Philippines *Day 4*

Malu's 75 yr old mother wakes up every morning about four or five like clockwork and begins to bring out the large bowls that she uses to wash the clothes by hand on the street in front of the house. They have a washing machine but Nanay (That is what Malu's mother is called) prefers to wash the clothes by hand because she says they are much cleaner and smell fresher. Nanay was born in an even simpler time than the Philippines is in now.

I love waking up in the morning to the rooster crowing about five o'clock. And as odd or as unrelateable as this might sound, I enjoy taking a bath with only one running spicket in the house. All of the water in the house is carried by buckets. And in the case of baths, are brought to a larger ten to fifteen gallon barrel that you wash up from. This isn't life in an impoverished household, the household that I am in is actually consider mainstream. When I go to HeCares I will expect a little less. Life here is so much simpler; no complaints, so many friendships, so much family and so many smiles.

I juxtapose that with the life I see in the U.S. and I think of the striving for more that I see there, the long hours at work, the long hours in college, and the goals and the ambitions that are on the tips of the minds of so many. And then you have the underlying unhappiness that goes with that; the anger when things aren't done in line with our goals and ambitions, when goals aren't met and the so many other things that cause the hard looks on the faces of the masses.

I believe that we were brought into this world to be satisfied with what we are given without regard to how much or how little. When I say 'given' I'm speaking about the about the things that we are able to acquire in this world. I'm sure most of us have met people in our lives that are able to amass wealth by almost any means that they try. And then there are those that can't have, acquire, or keep anything that they try to acquire no matter what. In the U.S. we have set up these patterns of success or failure into theories that would require us to follow certain patterns in order to acquire the same success that others have had. Following those patterns seems to increase the frequency of success for those that follow it, but it doesn't seem to bring any additional happiness for those that follow those patterns. And even then there are still some who can not amass greater profit and financial gain.

However that satisfaction that I am speaking of goes beyond what we have been given materially, I believe that satisfaction goes into the positive desires we have been given. For me it is a desire to help people that struggle with the basic necessities of food and clothing. A few years ago that desire was to help people acquire a computer who might not be able to otherwise afford it. For all of us I believe we have been given several desires. Some of them good, some of them not so good, that's for each of us to assess within ourselves. Some of these positive desires go beyond just simply desires if we will feed them. By feeding them they can become passions.

"Without passion a man is a mere latent force and possibility like the flint that awaits the strike of an iron before it gives forth it's spark" Henry Frederick Amiel