Bad Girls

Yesterday I finished reading Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave. It’s a compilation of essays edited by Ellen Sussman. From the harmless, little white lie to committing adultery, these essays show the different facets of a bad girl. I wrote an e-mail to Ms. Sussman, thanking her for coming up with the book. Having been a bad girl when I was younger, I felt alone despite knowing that there were others like me. Back then, it felt like the bad girls had a secret underground club of some sort that is being shunned by society. Now that there is actually a book that celebrates the bad girl in every woman, I feel a little less alone.

It left me wondering though, what is a bad girl? Is it the one who taught you how to smoke or the one who took the bait and smoked her lungs away? Is it the one who drank too much to temporarily forget family problems or the one who drank too much to get noticed by guys she knew wouldn’t even glance her way? Is it the one who did mischievous things in order to fit in to the ‘cool crowd’ or is it the one who bullies others to feel better about herself because she has very low self esteem? It’s kinda hard to tell, isn’t it? It really depends on how you look at it. I think society and religion dictate what a ‘bad’ girl is. It depends on social norms, those domestic unwritten/unspoken rules, the law, even tradition. What is normal in other cultures may be considered ‘bad behavior’ in some. Of course, if what you did caused harm to another person, that would generally be considered bad, but other than that, the line between good and bad gets blurry.

In the past, I tried writing about my experiences as a ‘bad’ girl, posting those things in a blog that was accessible only by invitation, meaning not everyone can read it, but like many other things I’ve started, I was not able to follow through. Something inside me wanted to chronicle them before they drown in forgetfulness and dementia when I grow old, but on the other hand, something inside me wanted them to be buried and forgotten. At that time, the feeling of wanting to bury all the bad things I did overcame me and so I stopped writing about them. I told Ms. Sussman that reading the book rekindled that dwindling fire, the burning desire of putting into words my experiences. Now, that compulsion of writing down every juicy, little detail is resurfacing again. Whether it’d be a blog or a book, I don’t know yet. But definitely, someday I will also write my story.

(Image from EllenSussman.com)

What’s the Formula for Success?

I’ve been turned into a Malcolm Gladwell fan the moment I finished reading just the first page of his second book Blink.  I first knew of Blink when I was still working in an outsourcing company that does abstracting and indexing. I chanced upon a review of this book and decided to go on a hunt for it. Since the book really satisfied my intellectual hunger, I decided to go buy his first book The Tipping Point. Once again, I was amazed by this author’s take on things around us, from the very mundane to the important issues facing society and the world.

I could say I lean more toward nonfiction books, especially if the topic piques my interest. I have read more fiction books than nonfiction, but that’s just because I was required to in high school and in college. After three years, Mr. Gladwell has churned out another book that will surely satisfy me intellectually. It’s called Outliers: The Story of Success, which tackles what successful people are made of and what makes them different from everyone else. 

I’m so excited about this book I can’t wait to go and buy it. It’s going to be released tomorrow, November 18, and God knows when that will reach our country. I sure hope within the month or I’ll die of anticipation.

(Mr. Gladwell’s blog can be found here, and more information on his latest book here. )

Starting With the Small Things

So I’ve just finished reading The Secret. It only took me a week, given the amount of work I have to finish. I’m really fired up to continue testing this thing out. Whatever you may think about this little story I’m going to tell, I leave it up to you to go and try it for yourself. Don’t just take my word for it.

Anyway, so I was meaning to buy the book for weeks now. When I got the chance to go to Alabang, I said to myself I’m not going home without it. So there I was in the biggest mall in the area, trying to remember where the PowerBooks store was but was too lazy to look for it. Since National Bookstore was in my peripheral view already, I decided to go there instead.

National Bookstore had two entrances, and of course I went through the nearer one relative to where I was. When you enter through this one I’m talking about, you’re going to pass by the cashiers first, then the DVDs/VCDs, toys, some supplies then the books. And what do you know, the first shelf that greeted me, the second level from its top, had two copies of The Secret on it. It was literally the first thing I saw, or should I say jumped out at me. I didn’t even have to look through the countless books lined up. It was the first hing I saw.

Interestingly enough, I wasn’t that surprised because I was almost somewhat expecting it to be there for me, kind of like when I bought the DVD, which was in the exact same place when I saw it in the bangketa four days prior buying it. In my understanding of The Secret, it’s supposed to be like this, that you won’t be so jaw-droppingly surprised that you got what you wanted because you know you were going to get it anyway.

I plan to try it out on the small things first until I get comfortable with it. So far it’s worked for me. When I’m confident that I’ve understood it fully, I’m going to go for the big things I want in life.

What’s the Formula for Evil?

So, I’ve been reading this book (halfway through it as of this writing) - The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. It’s a rather heavy read, almost like a college psychology textbook, but I love heavy reads once in a while. The book was written by Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford University psychology professor who conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment back in the ’70s. He took a group of normal, healthy (physically, mentally and emotionally) male college students and placed them in a makeshift prison at the basement of Stanford University. Half were randomly assigned as prisoners and the other half as guards.

The objective of the study was to see how the students would react in an environment alien to them (none of them have been imprisoned before and none of them have been jailguards before). The study was supposed to last for two weeks, but about three prisoners already mentally and emotionally broke down by the end of the first week. On the other hand, in a matter of less than seven days, the guards became more and more aggressive toward the prisoners. The experiment was cut short because it was getting out of hand - almost all of them, guards and prisoners alike, forgot that it was just an experiment. They have immersed themselves in the role so deeply that it had altered their behavior.

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Sitting on the Palm of God

June 27, I managed to catch an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show on the Hallmark Channel. Her guest was Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the New York Times bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. She related her spiritual journey that led to the making of the book. Elizabeth, a 30-plus-year-old, was married and had a career, but her life went in a downward spiral, eventually leading to a divorce. She traveled to Italy, India and Bali in an attempt to patch up her life and find herself again.

In her trip to Bali, she met what the townspeople call the Medicine Man and learned invaluable things from him about life. She related that in one of her many meditation sessions, she experienced a spiritual moment like no other - she claimed that for a brief moment, she was sitting on the palm of God, and at that moment, she said that everything made sense to her now and even wondered how could she have not seen things the way she saw them now.

Oprah asked a question probably everyone in the studio audience and every person watching that episode wants to ask Elizabeth - does one have to be badly broken, to travel far, far away and to meet the Medicine Man in order to experience this type of thing? And the answer is absolutely not. She said that every person is different, and the experience would be unique to each individual.

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