8 Years of Marriage

Photo by Lito Sy.

I celebrated eight years of marriage with my wife today. And after all this time I still believe that marrying her is one of the best decisions I ever made. I think that is one of the thoughts in my mind that will remain the same, always and forever, no matter what.

I always had the necessary strength to get through the hard times and I am lucky that like me, Emafe also had the strength to make it through the rain when things got rough. Now it's 2018 and we have been married for 8 years!

The biggest lesson I learned from being married to Emafe is that health is certainly wealth, and that all things worth having are healthy. Everything else that's unhealthy leads to suffering in the end, one way or another.

So Emafe, Love... thank you for teaching me the value of health. And thank you for learning with me side-by-side. I will do my best to focus on health and I will try to get better at being and remaining healthy. That way all of us can live a long and happy life together. You, me, baby Zac and all of our loved ones. Thank you for being nice to me and Happy Anniversary to Us!

I love you. (and baby Zac)

The food that was cooked for the celebration.

Some of the friends that visited us for the celebration.

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Happily Ever After

September 10, 2015

Movies in the United States and abroad have created ideas about marriage that involve two people "falling in love" and all of their dreams coming true. The story-line is usually a romantic love story with a couple who beats the odds and overcomes the challenges that threaten their relationship. Sometimes in the end, the inseparable couple gets married, and as we all know.. they live happily ever after. But is that what it's like in real life?

Here are some thoughts that run through my mind about life & marriage. It includes ideas that are generally not included in the entertainment industry's portrayal of a perfect marriage:

• Our story did not end after our 'happily ever after' started. We got married on March 5th, 2010 and it was a dream come true for both of us, but it wasn't the end. We had many peak experiences full of excitement & happiness after that, and it was more or less intermixed with just as many 'valleys' (hard times).

• The highlight of our marriage, at least for me, isn't the "falling in love" aspect or all of the dreamy romance filled-type images often displayed on social media or portrayed in romantic love movies. The highlight is getting to know what I misunderstood and misjudged. It's learning and growing, understanding my self more, understanding @emafe more, and understanding the mind, life and reality more. I only came to appreciate and receive these things through trial, error, seeking 'truth' and more or less, marriage.

• In a sense, there is no such thing as a happily after since that would mean that the work in one's marriage was done, but as long as we are not dead, everything we think, do, say and want requires effort and work. Everything is a work in progress and that includes our marriage, so the closest thing to a happily ever after, besides a few moments that feel like a happily ever after, is constant renewal.

• Getting married, living one's dreams, and having beautiful moments will always come with low moments too. Every positive I have experienced in marriage and in life, was eventually offset with an equally negative aspect. For a young adult or teenager, it is not always obvious that our positive experiences will more or less be balanced out with negative experiences, but now that I am 34 years old and have been married for almost 10 years, I'd say that everything gets balanced out eventually - there is no positive and no negative, reality is neutral and it's just our personal biases that are either positive or negative.

So in summary, Hollywood and International Love Movies portray a very positive experience for lovebirds that meet each other, fall in love and finally settle down. But marriage isn't all positive and neither is life. Life and marriage has a positive side, a negative side, and learning from both and evolving is just about as close to reality and a happily every after as one can get.

December 1, 2017

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Thinking of the Future

Father & Son.

While I write this I am in our room listening to music and bicycling. Zac is sleeping and Fema is browsing the net. The air is cool in our room and there is a slight breeze from the air conditioner where the wall meets the ceiling. I spend time reading and writing everyday and it's a great time to exercise on a stationary bike.

I started to exercise and improve myself after thinking about Zac. I was thinking about his future and I realized he will have a good one if I make good decisions now. So I am changing and adjusting my lifestyle to get healthier. That way I will be able to guide him in living a healthy lifestyle by example.

​To get started I downloaded an app called To-Doist to better organize ​each day. Apps like this are important in this day and age where it's hard to stay focused and distractions abound from Facebook to Instagram. I plan on teaching Zac to check his daily tasks early in life but in order to do that, I need to do it first!

In addition to keeping track of things I started to take an online course on edX to improve the thinking I do and to get advice from world-class teachers. The course I am taking is titled "Philosophy & Critical Thinking". It will help me clarify some of my ideas and should improve my ability to write articles. 

Those are some of the things I am doing to prepare for the future. I will try to remove most of the uncertainty in Zac's life to guarantee that he has a good future. Wish me luck!

A stationary bike!

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When Dreams Come True

Our Santa Baby of Christmas 2017.

Right before you were born I made a decision to stop dreaming. To just live things as they are. I felt like everything I asked for was given to me but that the cost of my dreams were too high, and then you were born. 

You were born a bit preterm but got older. As you got older you got stronger, and now I get to see the sparkle in your eyes when you smile with joy. That’s when it hit me. It actually just hit me today. I can dream again. I can dream again for you. This time I’ll analyze my dreams so that no one will be hurt and so that everyone will benefit. I’ll dream of a better society in the same way I dreamed of you.

You are when dreams come true. I love you, Baby Zac.

The New Year 2018.

Zac's Grandparents and Cousins (Fema's side of the family).

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