Option 1: No Social Media for a Day.

“Social media is a dangerous place to seek affirmation, acceptance, identity and security.” – Cornelius Lindsey

Social media, in lay man terms, is a form of media which consists of websites and applications that allow its users to share and post content to other people and viewers. In my generation though, once the term “social media” is mentioned, people from my generation instantly think of popular applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

I personally used these applications a lot before especially Twitter and Instagram, thus I had to delete these social media applications 2 years ago. I knew that I always get distracted by scrolling through tweets with long threads and scrolling through picture posts in Instagram. With this, I realized that a lot of my time was being spent on these two applications, thus I had to delete them. Anyway, for the first experiment, I had to withdraw myself from the only social media application I use nowadays which is Facebook. To briefly synthesize the whole experience, I realized that withdrawing from social media even for just a day is very similar to quitting an addiction or bad habit. For the first few hours, I found it hard to restrain myself from opening Facebook in my Iphone since the action of opening my phone just to open Facebook and scroll has been a habit for me. I think removing this habit of using my phone at times of the day when I have nothing to do was actually the hardest part in going on a day without social media. In contrast though, what went easy for me was the fact that I am not addicted to Facebook since I primarily use it for communication and light entertainment purposes, unlike other people who use this for more than four hours a day. I believe that my past experience of deleting Twitter and Instagram helped me go on a day without social media since I was able to remove the “addiction” I had in social media and I found out that its negative effects can really affect one’s disposition, esteem and even time management.

To further expound on my learnings, I just wanted to emphasize that social media and its impact, whether it may be positive and negative, vary from one person to another depending on how they use social media. With this in mind, I just also want to point out that social media for me is an outlet to establish norms, status, power, fame and popularity. Although some social media users may not agree, I believe that even these people subconsciously fall under these norms whenever they use social media since people usually want to fit in whenever they post pictures, share memes, or even when they post something funny/insightful just to go viral. Although some of them wouldn’t admit, I believe that social has this scintillating effect to the extent that it somewhat forces people to fit in what is uso, patok and cool that has an overall impact on one’s views, self-esteem and self-confidence as a person. Overall though, this experience made me realize that social media’s impact really depends on how the person uses this, as long as the positive benefits outnumber the negative ones in order to get the best out of social media. In addition, I also believe that a break from social media gave me the feeling of serendipity and tranquility in a sense that allowed me to relax and break free from other people’s opinions and thoughts. This allowed me to focus more time for relaxing, doing productive things such as basketball, reading and spending time with family and friends. To sum it up, I really cherished the time I took a break from social media, which was yesterday, December 8, 2018, since I generally had more time to do things in the “real” world and allowed to spend more time doing more meaningful things than scroll and swipe through my phone.

Option 2: My Own Habitus vs Habitus of Bahay Kanlungan

The concept of habitus is one of the most influential contributions of Pierre Bourdieu in the field of sociology. To briefly explain, habitus is the internalized dispositions, lifestyle preferences that affect the perceptions of a person and his/her actions and views based on a social structure. It may be an ambiguous concept but there are certain factors in play in order to describe the habitus of a person or a group of people such as capital, field, family and society. In addition, two essential influences play a key role in a person’s  habitus, which are context and environment. All in all, the habitus helps drive human action but it does not determine human action solely since it only plays a key role in it, where there are other factors involved.

To compare and contrast my own habitus and the habitus in Bahay Kanlungan, it is important to consider the factors that I have mentioned since these factors affect my own dispositions, lifestyles and preferences, as well as the elders in Bahay Kanlungan. First and foremost, the environment plays a huge role in our lifestyle and dispositions. For me, my environment revolves around school, home, malls, bars and other social places while for the elderly, they are stay put in one home for the aged. With this environment, it is evident that the environment I often go to is more lively and energetic compared to Bahay Kanlungan which serves as a peaceful home for the elderly. Another important factor is the context, wherein the people in Bahay Kanlungan are mostly in their “Ego Identity vs Despair” psychosocial stage of development while I am in my “Identity vs Role Confusion” stage in Erikson’s model, thus I am more active and into exploring a lot of new things while the elderly just want to have a calm life wherein they can reflect about the events in their life. In addition, this context shows the huge difference in our lifestyle preferences, where I prefer to go out with other people to experience new things and help find my identity while the elders just want to stay in a chair and bed in order to relax. For the capital, field, family and society, I just want to try and summarize these since I believe it would be too lengthy to discuss all of this – in short, there are many differences such as the culture, field, resources and the people we interact with. For my habitus, I grew up in the generation of technology and social media and the capital resources I have were definitely greater than those in Bahay Kanlungan who receive minimal budget and donations, thus the lifestyle and views would be totally different. With these mentioned, I really found no similarity in terms of my habitus and the elders habitus, but I believe this helped me interact better with them since I was trained to adapt to the structure and culture they have built their – such as being respectful, quiet, peaceful, insightful and reflective. Also, I learned a lot about their experiences during their “youth” and adult life which enabled me to learn from their mistakes and thus, also help me in my own identity development. All in all, this BINHI program was very successful since a lot of lessons were learned and by comparing the habitus of both and immensing myself with the other habitus even for just one day, I was able to open my eyes to the reality of the hardships and the state of life once a person gets old.

“Only surround yourself with people who will lift you higher” – Oprah Winfrey

As a person who is experiencing the emerging adulthood phase, I am a person who explores a lot of things about my life. One main factor of my exploration and identity formation is the group of peers and friends that I am usually with and interact with often. These crowds have an influence on my identity, views and hobbies, thus it is important to analyze these crowds in order to help me find and create my true self. Personally, I am open to any kind of crowd since I believe that I am a very open-minded person, but I usually stay with people I connect with and “vibe” with the most – people who are smart (in their own way), people who socialize, and most importantly goal-oriented people. One thing that I have noticed is that I like to be with people who have a deep sense of meaning in their own way, but at the same time people who like to enjoy their youth since I believe that this is a time of our lives where memories are created and bonds are formed.  Thus, I usually associate myself with people who go out often and hang out with them in computer shops, bars and malls.

With these people, I believe that they influence my identity formation in a unique way. Personally, I already have a strong self of identity and self-esteem, thus I do not really need other people in order to shape my identity, but throughout the time I have interacted with these people, I realized one thing: hanging out with these people opened me to different perspectives in life. Even though I already had a solid outlook of life and a solid foundation of myself, hearing the stories of these peers about their experiences and views opened my eyes to the reality of life and how other people live it. With these, it helped me form my true self by reflecting on the kind of life I really want to live.

My mindset about the group of peers I interact with is based on the quote I have mentioned above by Oprah Winfrey. I want to be surrounded with people who have a positive mindset and outlook in life, thus helping me facilitate and restrict my interactions within my relationships. Whenever I encounter someone whom I believe will not be detrimental to my growth and improvement as a person, I immediately shy away and try my best to be respectful, but at the same time I will not initiate any conversations. Consequently, I love people who are goal-oriented and positive to my growth, thus these are the people I always look out to since I believe that these are the important people to be with in life. To sum it up, my peers play a huge role in my identity formation, but I believe that their most important role within my life is the good influence they have on my growth.

A Matter of Perspective

This is a classic example of the “what people (including myself) think I do vs. what I actually do.” This picture embodies a person’s perception of society’s thoughts and feelings of one’s self based on a stereotype or an identity being portrayed. For some people, it is accurate while for others it is far-fetched, but one thing is consistent for each and every one of us, it’s that each and every one of us have their own memes that can be related or different from other people’s memes.

Last week, we had an activity where we should make our own meme as seen from the picture above, and shown below is the output of our group.

As seen in this meme, we chose the part of ourselves wherein we are college students. This is an essential role and part of our identities since we play the role of a college student for the most part of the day, thus evaluating this role can be really helpful and useful for our own benefit. The output above showed results of what we think other people from our microsystem sees and thinks about us, and with these results, I was able to learn an important thing about myself and about how I should see every little thing in life: It’s all a matter of perspective. I realized that while doing this activity, different answers came up during our discussion, and the answers above are the common ones, but several answers came into mix depending on the person’s personality and understanding of the external environment. With this activity, I learned to be more open-minded to different perspectives about a certain thing or issue since not every one of us has the same perspective.

In addition, and also in more relation to the contents of the meme itself, I learned that one’s identity must not be construed based on the perceptions of society towards one. It is imperative that peers and people from the microsystem come up with certain judgements about one’s actions, and even one’s self may come up with things he or she thinks he or she is doing, but one must not get caught up with these stereotypes or assumptions even if they may be sometimes accurate since at the end of the day, only you yourself knows the real you. It is only you who knows your deepest thoughts, feelings and actions that shape one’s self and identity. Through this activity, I was able to form a stronger sense of identity since I realized that despite of all these assumptions of the peers around me, I am contented and satisfied with the fact that I know the things that I am doing that helps me live the life that I want and a life with meaning. All in all, most things come from a matter of perspective, but one shall not lose himself/herself in the mix of all these perspectives since only you, yourself knows the real you.

Essence of Emerging Adulthood

“Childhood and Adulthood are not factors of age, but states of mind.”

For this week’s discussion, we talked about the very disputed stage in one’s development, known as the emerging adulthood. In my honest opinion, I believe that this is the most vital and crucial stage in one’s development as a human being. In relation to my last blog post, the height of identity explorations can be found in the emerging adulthood since it is during this period that one’s main identity, values, views and preferences are formed. However, not everyone can experience this stage since this stage can be considered somewhat a “privilege”, due to the fact that it is only experienced depending on the culture of a certain country. The rough estimate in terms of age where one experiences emerging adulthood is from 18-25 yrs old, although not everyone experiences this since some culture and circumstances force people from this age to have children and work full-time, making them commit to a role and leave no room for identity explorations in the aspects of love, work and world views. Throughout this discussion, I truly believe that this struck me and has a huge impact upon me since I’ve never encountered a framework that accurately describes my state in life right now. I do believe that I have gone past the adolescent stage since I have matured in terms of a lot of aspects in my life, but I cannot completely say that I am a full-grown adult since I do not even know the roles I want to take and I am not yet self-sufficient to survive on my own. With this in mind, I had a feeling of relief with the crisis I am experiencing right now and a bit of “confirmation bias” with the risks and activities I indulge myself in to. Although it may seem like a bad thing, Arnett was able to explain properly what most emerging adults experience in thus stage, thus I learned more things about myself as I pondered on the things I do right now, my certain preferences, views, values and many more other things that contribute to my development. If there is one thing which I can take away from this lesson, it is that I believe that I am not doomed for the future since I am very optimistic like what most people from this stage believe in. I believe that I have the certain skill set, mindset and values that will secure my future in good hands. All in all, I can apply my understanding of this stage to push me to be not afraid of several opportunities that will help form me into the person that I am and to the the person that I will be. Often times, even though I go out a lot and experience a lot of new things, both good and bad, I am often afraid to go out of my comfort zone, which is not the best case in this stage of my life because I may find myself in these opportunities in life. To sum it all up, emerging adulthood is a real stage of development, as opposed to what other people who study this field believe in, and I honestly have a whole lot of gratitude to the pursuers and the people who study this stage since I believe that it is very essential for people to understand what they go through in this stage of their lives. Personally, I am thankful that I am introduced to this stage since I can apply what I learned here by taking opportunities, as I have mentioned earlier, and through this, I am able to get a sense of relief since I get to understand what I am going through right now as a first year college student.

Adolescence/Young Adulthood

For this week, I learned about the psychological stages one goes through in a whole lifetime and it was a really interesting topic since in my life right now, I am situated in the very middle stage of development. In Erikson’s theory and framework, the fifth stage or the Identity vs Role Confusion stage is the most integral and vital stage that one must be able to settle in order to progress smoothly in life. I learned that as an adolescent, one is no longer a child, but at the same time one isn’t a full blown adult yet. With this, one tends to explore and find out who he/she really is in terms of a lot of aspects such as sexuality, preferences, habits, hobbies, skills and talents. One is capable of exploring and finding out who he/she really is because time is still a luxury due to the fact that one is not yet committed to a certain identity in contrast to that of an adult. It is at this age that one must resolve and find out who he/she really is since this will be the foundation  of the his/her future lifestyle and career path. Thus, it is essential to find out one’s self at this time of adolescence by being open to new experiences and as well as staying true to one’s self despite of the external influences and certain notions that may hinder this trueness.

Self-Application

For me personally, finding out about this stage disturbed me a little but at the same time gave me hope. For the disturbance, to be completely honest, I really haven’t found my true self and identity. I believe that I have two sides, the “good and bad side.” For my bad side, I tend to indulge myself with vices and go out a lot during school days and while for my good side, I read, study and have a sense of intelligence once the situation arises for it. With both of these sides fighting each other, I really do not know what kind of person I can and should be in order to live out a meaningful and successful life. Although I have and idea what I need to be in order to attain my goals and succeed in the certain Philippines society, it disturbs me a little bit since I do not specifically know what I want to be and what I want others to know about me. Even though this is the case, there is still a glimmer of hope since this conflict is normal, according to Erikson, at this stage of my life. Right now, I will just go with the flow, but even so, I will still have a sense of direction and plan in order to find out my true self and find out what works in my life.

“The ego represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the passions.” – Sigmund Freud

Tripartite Model of the Mind

This week, I learned about the tripartite model of the mind which is basically a theory of Sigmund Freud about the three states of our mind and thinking. The tripartite model of the mind is basically composed of the ID, EGO & SUPEREGO and after discovering these three structures of the mind, I was moved and shocked due to the fact that I have learned something new that can really help me in my daily life and that I realized that my way of living and thinking is centered upon the principles of this model. In lay man’s terms, I will briefly discuss the three states of mind presented by Freud and among all of these, I will explain why I believe that the mastery of the EGO is the most integral and important of them all.

ID-EGO-SUPEREGO

The very first structure of the mind that is present in the unconscious state of the mind is the id. In simple terms, the id can be described as the impulses and instincts each and every one of us have. The id provides the mind with some energy and motivation to act upon our wants and need immediately. For example, when I am hungry, the id will tell me to stop everything I do and look for food, wherever I may be. The id is the state of mind that represents our untamed passion, sexual drives and desires, and most of the time, its wants and needs make us act in a way that is often times looked down by society. These drives and passions often times bring out the “animal” within us and is often stigmatized by society. This is where the superego plays a vital role, since it serves as the “conscience” of our personality. In essence, the superego is the social-moral component within us that strives to resolve the untamed and uncontrolled desires of the id. This superego serves as our guide to inhibit the sexual drives and aggressions of the id, to provide us with moralistic goals and to inspire us to reach perfection. Often times, the superego can be associated to “having no fun” since it is mainly centered on morality and perfection which removes the stigma that the id provides when we act upon them.

With the two states of mind given, I believe that the ego is the most integral and vital aspect of the mind that each and every one of us must master since it can serve as the balance between the two. In essence, the ego serves as a compromise of the id and the superego. It is the main balance between the two and I believe mastery of this is a true form of power since most of the time, the id and superego have a conflict with each other.

The ego within me

With a new perspective about the way I think, I learned a lot about myself and they way I perceive and approach things. Although I believe that I am a very balanced person in all aspects, I can see that I sometimes tend and lean to my id whenever I need or want something. In the basic aspects in my life, I tend to follow and succumb to my id since I often times have a lack of self-control. Whenever I am sleepy and need to study for a test, I allow my id to take over, thus I sleep and often miss studying or whenever I am stressed because of problems, I often let my id take over and thus I have a good time by indulging into vices. With the introduction to this model of thinking, I learned that I must work on my balance my “boost my ego” (no pun intended) by having more self-control and not allowing the demons of the id to take over. Although the id is not necessarily a bad thing, the effects and the actions influenced by the id usually has adverse effects, such as missing the opportunity to study or taking care of my health. Through this new perspective, I can apply this in my daily life especially when a certain need/ want arises within me. I now know that I must take a breath, take a pause and think about the options and the consequences of each action. With this mentality within me, I can learn how to compromise and balance, thus living a better and more productive lifestyle.

“Kindness is spreading sunshine into other people’s lives regardless of the weather.”

Act of Kindness

Today, I hade my area engagement for BINHI at Bahay Kanlungan in Rizal. Bahay Kanlungan is a home for the elderly, and although the lolas who live there know that students will be visiting the them, the cook of the place had no idea that someone will be accompanying her too. The main activity for this BINHI area engagement is to talk to the lolas but the lola assigned to me was too incapable to be accompanied and talked to, thus I was assigned to help and accompany the cook of the whole place, Lola Lita. As soon as I entered, with two other students, the smile on her face and the delight that was shown by her body language was evident since she had company and someone to help her prepare the food for everyone in the place.

Thinking Self

To be completely honest, I was not looking forward to go to this activity since I thought to myself that I am wasting a time of my weekend for this area engagement. System 1 took over me the night before, and during the time we were on the way to the place, and System 1 keeps on thinking that “this is a waste of time” and that “this will be really boring.” With this in mind, I did not look forward to this activity due to the bias that I have and have formed upon pondering about this “boring” activity, but as soon as I arrived there and witnessed their condition, heard a lot of their stories, and helping the cook prepare food and listen to her stories, System 2 was able to synthesize the experience as soon as it was happening. It was able to realize that the biases and conclusions that I jumped into were all wrong. The time I spent in the kitchen, the insights I have heard from Lola Lita, and the experience of preparing food for a lot of lola residents in the area changed the way I perceived things from then on. With the thought replacement that took place, certain emotions arised before, during and after the experience

Feeling Self

As soon as I immensed myself into the experience, two main emotions were felt: sadness and happiness. First of all, I would like to discuss the sadness that I experienced due to several events and factors. First glimpse of sadness that I felt was due to the biases I formed about this experience. As I mentioned earlier, I did not look forward to this experience and only saw this as a requirement, thus making me fall asleep on the way and have a lack of energy as soon as we arrived in the destination. Another thing that struck me and made me feel sad was listening to the stories and experiences of the lolas before living in Bahaya Kanlungan. The different stories of poverty, sickness and oppression impacted me and made me feel sad, making my chest feel a bit heavy and make me feel teary-eyed. Although feelings of sadness arised, the remembering cherished the happiness that was felt throughout the whole experience. As I have learned in my Theology class, service and doing acts of kindness gives a person’s life meaning, which in turn can help burst out feelings of goodness and happiness. This is exactly what happened to me in the time I spent in the kitchen, and also another factor that helped me feel this was through the advice I received from the elders. This advice made me feel hopeful and happy about the future, and their sentiments of goodwill and hope for me inspired me. All in all, the experience was a good one since it really exposed me to the true meaning of life from the perspective of the lolas who have experience a lot in life

All in all, I realized that those lolas have been left behind by their relatives, since their relatives see them as nuisance and inconvenience, and I believe this is the most important insight and lesson I have learned from this experience. As the panganay in the family, I should be in charge of taking care and loving of my parents, and although i haven’t noticed it yet, this experience reminded me that my parents are also getting older day by day. With this, I should not take the time I spent with them for granted and I should be more caring, loving and understanding with them since they are also getting older. In addition, I should not be selfish and should not forget my parents and see them as inconveniences when they get older since they have sacrificed everything for my benefit, welfare and education. With this in mind, I strive to become a better, richer, more powerful and kinder person as this experienced has opened my eyes to the reality of life and its conditions, especially with the ageing of my loved ones.

“In a world full of doing doing doing, it is important to take a moment to just breathe, to just be.

Mindfulness

Today was a day of nostalgia and a day full of ever-lasting memories since it was the last day of the Feast of The Holy Guardian Angels or more known as the AGS Fair. I visited the AGS Fair after four years in order to visit his salu-salo celebration with his class. As soon I entered the grade school premises, I was still feeling sleepy since I slept late the day before due to the fact that it was a Friday night, but nevertheless, I still felt the goosebumps tingle my whole body especially when I passed by the chapel area. I did not regret going to my little brother’s fair even though I just wanted to stay home and rest since I truly realized that the time I spent with him was the stress reliever I needed. Of all the places to commence a mindful activity, I never expected that I would achieve this in a very noisy and loud place, but I truly achieved a moment of “Nirvana” once I rode the Octopus with my little brother.

In my whole stay here in the Ateneo throughout the grade school and high school, I have ridden a lot of rides throughout the AGS (Ateneo Grade School) and AHS (Ateneo High School) Fairs and the most intense and my favorite of them all is the Octopus. As seen in the picture above, the ride is shaped like the octopus and it goes around in a counter clockwise manner while at the same time moving upwards and downwards to give the ride a thrill. As soon as I sat in the cart (seat of the ride) beside my brother, I paused and took a deep breathe, in order to focus in that exact moment. For a while, I let go of my present worries, my future thoughts and my past anxieties and happiness in order to immerse myself deeply into that nostalgic ride. As soon as I was able to relax and settle in the cart ride with my little brother, my senses were very sharp since it was a very sunny day. My eyes saw the clear skies along with the ray of sunshine, my ears were listening to the jeers of other riders and to the sound of the engine, my sense of touch was intensified due to the heat emitted from the sun, my sense of taste was more than present as my brother and I were eating Dippin’ Dots and my nose can smell the breeze of the Ateneo trees. These few moments made me feel so alive, happy and energetic, some feelings I haven’t had in a very long time, and this mindful activity I took on to throughout the whole life made me have a very positive outlook during the ride. I learned that there are two types of riders in any ride in the amusement/theme park: the scared/fearful riders and the happy/elated riders. The scared riders tend to overthink about things such as getting hurt or falling off, making them miss the moment and the thrill while the happy/elated riders make the most out of the experience, making them cherish these memories and be positive throughout the duration of the ride. Lately, I have been one of those scared/fearful riders, feeling so tense, overthinking about mundane things and feeling too hesitant about myself but once I took time off my “boring” daily routine and ride the octopus with my cute little brother, I had a wake-up call. I learned that everything is just a state of mind and a matter of perspective, it all depends on as to how one takes the things that happens life.

This simple but very deep principle of engaging in mindful activities can be almost applied to any activity one does throughout the day, and with this way of living, it teaches a lot of people to live in such a way that one does not dwell too much on the past and at the same time not overthink too much about the future. It also guides one to ease and destress from one’s daily hustle and bustle, and personally for me, it helped me loosen up from the stress I have experiencing lately and also help me strengthen my relationship with my little brother. During the ride, my brother told me that he hasn’t seen me a lot lately since I am either outside or stuck in my own room, and this made me feel a little bit teary since I have slowly forgotten that I am a role model and an older brother to him. Although it just requires some simple listening, being mindful during the time that he told me this feeling of his helped me fix myself and heal myself at the same time since I realized that someone misses and loves me for who I am. On a side note, later throughout that day, we talked a bit more about how his Grade 5 life is on-going right now and we played board games as soon as we came home. In hindsight, I usually go about riding rides and going to game zones, especially now in my age, as a very boring and mundane thing to do. I usually just accompany my brother to Enchanted Kingdom, Star City or Timezone as a task of seeing him or in Filipino words “BANTAY.” But after this moment of mindfulness, I realized that the way one rides a ride is really similar to one’s way of living or seeing the course of life as I have explained earlier.

Overall, mindfulness has a deep impact on me on a very personal level. Lately, I have lost the inspiration and motivation to go about my day and instead just stay in bed and think a lot of things but this experience has helped me heal myself, be friends with myself and be excited to live again as a growing and developing persons. As seen from the quote above, mindfulness can be a great asset and tool for me to live with a smile in my face and contentment in my heart, but most importantly, it can help me become my way of life and help me help others who are feeling too stressed or anxious in their lives.

Having emotions is an essential part of being human. In our daily lives, we all experience things and events that bring out emotion within us. As mentioned by several researchers, emotions affect the brain, the heart, the body and the way the person acts throughout a certain moment and throughout the day. For this discussion, I will show a glimpse of the five basic emotions humans feel every day. In order to do so, the A-B-C Model of Basic Emotions will be used in order to understand the principles and effects of emotions.

Sadness

Happiness/Joy

Fear

Anger

Disgust