding aside, I think that this was the most challenging output I did for my class. I mean, one good thing perhaps that this class was done online, right? You know. But anyway, aside from the challenge to submit a lip sync performance, I really feel the power and justice that this platform speaks to everyone. Drag is a movement. It is a form of activism. It aims to permanently erase all the misconceptions and misunderstandings of people about members in the LGBTQIA++++ community. Even as drag becomes more commercial, a host of queens continue to use their podiums and performances to challenge inequality and homophobia around the world.

Posted here is just some images of my absolutely beautiful (hahahha that confidence) transformation in order to pull off a Call Me Maybe Lip sync performance from RuPauls Drag Show on Netflix.

Again, this ain’t much but I poured all the creative juices that I have.