Skip to main content

A Box of Kisses

Some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you, Daddy.” He was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found the box was empty.

He yelled at her, “Don’t you know that when you give someone a present, there’s supposed to be something inside it?”

The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said,”Oh, Daddy, it is not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All for you, Daddy.”

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged for her forgiveness.
It is told that the man kept that gold box by his bed for years and whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each of us as humans have been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, friends, family and God. There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.

Comments

What people are reading...

Philippines Withdraws from the ICC

Woke up today to the news that the Philippines is finally pulling out of the ICC. The mainstream media, as expected, started looking into the legitimacy of the act while taking the opportunity to once again throw the EJK trash in the equation, still hoping that the shit would stick somewhere, somehow.  It's already been 19 months that they have been trying the same approach, with some help from their friends - the political minority, the human rights groups, the UN HR, and lately, the ICC.

Philippine Election 2019: A Case for Migration

There has been a number of story runs on the media the past couple of days regarding the search keywords ‘migrate’ and ‘migrating’ trending HARD soon after the election.   Seeing that it involved data analytics and number crunching, which is a passion of mine and is a good part of my day job for the past 17 years, it immediately struck a chord.   I first saw it on Rappler. I read through the article and, as soon as I was done, searched online to see what other agencies ran the story and how they presented it. Using google search tools, I saw the first run of the story is by Davinci Maru of ABS-CBN at 11:47pm on May 13, 2019, entitled “Dismayed at initial poll results, Filipinos search for ‘migrate’ online.   Then the Philippine Star soon followed, with a more detailed account of the interview.   To give credit where credit is due, of all the story runs, only the Philippine Star article actually provided more useable content, rather than the usual strategy emp...

The Bliss in Surrender

Surrender is a negative word.  It does not exist in any fighter’s book.  It is an order, usually almost always the last one, every general wishes to not ever give.  In surrender we relinquish all our power, accept we no longer are in control, and we resign to our fate.  To surrender is to give up, to concede, to lose.  We live in a world where giving up, losing control or simply just losing are frowned upon. To surrender is to show weakness. So we “man” up.  We set out to conquer life. We struggle. We survive. Battle-hardened, we march on.  No retreat, no surrender.

Lesson from the Hedgehogs

It was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold. The hedgehogs, realizing the situation, decided to group together to keep warm. This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions. After awhile, they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen. So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth. Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the heat that came from the others. This way they were able to survive.

32 Years of EDSA People Power

Please Juan, wake up from deep slumber! I am a Filipino, and a darn proud one. Yet, I just could not get my head around what we, as a people, do. We seem to be a flock of headless chickens roaming endlessly around a barren and hopeless land. We fight against each other without a clear understanding of what we fight for. People in EDSA now are saying, “We are fighting for democracy!” To which I say, “Of course we are!” We all get it. We fought hard for it and got it 32 years ago, did we not? Where exactly did it take us today? I am a firm believer of the idea that the greatest gift our forefathers left us is democracy. There are still societies to this day whose people who do not even know that people can now choose their leaders. We are given something many people can still only dream of. Yet there are those who say democracy failed us. Others just perennially blame the failure to the government. I think it is more a case of us failing democracy and a corrupt go...

World War C

This current conundrum that is the COVID-19 knocks at our doorsteps and tests our resolve as a race.  It sows fear and panic similar to that famous horror/thriller/sci-fi movie many of us know, World War Z. It is okay to be afraid.  Fear is what has helped humanity survive the various extinction events it faced throughout the centuries.  However, it is also important to realize that excessive fear is not helpful.  It either drives us to panic, which can potentially lead to anarchy, or cause us to freeze and just ultimately drive us all to inaction.  Lack of fear on the other hand is just, well, silly and somewhat irresponsible. The COVID-19 caused by the SARS-COV-2 strain of the coronavirus has taken us all by surprise.  It has spread across the globe faster than we could have all imagined, either through our ignorance or perhaps, even arrogance.  Whatever the case maybe, the reality is that it is here and it is wreaking havoc.  We have under...