Starting my Journey with Christ

All my life, I have been living in a Christian home. My dad happens to be a pastor, and my mom, a youth minister. I grew up to Sunday School, DVBC, Don Moen and Psalty. I followed rules, was rarely in trouble, and had been, in the most conventional way, a good kid. I was pretty much an "average christian boy". And along with that image of being a Christian, people would often think that I grew up with a contented heart, with a strong spirit and a steadfast faith in Jesus Christ.

But that wasn't the case. I WASN'T content. I WASN'T strong. And I most certainly WASN'T a steadfast, faithful christian boy. 

I had grown up feeling very empty and purpose-less with life---and I had NO clue as to why. I had a great family, I studied in a great school, my friends weren’t bad influences, and I had no vices at all.  I had no idea why I felt so meaningless. And so I tried to reflect on the decisions I’ve made throughout the years. My choice of friends, the way I dress, the shows I watch, everything, but still no use. There was not one decision in my life that I made that had an impact so great that it apparently sucked out all sense of "purpose-ness" and from my life.

Then, around 5 years ago, it hit me. All these feelings of emptiness didn't stem from a badly made decision, but rather from a necessary decision I NEVER ACTUALLY MADE. I had grown up in a home where Jesus Christ was the focal point of day-to-day life. I was living a life where almost ALL my decisions were based on what God would most probably say. But I forgot the most essential part of having a Christ-centered life: the choice to RECEIVE Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. 

It never occurred to me that I had been living a “boring” life because I treated all my decisions and all my actions as obligations which need to be complied and not taken to heart. I was living in a Christ-filled home, but I never had Christ as my life’s foundation. All my actions, all my choices were wobbling on the fact that I did them half-heartedly. I brushed them off like they were things that didn’t need reflection and personal input. I decided THEN and THERE that I would put Christ not just in the center of my DECISIONS, but also in the center of MY LIFE. There is that huge difference. And I felt that difference after I finally went beyond just superficially babbling the “acceptance prayer” and finally delving into having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

It felt AWESOME. It felt like that void in my heart was just right of Jesus to fill. I finally had found my life’s meaning---and I had a family to back me up for that. They prayed with me and held my hand as I started on this very-familiar-but-unbelievably-new journey with my personal Lord and Savior. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had made a decision on my own and without any household stigma pressuring me to pick a choice. Actually, I chose to get rid of that stigma and chose for myself a brand new life, and a brand new path to take.

‎As I look back on the first few years of my brand-new life with Jesus Christ, I see how much things have changed. I have been a counselor and Program staff for numerous YoungLife camps, I started to lead bible study groups, I began to reach out to kids through tutorials, and I have taken part in volunteer missions for several youth organizations. I no longer felt useless, purpose-less and meaningless. I now have a new take on life. I can finally see, feel, hear, smell, and taste the glory, the honor and the love God has given me. 

Yes, the beauty and wonder of His love may have always been there. But the difference is just that this time, I finally chose to experience them.

I WILL REGRET THIS

Yes, this IS a Recording. Of me. Singing.
But while I'm still stupid enough to not take it down, go listen to it and have fun. :D

"Good" without God is not "Good"

(This stemmed from a conversation I had with a friend last night)

As Christians, being “good” is not as broad as how the world sees “good”. You can do the exact same thing non-Christians would believe to be “good”, but not really be doing good. Even if it was done with sincerity. 

We, with our flawed nature, innately do NOT have goodness in us. Goodness springs from God’s love for us. It’s not in doing things we merely believe to be right, but rather a manifestation of God’s love and glory overflowing from our hearts. 

We might save a baby from a burning house, but unless we do it for God’s glory, we are not really doing “good”. We act on our own "logical" belief that the baby should be saved, and not by our belief that God would want us to save the child. There is no God in the former. And without God in it, it cannot be considered "good". 

Universal ethics do not constitute what God considers “good”. Rather, Christ-centered ethicality is the main and ONLY foundation of goodness. God IS good. And He is the ONLY good. ALL THE TIME.

Open Letter to Ayala Center Cebu

Hello, my name is William Yasi and I'm becoming quite disgusted with your employees. You ought to allot at least A PART of your budget to train your workers on how to POLITELY and PROPERLY handle customers.

Here are some instances wherein I could hardly even see the "high quality" you boast of regarding customer service:

1.       Your supermarket staff would not allow me to return a leaking body wash bottle I bought minutes before because it's imported. Which means it's not part of your "return damaged goods" policy. And to top that off, they weren't at the very least courteous about it. They even made snide remarks at how picky I am about what I buy.

2.       The staff at National Bookstore preferred to chat about their love-lives rather than ask me what I wanted to buy. I stood there, trying to catch their attention, for half an hour before giving up.

3.       A security guard screamed at me for flagging down a taxi near the Krispy Kreme branch. I could've let that slide because I later found out it wasn't a loading zone, but what irritated me was the fact that he let half a dozen koreans ride taxis there before singling me, a filipino, out. How twistedly racist is THAT?

4.       Again, your wonderful supermarket staff rudely answered my mother's queries about fruit prices. She simply asked them how much the grapes were and the employee replied:

"Aw, awa ra diha maam. Di ba na klaro diha? (Why don't you try and take a look, maam? It's pretty obvious.)"

Is that the kind of manners you instill in your employees? I hope not.

I have had a few other blood-boiling encounters with your very unprofessional staff, but I'm thinking this would be enough for you to, at the very least, take action in trying to fix this.

It would be very disappointing to see one of the most sought-after establishments in Cebu fall short of what is expected of them simply because your administration FAILED to cultivate proper work ethics into your employees.

I hope and pray that you do take this seriously and do something about it. Thank you and God bless.

William Robert Yasi

Pacifying the Dinner War

Ladies and gentlemen, good day. I am here to talk to you about a very serious topic. Veggies. No, really. I'm here to address a growing problem about that stick of celery caught between your teeth. 

Well actually it's a problem on how to SOLVE a problem  about that stick of celery caught between your teeth .

It cannot be denied that one of the main issues that need to be addressed by the government should be that of the environment and its degradation. Not only is addressing these issues necessary, but the measures that need to be taken in order to achieve a sustainable environment should be done to cater to short-term and long-term effects on the key players of this debacle: the Environment (this includes those that breathe and those that don’t) and Mankind. Which is exactly why I personally think that vegetarianism is NOT the most necessary, most beneficial and most practicable solution to this problem. 

You see, eco-activists are now trying to bash the non-vegan population into destruction. They say that the BEST way to save the world is to go veggie. And go veggie 100%.

oh yes. Yes, indeed.

Okay, conceding to that fact that yes, Vegetarianism may have a one-two hit on the meat production industry (which is also now one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases), but it just doesn’t solve the problem. It only sweeps it under the rug. 

See, the problem here is NOT that a lot of us patronize meat products---as that is natural for us, omnivores---but rather, the problem is that we patronize meat producers that utilize methods that are contributing to the destruction of the environment. We need to fix THAT and NOT the dietary preferences of the population. In other words, the more viable universal solution is not VEGETARIANISM, but rather RESPONSIBLE CONSUMERISM.

Why should we then tackle the mentality of the consumers and not the producers directly? Simple. Because even if we successfully topple down these companies, the patronage of the consumers towards their products will not die. They will still clamor for similarly-manufactured products. We don’t destroy the mentality, rather we worsen it as it will make these consumers realize that they WANT the product and they will fight tooth and nail to get it back. 

And we all know that for most companies, “the customer is always right.”

And they are darn serious about it.

Which is why, what the government should focus on is to change the product preference of these consumers to more environmentally-responsible companies, as this avoids drastic (and often disadvantageous) paradigm shifts for the people AND at the same time, indirectly making them more responsible and contributive to the improvement of the environment. 

Furthermore, if the government successfully channels the priority of its citizens towards the more eco-friendliness of the products they are buying, whether it may be through information drives, massive forums and extensive promotion, this then gives an implicative incentive for the non-eco-friendly companies to become more responsible with their processes. For when they see that the market becomes more inclined to buying beef that’s not produced by mass breeding (which causes massive methane production); they then see that the most practical thing to do on their part is to be more eco-friendly. The “villains” then try to level the market field by treating the earth better. In short, since for these companies, the customer is always right, the government should make the customer buy right because from that, the companies then do right.

On another note, VEGETARIANISM is frankly NOT the most practicable thing to do. Extending from the previous point wherein channeling the dietary preferences of the people to a more eco-responsible aspect is easier than having them change their diet totally, we focus then on the fact that vegetarianism is something that cannot be done overnight. 

Especially when the average human eats like a baby whale

Humans, by nature, are omnivores. Meaning we are built to take in both meat and greens. Vegetarians however, choose to eat only vegetables. And coming from a nature that dictates you to have some sort of meat in your diet, it would take a large amount of dedication and perseverance to have your diet isolated to vegetables. That’s why going vegan is NOT for everyone. We cannot demand the same amount of effort from everyone because the decision to eat ONLY greens is an organic choice. It has to come from the heart of the individual. Yes, vegans and their dedication to their advocacy deserve a resounding applause, but that doesn't mean we can take away someone’s right to choose what he wants to eat and what he DOESN’T want to eat.

We do not want to force our people to give up their love for meat. Let them eat meat all they want. From my previous argument, It has been established that it is INDEED possible to let them continue eating their beef steaks and save the earth at the same time.

Finally, the whole idea of having the whole of mankind eat only vegetables does more harm than good. Nature has remained sustainable because of a balance created by the food chain. First-order consumers eat the producers, second-order consumers eat the first-order consumers, and so on. All organisms have something to contribute in this chain, and an imbalance in this causes the endangerment of the massively consumed entity. Which then leads us to the idea that if we have everyone completely exclude the consumption of meat in their diet, we endanger the crops that get over-consumed and also face the problem of having these livestock, which are no longer eaten, become additional consumers to these already endangered crops. We soon are left with no crops at all. And the balance would then disappear. 

Also, be reminded that these crops are contributors to the consumption of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. If we lose them to over-consumption, we lose our carbon sinks. We then have bigger problems at hand: we force ourselves to eat the meat again, which is what the government is trying to avoid with their proposition, and we become slowly suffocated by the increase of CO2 in our air. From that analogy, it can clearly be seen that the idea of having Veganism (as the main solution to global warming and the like) as counter-intuitive, impractical and non-doable at the very least.

So with that, Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope that I have proven enough to you that in order for us to really solve this problem we have with Mother Earth, we need to solve it at the very source of it all: Mankind’s abuse. We abuse the environment by processing these products in methods that are negligent of its consequences so we need to fix THAT---and not our diet.

We were built to eat vegetable AND meat. So let’s embrace that. Improve our consumer mindset and NOT our food choices. So at the end of the day, we say YES to the vegans, YES to the Omnivorous and YES to the meat-eaters. Why fight when we can all harmoniously live together?

Bazinga.

I Can NEVER Experience LOVE

This was written well over 3 years ago by an unnecessarily angst-y me. 

"Today, I tried to write about love. About how love can change my life, how it can take me to places I've never been before, how it can make me feel like I'm someone else...

But sadly, I can't. I just can't get myself to write about something I don't know.

Honestly speaking, I've never had butterflies in my stomach. And I've never seen stars twinkle in someone's eyes.

I have never been in love. EVER.

Love must be something for someone else. It must be something reserved for people chosen by fate. It must be destined for those who deserve it. It must be for the lovers, the sweethearts, and the narcissistic.

 
I have no indulgence. And I have no aspirations. I have no love in me to give away.

And with that realization in mind, I won't even try to think that I'd ever be capable of writing about love----much more experience it."

Oh, the difference a few years can make. 

Why I Write

A lot of things come rushing through my mind when I start to write----well, when I THINK about starting to write. When I get my pen and paper, laptop, whatever, there’s just this onslaught of ideas, suggestions that come flowing through and out of my head.

And it’s hard. Well it’s confusing. It’s debilitating.

Whatever. I just said that word because it’s sounds nice. Debilitating. Haha. I like it. Like bears. And ponies. J

But not writing. I don’t like writing. It’s a burden. It’s tiring. It’s just painful to even THINK about what to write.

But here I am. Writing.

Weird. In that influx of ideas, I am in pain, in the middle of confusion-land and I AM IN PAIN. But my heart starts to pump faster. It just builds up this sort of tension, this excitement that I’m going to write again. I’m finally going to have that new article. That new blog post I’ve been dying to post. The adrenaline’s just… there. I may not like the product, I might even cry over how horrible it is, but the excitement over writing is there. And I can’t change that.

Well I basically write, not because I like it, but because it is something I can get myself to dream of. I can dream when I write. I can see a future where people will read my posts. Where they would be FINALLY able to understand what I’ve been trying to say to them. Not like when I’m talking where I can’t edit what comes out of my mouth. I get to take time to choose my words and say them the way I want to in real life. It authenticates me.

My voice is loudest with the words I write. I am me when I write. That whole curated structure of mumbo jumbo is …me. Staged. Curated. Planned out. Me. The very essence of making sure that everything meshes together in the paragraphs just puts it all in a nutshell. All of me. In a fabricated representation of me. MEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Yeah. Just soak it all in. :)

Then it begins to go downhill. The whole article crumbles down because I’ve had my fill. Things start to lose sense. I start rambling on about whatever.

I become bored. Then all of a sudden I become uninterested altogether to carry on writing. To finish whatever is on my head.

But the rush of wanting to be heard is STILL there. I think it’s always going to be there. I think.  

But yeah, I’m down to my last few words. And I’m going to stop writing. But not before I tell you to write when you can. Be heard. Be read. Ride a pony. Hug a bear. Whatever. Just write it down.