Last weekend I went home to Pangasinan to escape from the toxic life in our office. Busy season is already taking its peak in audit. As the mercury rises for the stress level in our office same as well for the reporting dockets, audit files and papers piling up in my desk. My files never goes down; it grows higher and higher each day. I want to finish them sooner than the April 15 deadline for tax so as not to clog my schedules. But time comes that I feel so drained same with my cellphone beeping, begging and calling for a charger.

So I went home and spent time sleeping on my precious bed. I also attended my friend’s birthday “bash”. I did not stay long for another “mahaba-habang inuman”. I bailed out early, went home, dived straight to my bed and spent more time sleeping. Deprived from a long-night sleep for weeks, I love the feeling of getting charged-up sleeping (hay happiness!).

While I was enjoying my charging-up for another grueling week, I got the chance to read old newspapers at home. My father always buys newspapers.  I inherited from him the habit of reading broadsheets. From Bata Batuta to Funny Komiks to Scoreboard and Sports Magazine and now Inquirer Newspaper, that is the evolution of my reading (oops I forgot FHM lol!). Way back during high school I used to cut articles of different topics and compile them. Most of the time I collected Youngblood articles of Inquirer. It has been my fascination reading articles wrote by young people about the topics I know I could relate with. I always look forward for articles about life, inspiring stories, testimonies of people of my age while I don’t give much attention the articles about politics and disgruntlement to government. I guess I am already feed-up of too much “serious” issues and I want to relax my mind reading “light” stories.

While I was enjoying my siesta reading, I came across to some meaningful lines from articles I read. I took- out my pen and used notepad and started writing down the lines. I initially thought that these lines could be used as attention-catcher status or lines in Facebook (thanks to advent of social network). Some of the lines are also good to be sent as text messages to special ones and once special. Some lines I listed may be considered simple to some but for me it has extra effect (me tama) in my life. I can relate to those lines so I keep them in my file. Credit must be given to those writers who are so witty and probably awake when God showered the gift of gab. I forgot their names and I hope I could still check their names back in the old newspapers where I took the lines.

Here are the lines I selected:

• “Whenever we go off searching for something, we never find what we started the search for. We find something better than we ever hoped.”

• “I preferred the peace and quiet of home to the late-night parties of the city.”

• “There is so much romance in being alone.”

• “Have you tried to stop searching for love everywhere else, and begun to realize that you have all that you need with and around you?”

• “We all choose to risk – and we all should. Because risk tests our courage, and pain strengthens our resiliency.”

• “Remember that love does not want to be found. It finds us.”

•  “You are like shirt that gets better and better as it is worn.”

• “I burst out in laughter until I had to wipe my happy tears off my eyes.”

• “I missed her smile and infectious laughter.”

• “Accepting changes is really the most effective ways to move forward because there is nothing one can do to hold them back or reverse them.”

My list ended with this simple line:

“You’re going to be just fine!”

So simple yet I guess all of us need that line in our life. In every problem and in every struggle we face always remember God is good and….

“You’re going to be just fine!”