1:05 PM Tuesday, August 17, 2004

It is not easy finding happiness within yourself, and impossible of finding it from anywhere else.

or so someone said. I'm just glad that , for no particular reason, i woke up today humming-to-myself happy.

*~*

ANG KUTING MABAIT... PAG BINATO MO NG KAWALI, MAY DADATING NA BISITA

My cousin was showing some of the drawings her 'mental patients' made to my sister, who was looking forward to being assigned to a mental insitution soon. Both are nursing students. My cousin laughingly told many stories about what her patients did or said (like the one above). My sister, looking at the drawings, wondered why they almost all drew balls and houses.

I suddenly got transported back to the time my class went to the National Mental Health Institution in Mandaluyong... where we fell in line as we went from one gallery of insane people to another to another. One patient asked us from which school we came from, my friend Bhing answered "PNU" and the guy replied back "Ay, ako kasi galing UP eh." wehehe

And then I couldn't help but sigh with a little sadness that I can't anymore interpret psych tests like the House-Tree-Person Test or the MMPI... can't even remember anymore how to properly administer them (though when college researchers sometimes come to our office to have survey questionnaires filled up, I usually cannot help but critique the questions, and question the validity and reliability of such... because I had brilliant teachers for Psych Testing and I cannot easily forget what they taught). Then there's the sadness brought about by the fact that if I need not care for a good salary, i'd probably be doing volunteer work in NGOs and rehab clinics because I'm really happiest in that setting. Then there's also the sadness for all those people who... I suspect, didn't have the grace to triumph over losses and tragedies... and then the likely possibility that they were misdiagnosed and drugged wrongly, which made them sicker.

I'm a psych graduate, one who is averse to people labelling themselves as manic-depressive and such (tho I know that there are real people with real psychoses brought about by bad physiology). I feel that for people of the modern times, it's easier to just label themselves and become silently proud and feel justified that they're sick and that's it. And that's wrong. Or at least, sad...

Which is why I always pray, may I be made of better stuff than most. May I know how to bend rather than break. May tears always afford me with reprieve, with release. May I have the grace to know that bad things will happen even to good people while also remembering that good things happen to people, good or bad, all the time.

*~*


I dunno about you guys but I love this position!!! And I love the picture!!!


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