Life is not mea­sured by how many breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away.

What defines a life? Will Hoffman’s short film stitches together ran­dom, mun­dane moments from the lives of dif­fer­ent peo­ple. But watch­ing this film, you feel like they are moments from your own life! The move from one moment to the next is non-linear, non-sequential, joy­ous, ter­ri­ble and unex­pected, all at the same time — and yet it evokes a feel­ing of deep con­nec­tion and beauty. Here is an invi­ta­tion to be nour­ished by what each moment of your life offers.

These are music videos that show­case actors or actresses in sur­pris­ing (and not so sur­pris­ing) cameos. There are a lot more, and I’m sure many of you have your own choices, but these are mine. You can sug­gest more mtvs in the com­ments and I’ll come up with a sec­ond (longer) list.

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I am a fight fan. I watch box­ing a lot. One of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries was my father bring­ing me to our box­ing “col­i­seum” (I think it was really a cock­pit that was con­verted into a box­ing venue with the strap­ping of a ring) when I was 4 or 5 years old. It was fight night (and way past my bed­time). I don’t remem­ber the fight, who the fight­ers were, or who won. But there was the unmis­tak­able feel of excite­ment among the crowd as they cheered the box­ers on. I also watched Mike Tyson kick the liv­ing hell out of Spinks’ ass in a lit­tle under 90 sec­onds in one of the few restau­rants that had satel­lite tv in our place back in the day.

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Money can’t buy hap­pi­ness. Or can it? The Tier­ney­Lab blog from The New York Times recently con­ducted an infor­mal sur­vey. Based on Spent: Sex, Evo­lu­tion, and Con­sumer Behav­ior, a new book from Dr. Geof­frey Miller, read­ers were invited to:

List the ten most expen­sive things (prod­ucts, ser­vices or expe­ri­ences) that you have ever paid for (includ­ing houses, cars, uni­ver­sity degrees, mar­riage cer­e­monies, divorce set­tle­ments and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most hap­pi­ness. Then you’re sup­posed to count how many items appear on both lists.

This was some­thing I gave as a homily years ago when I was still a Jesuit and my par­ents cel­e­brated their 25^th Wed­ding Anniver­sary. In a world where talk is cheap and com­mit­ments more and more tem­po­rary, some peo­ple do stay together despite every­thing. This is about my mom and my dad. And even if their anniver­sary is still in June, I would like to share this at this early part of the year, because it is a good reminder for us to be there for the long haul.

We had the mass in my favorite chapel in Sacred Heart Novi­tiate, the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion Chapel. It has one of the most beau­ti­ful stat­ues of Mary ever. I hope you could go to Sacred Heart Novi­tiate, in Novaliches, Que­zon City, Philip­pines, and pray in that cute lit­tle chapel and behold the beau­ti­ful Mary pray­ing with us and pray­ing for us as we start our jour­neys this year. May she be there for the long haul. And may we con­tinue to be pleas­antly sur­prised at the many things hap­pen­ing to us.