I can’t give my two – cent feelings every time I got sick or injured way back my toddler years. My mom told me that I was a normal developing child who often got fever, chills, cold, and cough when I was about months to four years old. She also told me that I was once a picky eater as oppose to what I am now. I used to fuss at mealtime and she felt bad about my eating habits because she thought I will not grow well. She fed me to get to eat more and if she lets me feed myself, I won’t eat enough and I will get messy. She had to push the spoon into my mouth or made tricks to distract or entertain me. She chased me around the house to get more food. That’s why I was a clumsy kid back then who always got a scar on my knees. I have also undergone this “purga” process. My mom gave me Antiox and voila!, “cute” creatures came out wriggling from my butt (Actually, they’re so cute I’d like to eat them like pasta if only they were not bad).

          I’ve got measles when I was five and chickenpox when I was six. I looked so disgusting. I asked my mom if there’s a cure, but she told me there’s none ( I mean there is but only for the fever). She told me not to worry because I was vaccinated when I was an infant. That might not be a cure but it will help decrease the damage or intensity that I might get. And if ever I get chickenpox in the future, my body already has the antibodies to fight them back. That will likely lessen the damage and its effects.

          When I was in my first grade, I got sore eyes and my mom gave me Visine and tinted sunglasses. And everything’s back to normal not until I reached fifth grade. I had this urinary tract infection or UTI as it’s popularly known. It’s the most nerve – wracking disease that I’ve got so far considering the intensity of pain (actually, I have low threshold for pain). It hurts so bad that’s why I couldn’t even sleep. I looked like a walking stick for a week. I was admitted at Polymedic. I have been dextrosed. Nurses gave me this white liquid whose generic and brand name I can’t remember. But I’m pretty sure it’s not semen. When I was twelve, I’ve got my menarche (I was terrified, I thought my anus was bleeding. Add this to the hassles that a woman undergoes). And on that very same day, something spurted into my right thumb like a mushroom that popped out of nowhere – it’s a wart. And coupled with this is acne in the ventral part of my upper arm. I was not guilty because I’m still sticking to my proper daily hygiene. It’s just that something’s not right. And then again, my mom told me not to worry because it will eventually disappear and fortunately it did. Thanks to Katialis.

          Here comes another skin disease . They used to call it “butlig” but it’s somehow different. I can’t remember the specific name of that skin disease but the dermatologist told us that it is genetic and its possible that I have inherited it from my father who used to have one. It’s actually fat accumulations surrounding the eyes. The doctor had it cauterized and then it never showed up again. I also have hair fall when I was in second year high. I thought I have cancer and was about to die. My mom told me that I’m so fickle – minded to think about such a thing to the fact that a cancer patient gets hair fall when he/she is already in coma, which is I was not. The doctor told me to just decrease the amount of shampoo that I use everyday.

          And everything’s back to normal again not until I’ve entered UP. I’ve taken this Math11 thing which scared the hell out of me. My scores were so disappointing. I channeled my depression through eating. I ate, eat a lot and ate more even if I’m already full. It came to a point wherein my stomach got saturated (like in a hypertonic solution, I guess). It didn’t swell, but what I got is dyspepsia. It was late in the evening, I was rushed to PGH because I can no longer bear the pain. The doctor told me to eat moderately. No rice or anything “heavyweight” for a week, just plain porridge. It sucks a lot! I think I was being punished for being so “matakaw”. And they gave me this med whose name I can’t remember again.

          But the most distressing thing that happened to me is when my life was in a blur, I mean literally. My vision “increased” to 100/100. Its so ironic because I can clearly see the cute ophthalmologists at PGH but I can’t see those letters at the Snell en’s chart. I’ve attempted to memorize them but I failed. All I see are dots (lots of them). I was required to wear those stupid glasses so that I can adjust but I feel uncomfortable so I only used it when you know, when things don’t go my way.

          In general, I still consider myself healthy because I possess at least one of the “The Ten Signs of Good Nutrition from Nido – good appetite.

“…that is precisely what we need philosophers for. We do not need them to choose a beauty queen or the days bargain in tomatoes. Philosophers will try to ignore highly topical affairs and instead try to draw people’s attention to what really is eternally ‘true’, eternally ‘beautiful’, eternally ‘good’. – Sophie’s World

            There’s a slight difference between pretty and beautiful. When someone is pretty, one has a good appearance. But when one is beautiful, he/she shines on the inside and out. The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man seeing him comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses courage and determination or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and phenomena.

Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to him in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the woods, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf’s appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had experienced is art. If even the boy had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an encounter with a wolf and recounted it so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced when he feared the world, that also would be art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in imagination) expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, courage, or despondency and the transition from one to another of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by sounds so that the hearers are infected by them and experience them as they were experienced by the composer.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.