visible rhetoric

One day a little boy saw a butterfly struggling to get out of its cocoon. It was a difficult struggle, one that entails expending all of ones strength to get one’s body out through the little hole of the cocoon. The boy out of sheer generosity tried to help it by making it easier for the butterfly to get out. He cut the hole bigger and in doing so the butterfly came out in no time. But what he saw coming out disturbed him. It looked more like a caterpillar than a butterfly – its body bloated and its wings helplessly shriveled up. The butterfly never took to flight. Its bloated body was too heavy for it to bear and its wings too withered to carry it up in flight. The boy learned from that experience that that little hole in the cocoon and the struggle the butterfly has to take to go through that hole was a necessity. By going through it, excess fluid is excreted and the wings are combed and straightened out. The little hole and the struggle that accompanies it were necessities...

I am supposedly the prefect of discipline and it is part of my duty, I mean not just a part, but the main bulk of my duty, to keep everybody in line – meaning I should be there to discipline, to make sure that their behavior remains within the ambit of what we consider civil, to make sure that the rules will always be followed, to make sure that everybody sleeps and wakes on time, to make sure that the little boys eat their vegetables, to make sure that they do their house cleaning well, to make sure that they don’t do anything weird to their teacher, to make sure . . . the list can be endless! Doing all these to the boys I can presume what your next question would be. You would ask me – do you like this kind of job? Last night I sat down and listed the many things I hated with this kind of job.

In ancient times sailors who have been at sea for months on end waited in anticipation for the time when the captain announces that the ship is now ob portu. Ob portu is a Latin phrase which means toward the harbor and it is used in a time when a wharf does not extend that far towards the sea to accommodate ships even during low tide as if have today. Ob Portu means the ship has almost reached the port and it is waiting for the right time, for the high tide to come so that the ship could dock in the harbor without fear of getting aground. A sailor is assigned as a lookout and when the high tide comes, he signals the crew and they immediately grab this instance to come nearer to port and dock. If they miss this suitable time, if they miss this right time, if they miss this appropriate time, they will have to wait for another day so that they could dock properly.

At age 36 God deems it necessary it seems that I be given a crash course on loving to augment if not to complete my own human formation. He has given me at least two points today which I am sharing with you for whatever they’re worth to you at your age. The first point I would call competing for love, of course with all love’s necessary accessories like caring, attention, affection, attachment perhaps and even gifts given. Competing for love had a early head start for me probably when my younger brother came into the world and when I began understanding what my elder brothers were talking about when we were left on our own exchanging boyish comparisons like the toys that they had in the past when I was not yet born. Even when I was still very young I remember even regretting to see old pictures of my brothers being cuddled. Obviously I can’t seem to locate the pictures they had of me being cuddled, hugged and embraced. Well after having their fourth child I surmise that they got ...