This year, the launch of the iamninoy campaign, Cory, as well as other family members and friends, encourages all Filipinos, especially the youth, to be the catalyst for the change that our country needs. The campaign also invites corporate brands and their customers to help in providing aids and projects that will raise the welfare of marginalized Filipinos.

To some, it may seem that leftist parties only makes the political situation of the country worse. But, apparently, these groups also try their best to help our countrymen especially those who are very poor, so that they can have the opportunity to raise their own standard of living.

Martin Buber’s insight when it comes to the suffering of the Other is that the person (I) objectifies the other—that is, the person (I) makes the Other his object that is subject to his own prejudices and biases. However, Buber points out that the Other cannot be objectified, and that the person (I) and the Other are first encountered as subjects. By denying this meeting of subjects, their relationship becomes the I-It relationship or the Relationship of Seeming, which is the denial of the recognition of an interhuman relationship. There were many scenes in the movie that showed this king of relationship, especially between the Jews and the Nazis. An example was when the Nazi soldiers asked some Jews to dance in the middle of the street and paired them up in odd combinations (young boys dancing with tall women, etc.), even the elders were asked to dance even though they can hardly stand straight, just for the Nazi soldiers to be entertained. The soldiers treated the Jews as objects and thought that they can do anything to those “objects”. On the other hand, one scene that showed that the Nazis recognized the Jews as subjects rather than objects. The scene that showed a Nazi officer helping Wladyslaw Szpielman by giving him food while he was hiding in the attic showed what is called the I-Thou relationship or Relationship of Dialogue.

Gabriel Marcel’s take on the suffering of the Other is that first, the self separates himself from the experience and focuses on the effects of the experience rather than the experience itself; and second, the self reflects both on his self and the experience. For the first, the relationship becomes a subject-object relationship, wherein the experience is objectified, and the prejudices and biases the self feels surfaces. For the second, the self stays with the experience while also reflecting on his self. In this case, the self sees the Other as an other, and not what the self’s idea of the Other is. The scenes in the movie mentioned above also uphold these statements.

Emmanuel Levinas stated that the self uses his freedom irresponsibly when dealing with the Other—that is, the self uses its freedom at the expense of the Other. Moreover, the face of the Other designates the self to be responsible for the welfare of the former. These ideas were upheld in the scenes where the some non-Jew persons helped Szpielman hide from the Nazi soldiers after escaping from the ghettos. These non-Jew persons took full responsibility of the Szpielman’s welfare.

In conclusion, I think that persons should treat other persons as persons and not as objects. We should not be indifferent to the sufferings of others because it is part of being a human person to help others.

I did not understand why they feel that there is a need to change their sexual genitalia. Especially for male-to-female transsexuals, I cannot grasp the concept of why they want to have a woman’s genitalia. They still cannot bear a child with a “fake” vagina. Likewise for female-to-male transsexuals, which is rare, having a male’s sexual organ will not really help her-him to impregnate another woman.

After doing some research, I realized that transsexuals should not be looked down on because they went through a lot just to achieve what they really want with their bodies. It is not their fault that they were born having a different sexual genitalia from what their sexual orientation is. Rather, it is their choice to deviate from what they naturally have. I realized how brave post-operational transsexuals are in making that choice and doing everything just to achieve that transformation.

The passage of time changes everything around us, even those that seem to be the most static. Each day in this world gives us a chance to accumulate new experiences, learnings, and memories that make life more interesting. Whether good or bad, these new experiences affect us in different ways that makes our own lives different from others. In a way, our differences reflect how special and genuine each person’s life is because no two persons have exactly the same experiences and memories.

Life is also worth living because it gives us a chance to be whatever and whoever we want to be. It gives us a chance to dream and even allows to dream about a lot of things. Life also gives us tons of opportunities to achieve our goals. It is this drive to achieve our goals that pushes us to live our lives towards the fulfillment of these goals. Moreover, we see life as a something that is full of uncertainties which makes us cherish every moment we have in this world and it justifies why we should live life to the fullest.

Others argue that whatever we do in this life does not matter because what really matters, especially for very religious people, is the after-life. Those who believe in God and the after-life say that we are just passers-by in this world and life, like everything else, is only temporary.

Life is not worth living because man is surrounded by things that are not good such as wars, poverty, constant power struggle, and the like. Time and time again, man brought upon the world, destruction—destruction of the environment and of each other, as well. It is a vicious cycle that keeps on repeating, so why bother to live meaningful lives when everything around us is geared towards destruction?

Given these arguments, I still believe that life is worth living because it allows a person to grow or develop in anyway he wants. Everyday, we are given the chance to decide for ourselves, and from that, we become the persons we want to be.

"bloom" -- i made this using photoshop Ü