Valor

Courage comes in different sizes, different forms, different hues, different tales and different faces. The Greeks provide us with wide arrays of academic works and tales of courage. The Greeks gave us Diomedes in the Iliad is characterized as the bold one who bested Ajax and whose paternal uncle is Heracles or Hercules in the roman literature. Hercules is depicted as a great figure of valor and strength. He is a mortal who became a god because of the twelve improbable labors he had successfully accomplished as his penance for murdering his wife, Megara and his children. The term Herculean strength must come from Hercules’ extraordinary courage. His labors are collectively termed as dodekathlos. The Spartans were the strongest in the battle arena. Sparta has the best militia and they surely have the best warriors. The Holy Bible has its fair share of tales of courage. The Holy Bible gave us Samson who trounced the giant Philistine Goliath.
Diomedes, Samson, and Hercules are all paradigms of courage. They are men of valor. These men could be pictured as lean beings with wondrously built and muscle-toned bodies-bodies of a Greek God as an idiom often says.
Be brave. Be strong. Words so effortlessly said when one renders pieces of advice. But what is the true measure of courage? Does being bold as effortless as uttering the words be brave and strong? Does one have to complete twelve improbable labors like Hercules to possess audacity? Does one have to be part of the twelve-year Trojan War like Diomedes to be worth of the title man of valor? Does one have to slay a giant Philistine to be called courageous?
Courage in its truest and clear-cut sense lies beyond what is physical. It is not only about physical display of one’s audacity but also accepting every fiber in your being that shrieks your weaknesses. True courage is not just about winning and succeeding but rising up when one stumbles down and continuing the fight even if one is on the verge of losing. Sometimes courage is simply letting your tears fall to wash all the hurt away. It is never giving up but also knowing how to surrender. Courage cannot be gauged by the number of well-shaped muscles you have, the envious six-pack one has nor the perfect vital statistics of 36-24-36. It lies beyond muscular strength and endurance. Courage lies not just in our physical beings but in our spirits as well. It is seen not in times of peace but in times of war; not in times of laughter but in times of strife; not in times of prosperity but in times of adversity; not in times of bliss but in times of despair. True courage is not exemplified by a bloody carnage as one slays all the opponents and the hero is the only man standing. To quote: “courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall but by those who fought, fell and rose again”. One labor of Hercules states that true strength is only strong as it is gentle. Courage is continuously dreaming despite the disillusionment; it is dreaming again after one’s dreams have been shattered. Winston Churchill taught as that courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. It is not just about winning but losing and taking risks. Courage is loving someone despite the fact that the person you love cannot and will not love you back. It is loving again after having your heart crushed for the nth time.
We deserve to be dubbed bold as those Greeks heroes and Samson. We are the real heroes who incessantly wrestle with the ironies of life. The squatters crammed in the teeny space in Metro Manila who cohabitate with the rodents and roaches are as courageous as Hercules. They need not slay a Nemean lion or an Erymanthian boar. Seeing how they live in misery and how hard they wrestling with poverty while the corrupt boars and lions in the government live like kings and queens are more than enough to warrant their bravery. More valiant are those street children whose fate stripped them of your youth and innocence. At their tender age, they carry the weight of the world on their small shoulders. The anguish in their faces is testimony of how valiantly they face every waking day all by themselves having no one to lean on. They are left to fend for themselves and agonizing inch by agonizing inch they let the world devour them. Being brave is arduous. Paraphrasing what Anne Brontë has said, to be brave one must grasp the thorns in order to crave for the rose.
To be brave means standing up and fighting for the truth whilst accepting the censure of the wicked, the unjust and the dictates of this material world. All of us are men and women of valor. We are all modern day Hercules, Diomedes or Samson. We labor as hard as Hercules labored for his penance in order to survive and live righteously. We fought and still fighting a war- waged for love likes Diomedes. Like Samson, we always battle with unrelenting Goliaths in order to defend what we believe in. And our stories deserve to be recounted and written as those mythological and biblical stories. Courage may be indefinite but the definite fact is: being brave, like happiness is a personal choice. Be bold- play the game and fight or cower-wade forever and remain on the side lines choose!

Twilight: The First Bite

The twilight movie can be perceived from different perspectives of movie goers but can be generalized into three standpoints: the skeptics, the romantics and the nonpartisans. The skpetics are those movie goers who watched the movie because they were either forced by their friends or they just want to kill time. They are those people who talk nineteen to the dozen on how boring the movie is because of those sweet parts. They may also look smug (even though one may not see the facial expression in the dim confines of the movie house) when they see lovers walking hand-in-hand towards the entrance of the cinema. They may also be those people whose eyebrows rise a bit higher than normal when young girls who get to much affected by the scenes giggle undauntedly. They look so serious as if devoid of any human emotions but at the back of their minds they are planning how to assassinate the director who is culpable to the unorthodox love story between a vampire and a human which simply makes the hair at the back of their nape stand because they can’t simply stand another minute of the corny movie. In the end after watching the twilight movie, they either wind up being more cynic and loathing the movie or ends up accepting the idea of love and appreciating the movie despite his opposite notions.
The romantics are those movie goers who are simply over zealous to watch the movie. They may be couples in love, singles who are in love of the idea of falling in love or just inspired of the idea of love despite the heartaches and sufferings. One could catch a glimpse of their smiles when the sweet moments come in despite the faint light illuminating the cinemas. Their saccharine smiles, which reach their eyes and ears are bright enough to light up the room. After the two-hour film, they end up being more romantic, talking incessantly about how great twilight was or being a cynic because the story is too good to be true and it is simply impossible to fine their own Edward Cullen or Bella Swan.
The non-partisans tend to be in both worlds. They are those who giggle when necessity calls for it but gazillion thoughts are swirling in their mind as one mentally critiques and contemplates the movie in its entirety.
Twilight as a movie adaptation of a book can be either a piece of good fortune or a stroke of bad luck. Bad news first. The drawback of having a film adapted from a book is the inevitable and incessant comparison with the novel. In every movie adaptation, this circumstance is surely bound to happen. Imagine watching a film adaptation and then a person keeps blabbering about the differences between the book and the movie. “Err, shouldn’t Victoria’s hair be flaming red not blonde?” ‘The scene in the restaurant is very different from the one in the book” and so much more. One must bear in mind that a two-hour movie cannot essentially contain all the book’s contents. Besides, what is the point the word poetic license? The director can only guarantee a faithful adaptation and the twilight movie stayed as faithful to the book as possible. Absolute adaptation in the same way as absolute assurance in auditing is impossible. The point I would like to insinuate is: Learn to appreciate the movie in the same way as you appreciated its book. Set aside your biases and expectations and then decide later. Comparing is not bad just do not expect the movie to be the exact replica of what is in the book because in one way or another changes must be made for the movie to fit the allowable movie run time. Also give credits to the director, cast and crew by appreciating the movie despite the differences and deviations.
On the flip side, the good thing about twilight as a movie adaptation is that it gave life to the characters and whatever mental pictures we just conjure in our imaginations. It also gives the readers something to look forward too. Another plus of having a movie adaptation is its instant demand. The readers of the books are also the people who would want to watch the movie version.
Catherine Hardwicke’s adaptation of the Twilight has so far lived up to my expectation even though the film is short-budget, looked rushed and there is too much green. The pine trees are given too much exposure in the movie. The meadow part was quite short and disappointing but it was compensated by the shimmering effect of Edward’s body as the sun rays caress his pale white skin. The story was pretty much the same with the book but with certain alterations as expected. Some lines in the book where featured in the movie. The soundtrack was cool and vastly diversified. The soundtrack would take you back to the classical music of De Lune to the modern punk rock music of Paramore. Iron and Wine’s, Flightless Bird, American Mouth as it wafted in the air while Edward and Bella were waltzing totally blew me away. That waltzing scene before the movie ended was awesome in its own way. The director should have followed strictly the dialogues in the book with respect to the ending part because it would make the ending more romantic. The characters are quite interesting. Robert Pattinson who played Edward Cullen suited the role perfectly. Ashley Greene was ideal for the part of Alice Cullen. Jackson Rathbone justified the role of Jasper Cullen with his always-in-pain look. Kellan Lutz was perfect for the role of Emmett Cullen. Carlisle Cullen, Rosalie Cullen and Esme Cullen were exquisitely portrayed by Peter Facinelli, Nikki Reed and Elizabeth Reaser. The inclusion of the Cullen jewels or heirlooms had a spunky effect on the movie. Kristen Stewart who played Isabella Swan is quite too strong for the character she portrayed, though. Isabella is supposed to exude a personality that is clumsy and fragile. Kirsten Stewart failed on that aspect because her personality is quite stern. Jacob Black played by Taylor Lautner disappointed me. I was expecting for someone who is the exact opposite of Edward but equally devastatingly handsome. Lautner may be handsome but not devastatingly. He is okay for the part of Jacob Black but someone out there is more suited for the role. The long mane simply doesn’t suit Taylor Lautner and when he combed his hair so that his long mane could fall on the sides of his face, swear to heavens, it was atrocious.
Twilight tells us that love conquers all and that love can melt the coldest heart. Twilight tells us that in relationships self-control and discipline are essential. It tells us that love should be sacrificial not self-centered; that love is defying the odds in order to be with someone you love.Watching the movie without reading the book is great except maybe for few staggering questions of who’s who especially as to the identities of the other three vampires during the baseball game, were they family or foes?
If one had read the book and watched the movie, impression is entirely unto one’s own hands. Anyway, appreciation is subjective. One may perceive twilight in a skeptic kind of way, in a romantic kind of way or in a non-partisan kind of way. In the long run, despite the inevitable snide remarks let us just be thankful that twilight debut successfully into theaters and quenched a part of our thirsting imagination. In conclusion, I would say that Twilight is a movie one wouldn’t regret watching and one wouldn’t regret missing.

April 6, 2009
7:30am

Lending A Hand

To quote Antoine De Saint-Exupéry in the novel entitled The Little Prince: “Men occupy a very small space upon the Earth. If two billion inhabitants who people its surface were to stand upright and somewhat crowded together, as they do for some public assembly, they could easily be put into one public square twenty miles long and twenty miles m\wide. All humanity could be piled up on a small Pacific islet.”

A pretty good teaser, isn’t it? A way to start feeding one’s wiggling and zealous nerve

cells. In a book by Jostein Gaarder entitled Sophie’s World, the story revolved in only three words-“Who Am I?”. The pursuit of who man is can be traced back since the earliest civilization. Way, way back the arcadian life of the Greek philosophers. Since then, there have never been far more astounding and interesting topic than MAN itself. “Who am I” is just a simple phrase compose of three simple words but when pieced together proves to be the most arduous query one has to answer. And this is manifested in the book The Solitaire Mystery when the author said: “We human beings are so clever in so many ways- we explore space and the compositions of atoms but we don’t have a better understanding of what we are”. Nonetheless, man have never stopped struggling to know and answer the question of who he is as evidenced by the philosophers from ancient Greece down to the post-modern philosophers.

I am just an ordinary man and I even act like one. I live life like an ordinary one and I am in pursuit of who I am. And what follows recounts an ordinary man’s perceptions and realizations of what man is.

Man is a simple complex being. Man’s simplicity stems from man’s classical definition: man is a rational and social being. But what makes a man a simple yet complex being lies in a very important feature that sets us apart form animal- REASON. Reason is what helps us discern right from wrong. Our capabilities to think and use our mind make us more intricate than the animals which rely on their instincts. A phrase from the book The Solitaire Mystery says that if our brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would be so stupid we wouldn’t able to understand it after all. Thus, this complexity thrusts men to depict or portray his being in simpler ways. Man is depicted in paintings, novels, poems and even in movies. Just take for example Amorsolo’s paintings which centered on ordinary men working their butts off to earn and live. Also consider the painting Honoré Daumier’s The Third Class which depict a much simpler and less enduring portrait of the life of the poor. Also consider Rembrandt’s Woman Bathing in a Stream, it no longer shows the complexity of women’s fickle minded-ness but only a woman bathing in a stream. Man’s complexity has urged other men to exemplify a multifaceted man in simpler ways.

Man is a gift. One reason why I like holidays such as Christmas and birthdays is that it’s the time of the year when I have the chance to receive gifts. Who wouldn’t want to receive gifts anyway? Although, there’s a saying that it is better to give than to receive, one would really feel ecstatic if one also does the receiving not just the giving. There is this pure bliss in receiving a gift especially when one sees how the gifts are carefully and majestically wrapped. No one can measure the sheer joy when one unwraps the gifts. A French philosopher in the name of Hans George Gadamer regarded man as a difference or a gift. Man is a gift because what truly defines him is not on the outside but in the inside. The wrap is just a tip of the iceberg and the enormous part remains hidden by the wrapping so laboriously done. Man is a gift because there is more to him than meets the eye. Man is a gift because he is as precious as a gift. He is priceless and no amount of money can match his worth. He is a gift because God created him. He gave him breath and life. He is gift to his fellow-men by giving and sharing himself to them. He is priceless just like Da Vinci’s Monalisa or Michael Angelo’s Pieta.

Man is an unfinished work of art. There has been so many attempts to answer the question who man is. But there is as much definition as much as there are attempts done. Thus, there is no standard basis as to who man is and the question is still left hanging in the air just an unfinished painting left in a corner or left on its stand waiting when the hand that works it will get back and finishes it. Man is considered as un unifinished work because man has never fully contemplated who he really is. There maybe answers but the curiosity, thirst and pursuit of knowledge has never been quenched. Man is considered a mystery yet to unravel just like an unfinished canvass that has yet to unfold. Man’s hand has never been empty. It is always full. We always work hard towards whatever we need to achieve and most of the time we are never satisfied. Man simply never ceases.

Man is art in action. Quoting a phrase in a book, it says: “If the world is a magic trick, then there must be a great magician,too” Parapahrasing that, “if man is a work of art in action, there must be a skillfull hand that does the painting”. What man does in ordinary life is art itself. How a poor man struggles everyday to survive. How those squatters in Mega Manila crammed themselves in a teeny space along with rodents and cockroaches. How the street children wrestle with poverty and malnutrition. Just look at their sunken faces which denies their age. How those children are stripped with their youth. The emotions registered on their faces when they see other children like their age but so exceedingly blessed. You can catch a glimpse of their longing to go to the finest schools and have the finest things had fate not interceded. Their agony, their anguish, their woes and their delight aover simple things are worth capturing and so moving to gazed upon on. You don’t have to spend millions or thousands of pesos just to see those grotesques or picturesque because the horrors of the living and surviving are real life paintings more than enough to fill one’s eye for beauty and those eyes of paintings connoisseurs.

Man is not man without God. Behind every work of art is a brilliant painter wielding the brush. Man can never exist without God. A verse in a bible says that God without man is still God but man without God is nothing. Behind our woes, agonies, sufferings, happiness and struggles, there is a magnanimous, all-knowing and all –powerful painter who never fails to remember. Life may be hard with those harsh realities and grim truths but those are part of men’s lives. What every man must understand is that God does everything for a reason.

Gnothi Seauton (Know Thyself) is Socrates’ famous line. But is that all? Is knowing enough for a man? Just as it is enough to identify a painting with a painter? Is it enough that we know Da Vinci painted Mona Lisa or that Van Goethe painted the Starry, Starry Night? To some maybe yes, yes it is enough to know who we are but isn’t more meaningful to share what we know to others. Isn’t more momentous to partake and lend a hand in making other people know who they are just as we do not only identify a painting with its painter but also understanding the painter’s life and what moved him to come-up with such a masterpiece? Isn’t it vital to understand what a work of art is trying to tell us?

It all starts with knowing but it definitely doesn’t end there. Knowing who you are is not enough. Knowing who a man is and what makes him a man is not sufficient. We have to share what we know with other, we have to partake in other people’s lives as they struggle in their own endeavors. We have to partake in their sojourn of knowing who they are. Man need not just to know himself but to know other people because men are presents to each other. Men have to touch other men’s lives just like how a painting moves and touch our lives. Just like how artists touch other people’s lives by living an indelible mark and engraving their names in history through the meaningful work they’ve done. A man knowing who he is is not enough. A man leaving something remarkable that makes other people know and remember him, is nobler.

I may be an ordinary man but so are those artists before they became famous. But one can never be EXTRAordinary without being ordinary.