did you learn something new today?

i am tuned-in on e-radio portal and it's back to "old" music on a wednesday... one song goes "'cause you bring out the best in meeee, like no one else can doooo, that's why I'm by your side, and that's why I love youuuuuuuu..." (can you name the group who made this popular?), i take off the earphones when sharon cuneta's pa-cute McDo radio ad plays. *grins*

that is just to set the mood for this entry. when you hear old tunes, you are brought back to those days--those days when life was a whole lotta simpler. then you are reminded how fleeting the past years have been. i used to not like wednesdays on radio because they play "oldies", now, i look forward to it, because i now know the oldies. :-) i am among the oldies, hehe.

it is always good reliving memories, even those which are not so good (in a way, it gives you a sense of finality, some form of closure, that indeed, a certain memory is part of the past). but dwelling too much on the past is not really cool. we have to keep moving forward.

as we keep moving forward, we try to take in as much as we can, everything that we need to sustain us in our long journey. and to make our journey interesting, it would be nice to try to learn something new each day. maybe it doesn't need to be something big, or something limited to gaining knowledge or information. it could be learning to be happy with small blessings; learning to let go of petty arguments; learning to accept life's harsh realities; learning a new song; learning to smile with your eyes; learning to forgive and forget (too cliche, but it's something we all need to re-learn); learning to have fun; learning to be grateful...

maybe some of these do not exactly qualify as something "new", but then the novelty comes with the person who experiences it and chooses to learn it probably for the first time in a long while.

i may have had a tough couple of weeks. but today, i choose to learn to accept that there are things which I have no control over, and focus on those which i can still do something about. i learned that i waste a lot of energy in useless worries and anxieties, a lot of times. today, i hope to start learning to experience life as it is given to me, always making the most of what is here and trusting that everything will be okay in the end.

on a lighter note, i learned something new a couple of weeks back:

through my cousin jec, i discovered mangatar. and that is me manga-rized (is there even such a word?!). a few minutes after i made that, i realized the only thing that made tha mangatar a manga version of me is the pair of red specs. hehe.

here's a quick list of new things learned today, i learned that:

1. i can try not to cry when i am angry
2. everyone has a secret to keep (everyone, meaning it includes you and me)
   
3. rafael nadal is wearing pink at the 2009 French Open (well i learned that yesterday)
   
4. i am not the only person who hates being lied to (that's not really new is it?)
5. it is always easier with acceptance (then you can move forward)
   

a variation to our entry's title would be something our parents asked us everytime we got home from preschool: anak, what did you learn today? tell us, let's keep the ball rollin'.