no courtesy but happy

I read in the newspaper that Reader's Digest did an experiment to find out which countries do well in common courtesy (eg. opening the door for someone, please and thank you..etc), meaning, as Reader's Digest put it, "how helpful and polite people are around the world." They also tested which countries are the happiest which "measures quality of life against environmental impact." The Philippines was one of the lowest in ranking when it came to having common courtesy but, on the other hand, was one of the highest in ranking when it came to being happy.

Are we Filipinos really THAT impolite? Don't even deny it. Maybe we are. How many of us say please when we ask a waiter to serve us something? How many of us say thank you when that counter lady and bagger guy give us our things after we've bought it? Or how many of us greet that manong guard who stands all day in that mall opening and closing the door for us? I've experienced being bumped by people in malls without even saying excuse me or sorry. Is it really that hard? C'mon! These are simple words taught to us when we were still kids. Maybe these are even the most important words ever taught to us in this life. And why is it that we're always grumpy? I read something from Tuesdays With Morrie. What if this driver took over your car? What would you do? Would you stick that finger out? What if instead of sticking out that finger and saying that f word, you smiled and said hello instead? Wouldn't that be better?

On the other hand, we're one of the happiest people on Earth. Actually, those in the so-called third world countries and other Asian countries ranked high compared to USA, Canda, Japan and France, the so-called rich countries. They said that this was due to the fact that we are contented with what we have, not like those rich countries. I guess it's right. We don't need to ask for more because most of the time, there's no "more." We only have enough. And we can do with what is in front of us. We're creative. And the best thing about us? We can have problems and still laugh about it. That's why we look young and good! Look at those people in rich countries (no offense meant), they always look grumpy! They're brows are always together. Worrying what they worry about the most. Money. They're rich and they worry about money. haha So ironic. Let's keep it like this. Let's not worry to much. Let's enjoy what we have. We don't want to look old, do we?

Although it is ironic to be grumpy and happy at the same time. But as Gino de la Paz said in his article in The Philippine Daily Inquirer, "being polite-or even being happy-isn't something we aim for because a couple of surveys said we should be so. Rather, being courteous is important becaiuse, plain and simple, it's the right thing to do."

pain

I realized how we couldn't describe pain as much as we couldn't describe love. No words can exactly describe the pain, the hurt, which we feel inside. No matter how we try to put it into words, it just won't be enough. Even if two people are pained by the same thing, like losing someone, the pain will still not be the same for those people. No matter how alike we are with our reasons why we are in pain, the hurt which we feel will NEVER be alike. It's like even when we fall at the same time, get bruised at the same time and have the same size of bruise, bleed with the same amount of blood and scrape our knees at the same depth, we still won't have the same pain. The pain that we feel will only be for ourselves.

When you get hurt, a lot of people would say, "I know what you feel." But the truth is, what they only know is that you're in pain, but they do not know how much pain you feel. You can never say that you can feel the pain which other people feel. We have different experiences, different emotions, different personalities and different hearts. If two people broke up with their loved one, with the same reason, you would think they feel the same thing. But what if the other one is more resilient than the other? What if the other person have had gone through what she is going through right now? Would they still feel the same pain?

Yes, I know, I'm becoming too redundant. But, isn't it true? No one will ever feel the same kind of pain because we all have different experiences, emotions, personalities. Our hearts will never be the same in feeling what we feel.