The Valley of Amazement

We are living in a world where society seems to have a standard in everything. In a judgemental society, we are having a hard time to be true to oneself. We don't even know how to do it. But what does it means to be true to oneself?

Being true to oneself requires a simple things but really difficult to achieve. Love and acceptance that we don't need to seek from society but to seek it within ourselves. Don't expect that society will accept you if you yourself can't accept who truly you are. We don't need to fit in to the society standards, instead create and just be our own standard.

Being true to oneself does not only mean embracing our strengths but also accepting our weaknesses. We need to embrace our flaws because it makes us unique and beautiful. We must love everything about ourself, every feature of our face and body. If we love ourself for what we really are, it will give us the confidence to show to everyone our imperfections without any hesitation and we won't be bother what others might say because we are the one who knew better about ourself.

We cannot be true to others if we cannot do the same thing to ourself. Being true to oneself only means accepting who and what we really are and love everything about it. We don't need anyone's permission on what we are going to do and who we are supposed to be. This will lead us to a happy living.

"Apo on the Wall"

Have you ever read a poem that captured your heart? A poem that gave you knowledge and realizations about something. If not, the poem entitled "Apo on the Wall" is what you are looking for. A poem "Apo on the wall" is an absolutely good kind of poem. It tells about something that will surely amaze the reader. Every phrase of a poem gives meaning. And another thing I liked from this poem is the idea it gives about what happened in history.

I this poem, the persona is a curious child about something inside on his father's office at home and his curiousness led him to enter and look around in there. He found soldier's stuff that belongs to his father and saw the picture of Apo on the wall that caught his attention. His father caught him and got mad. Apo is Ferdinand Marcos who declared Martial Law and the persona's father is a soldier under Marcos administration.

The poem made me feel a lot of things including how it feels to be in the history and what it is like to have a soldier father. On the other side, it does made me feel bad for how the persona's father idolized Apo and even put his picture on the wall. In my point of view, Apo is doing something that is obviously not right. The curiosity and fear of the persona applies on me also. This poem tells that respecting privacy of a person is necessary and being a child it must not know what adults doing and just enjoy being a kid. In addition, it also emphasize the loyalty of a servant to its leader.

I always thought that soldiers is really dedicated to their positions and must follow what the leaders might told. And the poem proves that the thoughts running in my mind is obviously true. Even today soldiers does obeyed those who above them because in this field it is something that they must do. They must fulfill their sworn duty.