ULAM

A good college friend of mine who migrated to the US with his family on our third year of Computers, Assembly Languages, Bytes and Bits, created a t-shirt brand named U.L.A.M. We met up thrice during my stay at the US and for the most part, it was him driving over from the OC to my aunt's house in Valencia. Once, we also met in the east coast when I was in New Jersey and his company flew him over for training. We had lots to talk about, the past, the present which was different for the both of us and everything that came in between those last few college days and this meeting 6 years later. But I'm regressing.

The reason I'm writing this post is in part a salute to him and the great strides he has taken to remake himself. But for the most part, it's just me putting into words - or rather borrowing his words - to articulate the vow I'm taking this year:

Undoing Lies and Mistakes.

And the way I understand ULAM as he explained it to me, is to reinvent yourself. Although I have been into multiple conversations that stretch the envelope of self-reinvention, Undoing Lies and Mistakes is, in my sense, over and beyond any of the those previous conversations that talk about change brought about by empowerment. I do agree that there is nothing completely wrong with empowering yourself through channels that enable you to, the thing that hooked me with ULAM is the fact that what it stresses is for you to make amends with yourself. Change comes after that. Stronger or not, it doesn't matter because that's not the point. Point is, you acknowledge all the lies, all the mistakes and you also acknowledge the fact that some of their effects are permanent. But for those that that you can change, and that you want to change for better of for worse and with or without the acceptance of society, you are going to change it. To undo a lie is to make it a truth. To undo a mistake is to make it right. And there's no need to apologize to anyone because you're doing it for yourself. And there's nothing selfish about that contrary to popular thought.

Brand New Eyes

There's nothing like getting something other than what you expected. Most of the time, it is a source of agitation as you get thrown off your comfort zone and you're forced to recalibrate and adapt or at the very least to cope with the situation. But this time, it was a welcome disconcertment. Although the whole thing brought to mind the old adage 'Be careful what you wish for', I was glad that it was just a glimpse and not something permanent.

The 6 weeks that I spent in the US gave me one of the biggest intangible lessons of my life. And although it was a comfortable plane right that brought me there, it might as well have been a hurricane because the first thought that I had the moment I landed back was 'There's no place like home.' Scarecrow, Lion, Tin Man, Witches and Wizards aside, the trip back home (which coincided with the new year) equipped me with brand new eyes.

It's probably my biggest take-away from the trip. And I'm tons glad because it means that I'm not simply aging.