Publisher's Note

Publisher’s Note
It was 22 years ago when I arrived in Canada and chose Calgary, Alberta to be my home. Leaving my family and friends behind, it was a new adventure for me to be in a new country without knowing anyone. That was the time I looked for a Filipino community paper and never found any, [...]
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Page added on December 29, 2017

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Erwinism: Life as a Prayer

By Erwin Maramat

This year in review.

On the way to Lac La Ronge, it started snowing and darkness peered ahead. I was worried as I drove carefully behind a truck my co-driver was delivering, all I could make out are his faint, blurry tail lights, then the unexpected happened; the SUV I was driving slid and went off road, my windshield was covered with snow and my heart started beating rapidly, I stepped on the breaks heavily, I thought I was a goner, but the vehicle came to a complete halt. I was in shock, but I was alive. I thought about my family, and shortly thereafter, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called up my wife who was at work, luckily, she picked up and as words leaped out of my mouth they were of how much I loved her and our children. Hours later, I was back on the road.

I was immersed in thoughts as I made my way home that night. I thought about how I would have missed Christmas this year and how my children would have lost their father who was eagerly chasing numbers for a paycheck. It was quite a thought to entertain, but it makes one realize the value of life over matter.

We must do more than just sustain ourselves to get us by in this life. We ought to stop thinking about cents in our paychecks and think more about having meaningful seconds in our lives. We turn a minute older, and minutes accumulate to years and if those beautiful things lay squandered over trivial pursuits they turn into fortified regrets. We are not mere pawns tied to a merciless clockwork while we are busy putting our lives in boxes, so we can sell them back to ourselves at a price that will surely drain what is left of us. We are offered a pack of misleading promises of which we light up taking quick drags to appease our weary spirits only to find that we willfully handed an invitation for commercial cancer to devour us. As machines break down; so, humans do, yet this world preys on our desires and puts us in an eternal trance leaving us trapped in an endless cycle of nine-to-fives. We ought to break free and find our place. There’s nothing wrong with being average, but it’s also wrong to cling onto a belief that we couldn’t be more and all that we are sacrificial lambs offered in the altars of the elite.

I was going to be a Rockstar. I was going to be a teacher moulding minds. All those things ended up as wishful thinking. What was my excuse? I let this world get better of me. I knew I had what it takes, but I had it taken all away from me. I believed that I had to abandon my dreams because I cannot afford the life society was selling me. Everyone I knew was in love with results and didn’t quite feel the same way with the process, for his reason; people often say be practical which easily translates to stagnating until your decay. Jim Carrey once said, “you can fail at the things you don’t want’ you might as well take a chance at things you do.” We often sell ourselves short because the growing population of naysayers is overwhelming us. Nothing can be achieved without sacrifice. if you are convinced that a goal is difficult to reach; dreams are utterly just bi-products of wild imagination; or you are grounded by limitation, then you have not measured how desperate you need to be and what real value is, nothing can hurl you forward if you plant your self in the belief that you deserve where you are.

“Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.” ~ Leo Buscaglia

Do you remember the song Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi? A whole lot of us live life on a prayer. In dire hopes to make it somewhere, we purchase a first-class ticket to nowhere. Our life is our prayer, we must dedicate all that we do to God. If you take that into account all the time, will you offer a half-a** excuse to not give your best to make something happen? If you dedicate everything to him, will you give him anything less?

This coming Christmas, what is the best gift you can give yourself? Try honesty. What do you really love to do? What is holding you back? Are you happy where you are? If you have an exceptional reason to be more other than giving your youth and beauty to the endless pursuit of numbers, of dirt and grime, if stress and struggle, then perhaps its time to move on.

We are candles burning from end to end while burning daylight.

You keep putting things off that you won’t live long enough not to put them off. Take yourself out of the picture, is the picture the same without you? If you haven’t loved the way should, when would you? Our loved ones patiently wait for you to give them time. If you’re insured, surely, they would somewhat live off what you are leaving them, but what are you truly leaving them? Remember that life is a prayer, how our you offering your relationships to God? We just have to make it count by ensuring that we are there when we are. We can’t let our thoughts wander off or the demand for numbers keep us from bringing value to our relationships. These are some of the best gifts we can give anyone this Christmas and every day of the year. I wish you guys all the best, may you have wonderful time all year round.

Erwinism: Life as a Prayer

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