We can say a lot of bad things about Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, but we Fil­ipinos need to learn some­thing from this. This is Bill Clin­ton, ask­ing his fel­low Amer­i­cans to vote for Bar­rack Obama. That seems inno­cent enough. But remem­ber that his wife Hillary had just lost a bit­ter and long drawn out bat­tle for the Demo­c­ra­tic nomination.

A friend of mine have appar­ently been read­ing my posts on dis­cern­ment and deci­sion mak­ing the past weeks. He asked me over the week­end if he was meant to be in his job. We had a longish con­ver­sa­tion after­wards and we made sev­eral dis­cov­er­ies. These I will dis­cuss in more detail here.

First of all, let me say that I think it’s a human thing to ask whether we are meant to be doing some­thing, or meant to be with some­one. It’s some­thing very human to look for some kind of final­ity and ought­ness and mean­ing in things. It assures us not only that we are doing things right but that we are doing the right things.

Today is the feast­day of Cagayan de Oro City, where I grew up. I lived there until I trans­ferred here in Manila after high school. Here is a run­down of posts I have writ­ten that has some con­nec­tion to my City.

After a cer­tain point in our lives, we real­ize that we are not kids any­more: we get hurt and we feel pain but nobody comes to com­fort us and blow away at the wound. We cry and the world does not stop—it just con­tin­ues with­out break­ing stride.

This week, we will be talk­ing about the actual steps in mak­ing deci­sions. While these are not fool­proof, you are assured of mak­ing an informed deci­sion when you fol­low these steps. Remem­ber, intu­ition comes in all steps of this decision-making process. It is impor­tant to allow your gut feel to guide you as well.