Fragments of the Quiet Mind

It always starts with a broom. Not a better policy. Not a more efficient process. Just… a broom. Or a new shelf. Or a bright red label that screams “TAPE HERE” like that’s going to fix systemic inefficiency. We call it 7S. I call it performance art for the underpaid and over-managed. In my current workplace, 7S has become our favorite illusion of progress. We polish our tables like it’ll reflect competence. We realign folders like it realigns priorities. We proudly display our “before and after” photos as if anyone asked. Meanwhile, the actual deliverables? Delayed. Disjointed. Disregarded. We aren’t improving systems—we’re decorating dysfunction. There was a time last week when I spent an entire afternoon watching coworkers argue over the font size of cabinet labels. Not the report deadlines, not the implementation gaps—just labels. And I realized: we’ve turned 7S into a religion. Not of discipline, but of distraction. Let’s be honest. Nobody dares question it anymore. To cha...

The government says it shut down 7,000 illegal gambling sites. Great. That’s like taking a mop to a flood and calling it progress. Because this isn’t a coding issue. It’s a coping issue. You can kill the website. But if the hunger stays, the next one’s already in the queue. Gambling doesn’t thrive because it’s accessible. It thrives because it fills a void. And no one wants to talk about the void. Take Scatter. The poster child of this mess. Offered on legal platforms, monitored by systems that “ban” users— if their families report them. As if addiction sends out early warnings. As if people don't rot quietly before anyone notices. Regulation without prevention is just crisis management with better lighting. But that’s the trick, isn’t it? Make it shiny enough and people stop asking if it’s dangerous. And now? Gambling isn’t underground. It’s center stage. It's in your feed, dressed up as lifestyle. Influencers selling false jackpots like spiritual Kool-Aid. Fake payouts. Fla...

There’s something charming—almost poetic—about being politely asked to step into your own firing line. “Courtesy resignations,” they call it. Like being handed a thank-you note before your eviction. Like being broken up with via scented stationery. It’s governance by ghosting—but with manners. And oh, what timing. The king’s popularity is dipping, and suddenly, it’s the court’s fault the crowd is booing. Not the decisions, not the mirror—just the reflections. So now it’s time for the grand reshuffle. Not a purge, mind you, just a “realignment.” Because we wouldn’t want to sound tyrannical—we just want results. And nothing says “results” quite like rearranging the same deck chairs on a sinking narrative. Let’s be clear: this is not about personalities, the King insists. It’s about “performance.” But only after the performance failed to get a standing ovation. Strange how urgency is always retroactive. When the people whispered discontent, it was politics as usual. But when they scre...

I’ve been running from something, though I’m not sure what anymore. The warmth of coffee, once a comfort, now feels distant, like everything else. Time has frozen something inside me, leaving only a hollow chase for peace that never seems to end. Maybe it’s not about winning or losing, but about letting go—surrendering to the emptiness and finding a strange peace in it. We tell ourselves that we’re supposed to rise, to fight, but at what cost? To lean on others is easier, but when you stand on their shoulders, do you even recognize the height? I almost gave in to the lies, to the quick escape, but something stopped me. What’s left when you abandon yourself for an illusion? In the quiet of now, I realize it’s the small things that matter. The overlooked moments where peace resides—not in the noise, but in the stillness. What comes next is uncertain. Joy, sorrow—both are inevitable. But maybe that’s where the freedom lies: in accepting the paradox of it all.

There you were again. Bittersweet. Mysterious. Smelling faintly of burnt hope and toasted almonds. I couldn’t place you, but somehow I already missed you. You arrived on a Tuesday — not a remarkable Tuesday, mind you. Just one of those limp, mid-tempo days that smelled faintly of budget cuts and existential dread. I found you sitting there, steam spiraling like a secret trying to escape, whispering things to my tired soul like: "You’ll survive this spreadsheet." "You are more than your inbox." "The meeting could’ve been an email." Was it your warmth that unraveled the corners of my anxiety? Or your bitterness — so artfully balanced, like heartbreak in a tuxedo? Loving you felt oddly familiar, like recognizing a skyline you’ve only ever seen in a dream. Or a crush on someone who doesn't exist — but has a Spotify playlist somehow eerily aligned with your breakup mood. I started timing my mornings around you. Measured my sanity by your pre...

The strange thing about silence is how loudly it speaks when you’re not listening for it. It hums in the background, unnoticed, until you’re left standing amidst the remnants of choices never made and words never uttered. A quietness that feels less like absence and more like presence, like an unspoken truth lingering in the air. We’re all haunted by decisions we never made, like ghosts that won’t leave the corners of your mind. It’s a strange thing, regret. Not the kind that claws at you with sharp edges, but the kind that seeps in slowly, like smoke, unnoticed until you’ve already inhaled it. You realize, maybe a little too late, that some things should’ve never been touched. Some words should’ve never been spoken. And some silences? Perhaps they were meant to stay locked in place, never to be disturbed by the rashness of our own desires. But the mind, restless as it is, cannot leave well enough alone. There’s this vault, see, tucked deep within—hidden under layers of fleeting distra...

Last night i was scrolling through my feed, watching friends share grief after grief—losses, heartbreaks, moments that should have made us gather, cry together, hold each other close. Instead, all I did was tap a heart emoji under each post, one after another, like I was ticking off some empathy checklist. I felt this strange disconnect. Was that really me caring? Or just a shadow of it? It hit me then—this paradox we live with every day. We’re more connected than ever, but somehow the caring feels hollow. The digital world teaches us to perform empathy in tiny clicks and quick comments, but it rarely lets us be there. The silence, the awkwardness, the weight of someone else’s pain—those don’t translate well through a screen. I keep asking myself: When did empathy become a set of symbols? When did “I’m here for you” turn into an emoji? There’s something unsettling about caring that feels rehearsed, like a script we all read but don’t fully understand. It’s empathy reduced to conven...

Some ghosts wear zippers instead of faces. There was a time I couldn’t go anywhere without you. You were comfort on bad days, silence when words felt too sharp. You made cold mornings softer. Loneliness easier to carry. I didn’t question you. You were just there. Always. We went through everything together—late-night walks, grocery store breakdowns, bus rides where I tried to disappear. You hugged me when no one else knew how. I kept you even when you started falling apart. Even when I knew you were past your prime, unraveling at the edges, losing color in places that used to feel like home. You stopped fitting, but I made excuses. Called it loyalty. Called it love. And still, I held on. Maybe out of memory. Maybe out of guilt. Or maybe because I was afraid of what letting go might say about me. But the truth is— I don’t miss you now. Not really. Not who you’ve become. You're stretched out. Sagging. Smell like an old version of me I’d rather forget. You don't ho...

When the sun stands directly overhead and everything should be clear, why does the world feel most unfamiliar? At noon, shadows don’t disappear—they condense. Curl under benches, nestle beneath feet, cling like quiet facts. We confuse their stillness for absence. But absence, too, has weight. It doesn’t speak, but it hums. I saw a man once try to outrun his shadow. He sprinted down a sunlit boulevard like maybe speed could erase shape. But the shadow held. Didn't chase. Didn’t stretch. Just clung. Like guilt. Or memory. When he stopped, it returned—spilled calmly outward, patient and precise. Noon shadows aren’t dramatic. They’re honest. They don’t try to impress you. They simply say: you exist, and you interrupt the light. The brightest light doesn’t erase us. It outlines us. At noon, clarity sharpens into distance. Shadows don’t touch. Buildings stand apart. Trees withdraw their reach. Each object keeps its own darkness. Aphorism: Light doesn’t always illuminate—it isolates. The ...

I was fourth in line, staring at the back of a denim jacket and pretending not to read the pastries twice. The man ahead of me kept adjusting his AirPods. I kept adjusting my thoughts. The café was full of the usual late afternoon static—laptop clatter, jazz no one listens to, baristas calling names like incantations. I ordered my coffee—black, no room—and moved to the pick-up area like someone playing a role they knew too well. That’s when I noticed the girl by the window. Not looking outside, not reading, not even pretending to. Just holding her phone up to her face—slow, deliberate, as if asking permission from her own image. A few filters later, her features glowed. Skin blurred to impossibility. Eyes enlarged just enough to seem slightly haunted. The picture looked nothing like the girl I was watching. But she smiled at it. Not vainly. Almost gratefully. I don’t use filters—not out of principle, just confusion. I can never find the right one. Nothing ever feels like me. Or ma...

Way back in college, I had this quiet hobby of slipping into book sales. Not the big ones—just the messy, dusty tables tucked inside Centermall, one of Baguio’s oldest malls. The kind of place where the lights flicker and the scent of rust and forgotten pages lingers longer than the shoppers. It wasn’t about finding something specific. It was the hunt. The maybe. One afternoon, I came across a book with no title on the spine. The cover was soft, torn in the corners, like it had been through several hands that never loved it properly. Inside, on the first page, someone had scribbled in pencil: “Don’t finish this unless you’re ready to lose something.” I didn’t buy it. I kept turning the thought over in my head though, for years. I don’t even remember the plot. Just the feeling it gave me: like someone had whispered a secret then vanished before I could respond. We never really crave the thing, do we? We crave the tension before the having. The idea of it. The fiction we write a...

They said it like scripture, soft and rehearsed. "Things will grow if you just believe. Just stay. Just wait." So I did. I stayed. I bled into the dirt. I broke skin for something that never sprouted. The sun never came. And the soil? The soil was already full— of bones. Of memories with teeth. Of things I was never meant to uncover, but did anyway. They didn’t plant flowers. They planted ghosts. Carefully. Aesthetic. Like trauma could be arranged in rows and called design. They built a graveyard and named it “opportunity.” Hung fairy lights over decay and dared to call it “safe.” And I—I knelt like a fool, watering phantoms, thinking it was love.  Thinking it was growth. It was rot. Ritualized. Systematic. Here’s the truth no one wants to speak out loud: The worst betrayals don’t scream. They whisper. They wear your tone, echo your values, mirror your hopes until you’re too far in to crawl back. It wasn't an accident. They knew this place was hollow. They han...

I was watching David Blaine’s magic ‘trick’ (it was a trick where he calls two people in a deep relationship to participate) and he would test their connection with one another by making one person close his eyes and he would touch the shoulder of his partner. The abysmal thing with this is that the person who was closing his eyes would also feel the touch even though during the entire ‘trick’, David never went near the person who had his eyes closed (what more touch him). It was really a mind boggling trick as it made me think about it hours passed after watching it. As a skeptic of magic and the supernatural, I found myself grappling with the how and why of this phenomenon. Could it be that David orchestrated a behind-the-scenes dialogue with the participants to create an illusion of authenticity? As much as my rational mind seeks to debunk the spectacle as mere illusion, a subtle part of me yearns to believe in the magic of possibility. The presence of high-profile figures like Will...

Stubborn muse crushing the silence, Ostracizing a poets choice for subsidence. Rummaging within deeply settled thoughts, Restoring the pain from a fight long lost. Yearning for peace in Moira’s cruel world, But tranquility is nothing but an illusion hurled. Under the comfort of a memory he cowers, Tacitly tending to a wounded promise of ‘forever’. Deadly poison drank at a hidden park of bliss, Arduous passions trapped in a labyrinthine abyss. Requiems from a pink flying unicorn dinosaur, Nestled memory of a silvery moon restored. Irritating Cheshire re-creating a suspended story plot, Making the poet think of that tiny green dot. Macrocosmic tel-pad retention topped with coffee, Ineffable pancakes and Sapio-sexuality… Synchronicity ascertained on an abandoned soul tree, Stellar contingency, and the usual “Stop saying sorry!”, (^__^) Irrational belief in the numbers 12 and 7, Never ending shouts to CB in heaven. Golden snails and metal butterfly wings, Yellow caterpillars, ...

The soul does not whisper—it starves or screams. All in between is the illusion of peace. In the silence between the soul’s starvation and its outcry, we find the illusion of quiet—an artificial stillness that keeps us from confronting the essential hunger of being. It’s in the cries we refuse to hear, the ones we bury beneath distractions, that the true self makes itself known. The peace we crave is often the peace we’ve made of compromise, a truce with our most uncomfortable truths. But peace, in this sense, is not reconciliation—it’s resignation. We imagine that the soul's desire can be satisfied by a soft murmur, by polite introspection. We overlook the primal scream that rises when we’ve neglected the body and spirit for too long. To experience truth is to starve, to let ourselves hunger for more than what the world offers—only then can we hear the scream that shatters the quiet. It is only when the soul’s yearning is left unchecked, when we are stripped of the comforts of ig...

  They say to wake is to step into chaos. To exist, not merely to be. But what of those who remain cradled in the safety of sleep, lost to the quiet hum of dreams, untouched by the gnawing of truth? In a world that insists on slumber, wakefulness becomes a rebellion. To truly see is to confront the unbearable weight of reality — and few dare carry it. Most would rather fade into the comfort of illusion, where the world bends to the sweetness of their fantasies. But to be awake, to shake free from the shackles of the false comfort, is to become a stranger to the familiar. A wanderer in a land that asks for blindness and docility. The conflict lies in the tension: the dreaming world versus the one that burns with raw, unfiltered life. The soul, awake, is a battlefield. Each moment of clarity a war against the numbness. Each step forward a rejection of the lullaby that seeks to lull us back to sleep. This is the paradox of wakefulness. The more we see, the less we are understood. Th...

“They told me to follow my passion... I met myself.” Desire. It is the myth that drives us, the silent commander whispering in our ears, promising that with its pursuit, we will find ourselves, or at least, something greater than our current selves. In truth, it is a pilgrimage—the search not for glory, nor for destination, but for the inevitable unraveling of what we believe we desire. I have wandered these paths myself. The road is slick with promises, paved with assumptions, and lined with false guides who declare, “Follow your passion, and you will find fulfillment.” Yet, each step I took, every inch closer to what I thought would fulfill me, led me to a chasm where nothing could breathe. The pursuit of passion is a paradox, for what I once thought would liberate me only bound me tighter to the expectations I created. Desire, as I have learned, is a shapeshifter. It wears the masks of ambition, love, and ambition once more, seducing us with its promises of meaning, fulfillment, ...

The empty realization regarding a universe so vast handling all possible combinations and permutations of synchronistic events is too profound for my tiny mind. Reading a book about reincarnation and hope makes me a complete sissy.  I mean, hope should be simple, right? After the storm there’s a new dawn, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s not how many times you fall down but what matters is the fact that you stand up every time you fall down and all those Facebook and internet memes about hope. It brings hope to people in search of it. (it should give hope or presumably, die hoping.) Then here comes reincarnation, where your soul based on your past karma will be thrown in another space, another time – a theory where, in a grand scheme of things, order will be put in place as your soul will be raped and ripped somewhere, it can be in the past, present or future. (well technically as a subject, you will always be in the present, but you get my point. Since I...

The abyss calls not from a distance but from the marrow of our bones. To look into it is to stand before the essence of what we are. Nietzsche knew it well—the abyss is not a metaphor, but a living, breathing presence within us. And to stare into it, to confront it head-on, is to challenge the very fabric of our being. But here lies the paradox: in facing it, we don’t fall in. No. We transcend it. We become something more, something that dares to live at the edge of everything we are told to fear. We are conditioned to avoid the abyss, aren’t we? It lurks in the quiet corners of our darkest thoughts, the edges of our deepest fears. It’s that gnawing feeling that tells us we are not enough, that our lives are but fleeting whispers in the wind. Yet Nietzsche didn’t fear the abyss. He beckoned us toward it, urging us to walk through the darkness—not as victims, but as victors. “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he become a monster,” he warned. But the abyss ...

When we finally accept the fact that our lives are fleeting – everything ends… As nihilistic as it may sound, we are all subjects to the hour glass of time. The whole ordeal may seem unbearable and “un-romantic” but having an illusion of eternity provides us with nothing more than pseudo-ideals. Eternity isn’t a mechanical process quantified by time. Time isn’t the ticking of the clock, not the hour, nor the days but time is a living present.   We have to do away with our romantic designs of eternity – We want affirmation that our partners will love us forever, we want confirmation from people that everything’s going to be fine, we want to live with our loved ones for all eternity… But all of these are deceptions we tell ourselves for we cannot carry the burden of being trapped in time. Accept the idea that we are temporal beings. Our chronological limitation is what makes sense in this seemingly absurd world, but this limitation doesn’t mean that we cannot immort...