raymondballon-blog

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September 15, 2024

Last night, I woke up at 11 PM but snoozed my alarm twice, each time for 30 minutes. I was too lazy to get up, even though it was the start of the work week. I don’t understand my body—on my days off, I wake up before the alarm even rings. But when it’s time for work, I cling to every minute of sleep, delaying the inevitable as long as I can. Despite my procrastination, I still had enough time…

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Beyond the Punchline

It all started with a joke. I had just switched jobs, leaving behind a toxic apprenticeship in Pasay City for an entry-level call center position in Quezon City. The pay at my new company was only two-thirds of what I earned at my previous job, but I hoped it would be less stressful. I would have stayed if the compensation had matched the hours and quality of work I put in at my old…

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The Trinity

It is to be found for the first time in Tertullian’s writings, although probably he did not invent it: Trinitas. Diarmaid MacCulloch. Diarmaid MacCulloch – Christianity_ The First Three Thousand Years In my nearly two decades as a Christian, I only recently discovered that the Trinity was a highly contentious idea in early Christianity. We were taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy…

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The Countryside

Photo taken on January 8, 2024 at 5:11 PM I took this photo in Gabao, Irosin, Sorsogon. When I went home to the province from Quezon city — some 19-hour bus ride — for the holidays in December 2023, I would always ride a bike in an attempt to prevent my stomach from growing in girth too much. There is this bridge in Gabao where you had to cross a river. The river is flanked by dams on either…

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Failed to secure a job

I decided to apply for a call center job at TTEC in Novaliches. I arrived just before 2 PM and after filling out the job application form, found flashed on the computer screen that the recruitment ended at 2 PM. At least I did not waste time and money going to it just to find the recruitment had closed. I went through the initial interview virtually. I actually had applied on Jobstreet but got…

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‘“Better to trip with the feet,” he [Zeno] once said, “than with the tongue.”’ Quote was taken from Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. I am planning to build a social-media-funded community library in Bacolod, Irosin, Sorsogon, Philippines to supplement the function of our town’s tiny library. If you have used books you…

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Live with nature

‘“The goal of life is to live in harmony with nature,” we are told he [Zeno] wrote in On Human Nature, “which means to live according to virtue, because nature leads us to virtue.”’ The virtuous life conforms with the dictates of nature in the Stoic sense. Quote was taken from Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. I am…

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Defining who you are

‘When one young student attracted too many admirers, Zeno ordered him to shave his head to keep them away. When a different rich and handsome student from Rhodes begged Zeno for instruction—no doubt reminding him of himself at that age—he assigned him a seat on a dusty bench, knowing it would dirty the boy’s clothes. Later, he sent him to rub shoulders with the city’s beggars, much the way Crates…

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Being contemplative and active follows from being rational

‘“Of the three kinds of life, the contemplative, the active, and the rational,” Diogenes would write, the Stoics “declare that we should choose the latter, because a rational being is expressly produced by nature for contemplation and action.”’ You can be contemplative or active without being rational. But if you are rational, life will demand that you become contemplative and active. This is…

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The Manila Cathedral

September 9, 2023

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Giving in to desires

‘“He [Zeno] thought,” a later Stoic would say, “that someone who once experiences gourmet cuisine would want it all the time, inasmuch as the pleasure associated with drinking and eating creates in us a desire for more food and drink.”’ This is in contrast to a rival school in those times which taught that pleasure was the endgoal of life. Stoicism teaches moderation, but its ultimate goal is a…

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‘“Would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity?” Seneca asks in his Moral Letters. “Philosophy offers counsel.”’ Despite Philosophy being confined now in ivory towers of the academe, profused with high falutin words only a handful of people would understand, its goal ought not to change. It is a practical guide on how to live. Quote was taken from Lives of the Stoics: The Art of…

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To die well

“Cicero once said that to philosophize is to learn how to die.“ Not only is Philosophy about finding the good life, but also learning the good way to die. Quote was taken from Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman.

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How reading can bring a happy life

“It was Seneca, a Stoic philosopher of the Roman era, far removed from the academy, who would say quite bluntly that there was no other purpose to reading and study if not to live a happy life.” If we want to have a happy life, let’s make it a point that we live with the goal to achieve it. This also means an ample dose of scrutiny of what we are reading. Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you…

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Philosophy as life's compass

‘The only reason to study philosophy is to become a better person. ‘Anything else, as Nietzsche said, is merely a “critique of words by means of other words.”’ It’s unfortunate that philosophy in modern times has devolved into a high-falutin discipline with “pen-and-ink” philosophers always locked up in their ivory tower. Stoicism was, as it is today, the pursuit for a good life, a practical…

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True fortune found in shipwreck

“I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered shipwreck.” This was uttered by Stoicism founder Zeno of Kition, Cyprus after losing his ship and cargo full of Tyrian purple dye used by the wealthy and the royalty to color their clothes in a unfortunate shipwreck, and then finding his calling to study philosophy. Quote was taken from Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus…