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Life is Like a Cup of Coffee
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Today (as of this writing), is the first Sunday of Lent. And as I sit waiting for the mass, a child handed me a misalette, with a reflection on it  that life is like a cup of coffee. Reading thru, it didn’t took me a moment to realize that the happiest people don’t have the best expensive cups, but made the best coffee and savored it while its hot. Life is what we make it, as the saying goes.
Read on..

Life is Like A Cup of Coffee
by: Fr. Ogie Magbanua, SSP
A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said : “If you noticed, all the nice-looking expensive cups have been taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases, it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What was all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began  eyeing each others cups.

Now consider this: life is the coffee; the jobs, money, and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.

Life is like a cup of coffee. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee. Savor the coffee, not the cups! The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.

Live simply. Love generously. Forgive until it hurts. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Live uprightly.


This made me reflect a bit on myself and my life hence my post : Mom Alone, Home Away.



Might wanna like reading:


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Stress: My Most Loyal Companion
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In this training, it seems like no matter what I have accomplished or how few the commitments I made, there will always be something to stress about. Whether it’s exams, papers, diab clinics, conferences, reports, relationships and bills (light and water, phone line, DSL, TV cable or condominium association fees), something will always be looming around my head. And as these things continue to hover, stress  arises to meet them, there to meet the challenge, but often putting myself in overdrive and pushing my body into a state of anxiety.


Just like today. I started my Ash Wednesday going to mass and became overwhelmed by the priest’s sermon of the Holy Gospel. When I am about to get to practice being a good Christian, by encouraging people to go to mass, it turns out to be a bad idea. Sometimes it'll be better to just be still so you will not be thought of wrongly. Or else, I worry. Just like I worry on my patient who just had a re-stroke while waiting for her clearance to discharge. And as I sit on this nurse station, unable to go home to even take a quick bath (and surely the ride home is more stressful), with an insulin drip and the hourly CBG monitoring at hand, in a semi-comatose patient, I’ll always be at my toes or I might push my patient towards her mortality.

See, if you’re under stress, not only does your mind worry constantly, but your body reacts as well. I battle over headaches, muscle tension, insomnia and occasional acne, which make myself pretty stressed out most highly. Spa salons will make lots of money over girls like me. I admit, these days, its a bit expensive to have a sound mind and a sound body.

I have wanted to seize the day over wanting to accomplish all things at the same time in a short while before the world would come crashing down. The magnitude made me stop and think, will these things that occupy my worried mind matter a year from now? No, it’s actually not even important. I guess, I just have to figure out what’s worth my mental energy and focus on that.

So I always tell myself to keep my cool, and take one step at a time. What I found to be huge unmanageable problems are really just a series of smaller, manageable task. But this I learned anyway, certain things are out of my reach, I can’t control it, and some things can’t change. There’s no point in worrying or stressing about it. It might not be worth stressing over.
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Disconnection Notice
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Ever since I left home and be trained in the metropolis, the net has been my comfort zone. Why wouldn’t it be?

Life here is in a fast paced desolate living. As I rushed at the train station in anticipation for my ride or wait along the busy street for a cab, I ruminate about how strange being alone in a new place.

My social life is in rigor mortis and I still had not figured out how to call the CSI for final analysis. No friends, no family to talk to. Not even drinking buddies to relax with after a harsh day. Nearly atypical.

It makes me wonder if my life has been infiltrated by aliens or is this just a case of arrested development. My vital signs show I’m still stable and as I take my emotional pulse I realized I am not here for the social life, I am here to learn and to become what I want to be someday.

But I just need a life. Would it be a crime to want to get that verve up and coming, knowing I am a social being that needs friends around so I can move and lift my spirit? Sure, the internet held me hostage from decrepitude by accessing friends in my Facebook where it seems like every day is a party day.

But wait, the verdict says that’s not reality. Whenever I’m stuck in my laptop getting too unconscious of my time and space, I’m hearing someone saying “Yeah, right. Get a life!” I looked around and it was just me in this empty house. It would have been an amusing sight if my cups and dishes and teapots would speak the “Beauty and the Beast’-fairytale way. But then you have to hit me in the head real hard by now.

Obviously, I’m a bit of a social rut at the moment and surfing doesn’t fix the problem. And well, blogging doesn’t fix it too. It’s relatively easy to throw my spare hours away in front of my computer wasting time surfing the web for useless facts, mumbling about researches getting nowhere and then realizing later how vicious  my time zone has changed.

I dread getting comfortable filling my time with half-decent substitute for making new friends. I’d rather shut my internet out and hit the books. Who says I couldn’t live without the internet? I can do more useful stuff by total online disconnection, I am just not into total isolation.

Once, my mom said Facebook is evil. And I just laugh.  I don’t believe facebook lovers are self-absorbed and narcissistic. Those are ways to seek comfort and ego-boost, making it rather therapeutic and cathartic. Letting your life engulfed by it is what makes it counter-productive.

And being online is not a reality life line. Real life is when you begin putting yourself out there in the real world in the circle of some groups’ radar, ready to be invited or make plans to hang out with.

And so here I am, while I’m having my fellowship training in this new place, I’m crossing my fingers (*wink*). Consequently, first thing’s first. We have to know our priorities so we’ll know when to connect and disconnect.


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Trip Down Memory Lane
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  This is a story of physician's luck being put to a test, not by sheer intellect but by bravery and honesty, and of defiance and acceptance. 

  Maybe people thought doctors are second to God.  They save lives and heal people. They thought our feelings are set aside for a far better priorities. Sometimes they thought we are capable of becoming numb in facing deaths and critical illness. Sure we could.  Doctors are humans too. We know how to laugh and have fun, we also know how to cry. We got sick most of the time too, there's no exemption to that. More so, we are most afraid of illness and deaths more than you do when it comes to our own loved ones.

  More than a year ago, God had put me in a situation where my ability to focus was hindered by my emotions as my sister was put into the brink of death. I thought my 2 years of being a junior consultant in the ICU of a tertiary hospital would make me well equipped on these areas. But no. Nobody will be ever be prepared of death when this comes to your own kind, even if you are a doctor specializing on that field.

  Somehow, my clinical perspective in life had changed thereafter, becoming more sensitive and people oriented than focusing on practice guidelines. For in reality, you have to stand up, and sometimes give up, to deliver what matters to your loved ones than to you.

  Being a doctor doesn't give you much money, it even cost you more on liabilities. I somehow regretted having chosen this profession. However, I have now fully understood why the Lord dragged me to the test... to appreciate that I have made a splendid choice in helping people without asking too much, and to never worry for God will provide doctors for you in times of need without a cost too. Hippocrates must have seen that even centuries back, his oath has been proudly recited in every newly licensed doctors in the country.

  So read on, its a true story cut in two parts... 

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It’s Not About How I Feel, But What She Feels…
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A Husband’s Reflection
By: Shaun



I once prayed for the person that I longed for. I implore to God to make me win her love, win her trust, and to make her believe that what her heart truly desires may have the chance of becoming real, if she would let me try to be there for her. For a long time I linger on the impossibility, yet even under despair I struggled to stay. She had rejected me once but I plead. I pleaded to her difficult past that’s unwilling to let go. I childishly prayed that she should love me instead of him.


My fervent prayers were answered and by spontaneous providence there was not a doubt that she is God-given. She finally came into my life so beautiful, sincere, and full of idealism and passion about love and the perplexities of life. I must admit I got timid the first time, not because she was difficult to love but a difficult person to discern. Half her heart was concealed by pain, suppressed to give the same love as she had once fulfilled. Even so, as with all gifts of life, we are filled with enthusiasm to unravel what is inside. If it was broken, we tend to look for the missing pieces to put it all together again. We may even discover how it is made and by then we learn and appreciate its history. And all you ever want to do was to protect her next time.


I won the love of my life not by chance but by perseverance. If it means having to confront her parents dismay in the past which is present in every aspect of what we are trying to begin, I'll continue to persist, even if my persistence have brought me too many afflictions. I knew already then that I’ll be inadequate. Not even she could describe who I am to her because she really doesn’t know how or where to begin in the first place. I came to her when I was not needed, yet I insist, and then impair her thoughts… she could have gone into a better life… I should have listened to her silent cry for someone else.


But I did not. I insisted on being the right person for her. I thought that it would not be in vain to try to make everything worked for her. Or was I just too damned to accept rejection? I dwell on the pain and was looking for her empathy. But she came back and that is what matters most to me, and I don’t need to feel anguish that time. Truth of the matter was, I refused to yield about letting her go, about leaving my comfort zones and this made her life tangled in a constant state misery.


The day we got married I developed expectations prematurely. Because I feel like I was now being accepted, I defined myself above all as someone who deserved to be loved and cared, and then my happiness was in her control and I was engulfed with insecurities and anxiety to that assumption. I became overly sensitive if she can’t reciprocate. The more I became emotionally attached to her, the more important I believe she is to me, and it creates more anxiety and panic to me in any event that would make it seem unlikely for her to do so. I feel elated at times when I see the effort but unhappy when she is sometimes inconsistent to meet me halfway. I stoop to low things like accusing; always looking for her faults, keeps reminding her everyday about her failures/imperfections, and jealous of her time outside home. How stupid of me, really! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid… I snapped and it meant everything to her. I became dependent upon these little signs of success or failure in a relationship. I took her to one of those emotional roller-coaster ride. I drove her away by being too emotional or too needy.I should have learned to love her unconditionally. I should have thanked her for just marrying me and not forgetting that she was God’s gift, and that she was special whom I should serve to protect, cherish, and nurture.

My wife has retreated into her deep emotional shell. She will decide if I was too late or too early to ask for her to come out again, and allow me to take her hand once more. Although it squeezes my heart in pain for us not to be together, I need to see the extent that it is necessary to let go of her so she can fulfill her life path. And as I discover mine, I must also learn to let go of my old self and remove the roadblocks to love and forgiveness so she can come home in time. And I pray that she will one day.

I know my children will have to live with all the stress that I’ve caused them because papa was selfish. Without their mama, papa can barely compensate the love she has given them. Nevertheless, I am taking a leap of faith into the unknown, my boys and me having to live as family without the only woman of our lives.


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