On The Sacrament of Confession:Even if I am not a Catholic Christian and am not asked to partake of the sacrament of confession, I do believe that it may have positive effects for human beings for several reasons. The first is that because human beings are indeed communal. I attest to this by my own experiences. No man is an island. I have had many problems with my ex-boyfriend when we were still together, and one of those problems is that I had to keep our relationship a secret because my family and friends did not agree about it. Handling problems within our relationship became a lot harder because I had no one to talk to about it. With this, I realized that in many aspects of my life, I actually face challenges with more courage and make better decisions even just by being able to share my sentiments and experiences to and with other people. The next is that I believe confession is not merely trying to get away from the guilt (which might be apparent in the face of abuse), but it can also be a means to express the sincerity of the one who confesses. I think that a person who confesses his sins to another human being subjects himself to a vulnerable position. No matter how much assurance one can get that his confession will be kept secret, who he is confessing to is still a human being capable of flaws, for instance the tendency to judge or the slip-of-tongue. This is not to say that those confessed to should not be fully trusted, I’m just trying to point out that as a person to confess, I would probably have at least some amount of fear of being “exposed”. Therefore, I believe that confession is not just a bed of roses where one hopes to have their sins just washed away and be again guilt-free but in some sense a test of sincerity. I also believe in the idea that whatever an individual does will inevitably affect others. Therefore in the face of sin, not only does a person affect his relationship with Christ but also with his body, the Church. Therefore, aside from Christ, it is only right to also make amends with the Church through the sacrament of confession. The latter is most important, however upon damaging one’s relationship with the Christ’s body, one eventually becomes an ineffective part of the body because of his separation from it. I realized this during the times when I was very distant from my home church. For some time, I experienced a “backslide” from my faith and just cooped myself in and away from the church and from most of my friends. By God’s grace, I was able to get back on my feet and my faith. However, it was admittedly hard to reconcile with my church family and I strongly felt how distant I still was from all that was going on in the church. It was not until I joined a small discipleship group (D-group) that I again felt the sense of belonging to the church family and function in it effectively again (I’m not sure if the activities of my D-group is an appropriate comparison for confession, but since I have never experienced confession, please allow me to express my reflection in such way).

On The Importance of Holy Mass:
 “From God’s perspective, the heart of the man who responds to him is greater and more important than the whole immense material cosmos, for all that the latter allows us is to glimpse something of God’s grandeur.” I think this excerpt summarizes in a worthy manner how important the Holy Mass is. It reiterates the idea that the land is given to human beings as a space to worship the Father and also as a space to receive his abundance. We are in awe of all the things we encounter in the land given us but they are actually nothing compared to the actual purpose of the Creation. And this purpose, which is to be in communion with God, his people, and his creation is achieved in the Holy Mass. Even as it is true that we can in fact commune with the Father when we are alone, the potential of the gift of being able to be in His presence is reached when in communion with others to whom He also graced the Creation. God’s magnificence is only seen because He allows it to be seen and because man allows himself to see it. Often times it is us who blinds ourselves from this grace. For me, this is striking because it is funny how most people search high and low for things better, things to excite or thrill themselves with. But it is actually in the Church, in communion with Christ’s body, where human beings can find the cure for the deep longing of that ultimate breath taking experience which all along can be achieved just by allowing ourselves to be absorbed in God’s presence in its full potential in the Holy Mass.

When I was younger, the idea of following Christ was very nice. For me it meant doing nothing but be of service to the Father. However, as I grew older and acquired more responsibilities, I started having ideas that “following Christ” entailed literally dropping everything I had –my family, my responsibilities, basically the life that I’ve known and lived. This idea made me very uneasy and therefore reluctant to actually follow. I even debated with myself of how this might actually “just” mean escaping from the difficulties of my present life. This was really a strain to my relationship with the Father, and it was so hard to actually understand what I was supposed to do thus made me to always push the issue aside.

            Little did I know that following did not mean to just apathetically drop everything and turn my back on my life. My existence is a gift from God and there must be a reason why he gave it, there must be a purpose why we are all leading different lives and realizing different specializations. Although for some, following Christ might mean actually dropping everything and lead a life of holiness untouched by the world if possible, for others it also meant to take the path that Jesus was taking. Following meant walking side by side with Him throughout my life and strive to live the way He did when He was still on earth.

            We do not have to stick to a preset method as to how we should follow, rather as people have differences then also are the differences in the manners of following. However, no matter how different the ways are, the most important is the wholehearted pursuance for the Father. The differences between peoples which includes the differences in the specializations achieved was not meant to make pride for ourselves, rather it meant to make ourselves and others marvel at the greatness of the Father as it radiates through our differences.  Thus, it is the purity of the heart in doing that counts and not the manner in which it is done.

            So if I was asked now to if I would follow Christ, even as I know that it is easier said than done, I would wholeheartedly strive to do so. As the concept of the original solitude tells us, we came from the Father and our end goal is to return to the Father. Since our likeness to Christ brings us neared to the Father, I now realize that following Christ is not a means of escaping, rather a means of getting to the end goal which is to be with the Father.

Unlike the families of most of the students in the Ateneo, my family does not have its own company or business. For this reason, I entered Ateneo de Manila University with the hopes of already having acquired valuable knowledge and experience in the field of business once I graduate. This is how I saw my future; I believed that every venture started from a goal no matter how vague or clear and that these goals change overtime – adapt with acquisition of new knowledge and fresh ideas.

            Even as a kid, I have always been interested in business; I read books about strategies, watched videos about how-to’s, and attempted to sell random things to my schoolmates. But never have I been exposed to any form of legalities in business as closely as I am now, and I can say that I was very surprised to be presented with a different face of dealing with business.

            As I read through the essay by Richard Goossen, I realized that an entrepreneur can learn so much from a lawyer. Not only because of the legal matters that entrepreneurs need to take note of but also because of the seemingly opposite mindset entrepreneurs have with lawyers.

            In the essay, the importance of the fact that aspiring entrepreneurs should have a balance between being positive and realistic in business ventures was stressed out. I am now aware that I should carefully examine future consequences of each business undertaking not only because of the marginal risks, but now also because of the legal matters that affect, and without proper knowledge, probably even complicate the business endeavour.

            I was also continuously taken aback while reading through the essay because there was so much to take into account. I thought that handling entrepreneurship is already tricky on its own, what more that there are now law related matters that I have to carefully consider.

            Another thing that caught my attention was what should have been an obvious realization that the world is imperfect and that lawyers too can make mistakes, give wrong advices, and possibly lead their clients to worse directions than where they are, or simply be ineffective. Taking this into account, I recognize more the importance of being familiar with the legalities of business as to not completely rely on lawyers.

            However, regardless how great some lawyers are, given the imperfect justice system we have, even the best are liable of defeat form injustice. With this realization, I found a sensible reason for following the adage that I should not put all my eggs in one basket in case things should go wrong.

            By these new acquisitions of knowledge, my simplistic views of my entrepreneurship goals have significantly changed. At this point, entrepreneurship for me is not only starting a business, running it, dealing with risks in between, and eventually either ending up bankrupt or creating a cash cow; I realize now that entrepreneurship is so much more – much more complicated and even much riskier.

             I bear in mind that the sense of being spontaneous is critical in building the foundation of entrepreneurship, but I am also aware this can also cause be the downfall of each business venture. I consider the need to keep being positive but also consider instances where being safer than sorry is a better option. I will continue to be concerned about being constantly updated with the trends of the market but now I also am concerned with the movements of the law. For now, all these might seem overwhelming to a college student like I, but I have to accept that this is how the game of entrepreneurship works and make every effort to adapt if I really want to succeed.

Most people who have not yet ever encountered Chinese writings in the past would be overwhelmed by the complexity of how Chinese characters are written. Chinese characters have acquired many names, some of which names are squared characters, squared graph characters, or tetra graph.  As seen by its complexity, Chinese characters do have a hefty history of which’s development can be dated as far back as 4000 t0 4500 years ago. This was when the Shang dynasty flourished, and from that time were many writings found in oracle bones used for such things as prescriptions.

                 It has been found that a considerable amount of Chinese language developed from pictograms or symbols that convey pictorial resemblance to the particular action, thing, event, et al. However, this presented a problem as language expanded and more vocabularies were learned by the peoples. This then pushed the establishment of words formed through rebus, or the usage of pictures and different devices to represent parts of a word instead of the whole by itself so that a whole new meaning can be derived from the combinations. Today however, the pictograms of which some Chinese characters have originated from are not anymore as obvious as before. This is because as words became many, the pictograms have been simplified and standardize overtime for the convenience of writing. It is interesting to take note of how even in simplification; there were cultural reasons as to why the written form of Chinese language looks like the way it is. During the earlier times when the Chinese would write on printing blocks made of wood grain, they had to be careful not to break the grains as they write and therefore they patterned their writing to adapt thus giving them a kind of typeface characterize by strokes that would be thinly horizontal and thickly vertical so as to protect their printing blocks from easy wear and tear.

                It was also seen from archaeological research that however the spoken form of Chinese language could have been somewhat unintelligible from one area of Chinese people to another and from one instance or event to another, the written form was universal. It was also seen that each Chinese character often represented a word or idea than just a sound which is commonly seen for the characters of other languages. This however caused a hindrance to mass literacy as people needed to learn a considerable amount of Chinese characters just to be able to read newspaper, books, or writings that entailed more prestige. Thus, as compensation before the Chinese alphabets were created, in 1956 simplifications to common words used in Chinese language were introduced. To establish a more standardized spoken and written language, in about the same time as the establishment of simplified Chinese, mainland China started using Pinyin, not to replace but rather to transcribe Chinese characters from its original form so that the use of the language would be made known to foreigners as well.

                As I have mentioned awhile ago, each individual Chinese characters usually represented one particular meaning or even more than one as opposed to foreign languages whose individual character (letters of alphabet) represent only part of a whole word of which’s combination would be needed to get its full meaning. It is of advantage that foreign languages, for instance English, would use alphabets to create words and thus which alphabets would be very flexible and innovative in creation of new words and therefore concepts. However the Chinese characters of which some originally derive from pictographs, no matter how minimal is left from the representation of the original pictograph may be, still is a close preservation of the original written form of Chinese language. This is important, as in general knowledge, preservation of culture is one of the main factors needed for a nation to prosper. And since language is a primary vehicle for culture, the preservation of the written form of Chinese characters at its least may be a suggestion why Chinese people within and out the country are much rooted to their culture.

                The next idea to take note of is that how different the grammar and usage of the Chinese language is from the English language. As English language emphasizes on structure to be able to clarify what they mean, the Chinese examines the meaning first in order for the structure and the grammar of their language to be put together. For instance, the character hou from the word houmien in Chinese which means “behind” is also used in the word yihou which means the “future”. It would be confusing for some foreigners to understand this because the future is not usually associated to the word behind as the logic is that a person walks toward the future which therefore makes it be in front. However, there is a logical explanation as to why the Chinese uses the word the way they do. This is because, for the Chinese the future is unseen and since it is illogical to say that something in front of you is unseen they used the word behind to signify the invisibility and unpredictability of the future.

                Another example would be the sentence construction of Chinese language as opposed to English language. The sentence “I will eat breakfast this morning” is an example of how westerners would construct a simple sentence; they use the sentence pattern of S-V-O. If translated in Chinese, this particular sentence would go like “I, this morning, will eat breakfast”. The pattern is still the same, S-V-O, however the answer the question when is placed in a different position. The logic behind this for Chinese people is that one cannot know what transpires before all the details have been laid out. In this case, one cannot know if it is breakfast, lunch or dinner that is being eaten before they know when it is being eaten.

                The Chinese language definitely takes complexity as one of its trademarks, nevertheless, it is always fulfilling to know and understand the language because it is one of the most used language in the world and also because as we have seen how prosperous the nation as a whole is, we get a glimpse of how their majestic minds think through their knowledge.