Hello there friends! Sorry for the long absence! I have decided recently that since the life of a person revolves around the practice of a wide range of virtues (or good habits), then there is a need to re-title this blog from Staying Simple, Staying Alive to Stayin' Alive to suit the general scope intended in this new thrust. Staying Simple is focused on just one of the virtues: Simplicity. Although it is a laudable virtue, making it the sole topic for this blog may not be encouraging for you, my dear friends and readers as it is quite limited. But if the scope goes around the whole gamut of life's healthy practices, that'll be more interesting, isn't it? Yes, for both of us. Plus the bonus is that if I use Stayin' Alive as the title of my blog, I guess the '70s nostalgia will stimulate my gray matter to come up with better ideas on how to keep Stayin' Alive both physically and spiritually. How I wish I can splice a short portion of that disco music from the Bee Gees and patch it here as an intro or warm up. Right now, I have very limited knowledge in video and sound editing to make that possible. But I'll find a way.
The foundation established in the initial article of this blog remains the same: man ought to put to heart his mission to Know, Love and Serve God. His goal: Heaven. That idea was tackled in the first article written and can still be viewed in this blog, along with the 2nd and the 3rd. I haven't yet finalized the factors that I will consider in choosing what virtue or good habit to discuss on a specific date. But one thing is definite: if I find myself wanting in a certain good habit, that will not be a reason to skip discussing the habit. On the contrary, that should be a strong motivation for me to cover the topic as a way of reminding myself to improve on that virtue and to show others that working it up is possible no matter how difficult as long as one is genuinely intent in constantly making changes where and when they count.
At this time, I will be using the acronym method of presenting ideas. In my training sessions as a Sales Head in my present as well as past career affiliations in the field of real estate marketing, I have regularly used acronyms as a tool to kinda order a certain set of ideas and make them easier to remember. Some say it's an easy way out but for me, it's a challenge to match the discussion with the topic found in each letter of the word or the phrase being covered. And since it's a personal style that I have been used to, I request that my friends adapt to this "acronym" approach. Some modules I have developed using this approach are: (1) Charismatic Speaker (2) Real Estate Focus (3) Toastmaster. And titles like Inspire, Prime, EDSA (Elite Direct Sales Associates, my own group in KidzWorld, a theme park project in the early 2000), GIL (my own nickname which I used to coin my business name, "Global Industrial Link"). More on acronyms - the late Sir Raul Paredes of my past Kiwanis Club (the so-called Premier Club- Manila) gave us an amusing story about the original Light Rail Transit-1 connecting the cities of Pasay, Manila and Caloocan when the government was in the process of finding an appropriate name for it. People came up with all sorts of titles.
One name that caught the fancy of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos (it was during his term when LRT-1 was constructed and first operated) was the acronym M.A.R.C.O.S. However he did not approve of it for obvious reasons. I won't make you guess what the creators of that name had in mind. Here it is: Metropolitan Area Rail Commuter Overhead System. They even had a story for that. A usually tardy employee in Manila comes in early regularly for work, to the surprise of many. Curious, they asked him: "What have you been doing lately to improve on your punctuality?" His reply: "Nagma-MARCOS po ako. Mag-MARCOS na rin po kayo!" Perhaps I need to make this clear - No campaign intended here for his son Bongbong. Just wanted to show the effectiveness of acronyms in delivering ideas succintly, and creatively.
In my next article, I will start discussing the new title of my blog: Stayin' Alive using the acronym method. I shall target one virtue representing each letter and that single punctuation mark there, the apostrophe after letter "n" (huh?, even the apostrophe will be given an equivalent virtue? Yes and you'll see in the subsequent issues as we go along). And while the next article is pending, you can post some suggestions as to what, in your opinion, those letters in Stayin' Alive can stand for to make this article more exciting and interactive. Since the first letter is a premier spot, I guess you have a ready thought what that letter S stands for. More on that in our next discussion. In the meantime, I enjoin everyone to help boost quality of life in their families and the society they belong to through the deliberate, conscious and constant practice of life's virtues, our natural/organic and God's preferred way of Stayin' Alive.
