I am very honored to have given my last and most significant birthday gift to my grandfather before he passed away last year. Here is a painting I did for him and for the rest of the family he has left behind. We love you lolo.
"How well the painting captures him and tells his story."
A tribute to Teodoro Gonzales Sr. Article by Raymund L. Fernandez published last June 3, 2012 in Cebu Daily News (read article below)
A tribute to Teodoro Gonzales Sr. Article by Raymund L. Fernandez published last June 3, 2012 in Cebu Daily News (read article below)
Acrylic paint on canvas
Distance
by Raymund L. Fernandez
Physicists reckon distance by an imaginary straight line between two points in space but we know straight lines are hardly possible in real life. We humans travel in twists and turns meandering through life, sometimes at our leisurely pace, other times, as fast as our bodies can take us. Which is why we do not measure life the way we value speed in units of distance divided by time. A person may make as much of a short life as with a long one. How best then to measure the value of life?
Some say in units of achievement. This person achieved this much. He or she did this and that at this and that age. The younger he did this and that the better. It seems a fair measure. And yet we ought to warn ourselves. Since we know that every achievement comes always at the expense of another. And often, the value of achievement is a mere construct resulting from social judgement. There is no universal unit to measure achievement. Take the head surgeon of the biggest hospital in the United States. Now measure him or her against a missionary doctor who has opted to practice in a small island off Mindanao, moving her whole family there in order to deliver medical service to a village who would not otherwise have a doctor. Who achieves more? Can we truly tell? Still, if it were put into a contest, humans would judge anyway, that being the inevitable nature of humans and contests.
Life is no contest. But we have to be excused for behaving as if it is. We are wired that way down to the cellular level. And this wiring merely reflects from the nature of the apparent universe. All organisms struggle to survive inside an environment that has absolutely no obligation to either promote or dis-promote life. One is either predator or prey. We all inevitably become food. And if life is a contest, it is one all of us will lose eventually. Winning or losing is hardly a telling measure. It is by far better to do away with measures that put the value of one life against another.
The physicists know measurement becomes possible only after we assume or construct a universal unit to measure anything. And since life is too complex for such a universal unit of measure, then we cannot really measure it with any trustworthy degree of certainty unless we assigned limited fields for measuring. For instance, it is impossible for us to say that Juan Ponce Enrile is the better person than Miriam Defensor Santiago. But if we asked who is the better lawyer or if we judged by the way they handled themselves through the Renato Corona impeachment trials then the answer is too obvious to deserve spelling out.
But all this does not mean we cannot measure the true value of life. The philosophers would have a thing or two to say about that. The religious too. And it is a fact that we have to make this judgement all the time. A person may survive without any inkling at all for the purpose of life. But a person must judge that life is valuable for him or her to voluntarily persist for even a single day.
Life hurts. That is the inevitable nature of life. We have therefore to justify our persistence. And we must justify it by a feeling which is the opposite of hurt. The opposite of hurt is the judgement that life is meaningful. It is beautiful. It is aesthetic.
Every person's life therefore is a story not necessarily stated in words. But it is only through words that we can retell it. And so every life is inevitably a narrative we write ourselves of ourselves and perhaps for everyone else although the latter is not at all a requirement. Even so, we will all be measured in the end by the story we tell of us. And the ultimate measure of the story will always be how beautiful it reads.
For ourselves, we might surmise that by the end of our story we must also recollect the distance we have travelled before we came here, every twist and turn in our meandering course from birth to here, the story of this particular "I". And what will we think? Will a smile cross our faces? Will it be just such a smile as is on the face of this painting of this old friend which now hangs over his casket among the flowers? He will be buried today, yesterday by the time you read this.
How well the painting captures him and tells his story. How well it tells of how he measured himself. He rest his chin on his right hand. His hand is open, not balled into a fist. His smile threatens to break into a laugh, as if to say life is almost funny, it is worthy of a smile. He seems to say: This finally is the true measure of the value of life. This smile. This is my unit for measuring the distance I have travelled so far.
by Raymund L. Fernandez
Physicists reckon distance by an imaginary straight line between two points in space but we know straight lines are hardly possible in real life. We humans travel in twists and turns meandering through life, sometimes at our leisurely pace, other times, as fast as our bodies can take us. Which is why we do not measure life the way we value speed in units of distance divided by time. A person may make as much of a short life as with a long one. How best then to measure the value of life?
Some say in units of achievement. This person achieved this much. He or she did this and that at this and that age. The younger he did this and that the better. It seems a fair measure. And yet we ought to warn ourselves. Since we know that every achievement comes always at the expense of another. And often, the value of achievement is a mere construct resulting from social judgement. There is no universal unit to measure achievement. Take the head surgeon of the biggest hospital in the United States. Now measure him or her against a missionary doctor who has opted to practice in a small island off Mindanao, moving her whole family there in order to deliver medical service to a village who would not otherwise have a doctor. Who achieves more? Can we truly tell? Still, if it were put into a contest, humans would judge anyway, that being the inevitable nature of humans and contests.
Life is no contest. But we have to be excused for behaving as if it is. We are wired that way down to the cellular level. And this wiring merely reflects from the nature of the apparent universe. All organisms struggle to survive inside an environment that has absolutely no obligation to either promote or dis-promote life. One is either predator or prey. We all inevitably become food. And if life is a contest, it is one all of us will lose eventually. Winning or losing is hardly a telling measure. It is by far better to do away with measures that put the value of one life against another.
The physicists know measurement becomes possible only after we assume or construct a universal unit to measure anything. And since life is too complex for such a universal unit of measure, then we cannot really measure it with any trustworthy degree of certainty unless we assigned limited fields for measuring. For instance, it is impossible for us to say that Juan Ponce Enrile is the better person than Miriam Defensor Santiago. But if we asked who is the better lawyer or if we judged by the way they handled themselves through the Renato Corona impeachment trials then the answer is too obvious to deserve spelling out.
But all this does not mean we cannot measure the true value of life. The philosophers would have a thing or two to say about that. The religious too. And it is a fact that we have to make this judgement all the time. A person may survive without any inkling at all for the purpose of life. But a person must judge that life is valuable for him or her to voluntarily persist for even a single day.
Life hurts. That is the inevitable nature of life. We have therefore to justify our persistence. And we must justify it by a feeling which is the opposite of hurt. The opposite of hurt is the judgement that life is meaningful. It is beautiful. It is aesthetic.
Every person's life therefore is a story not necessarily stated in words. But it is only through words that we can retell it. And so every life is inevitably a narrative we write ourselves of ourselves and perhaps for everyone else although the latter is not at all a requirement. Even so, we will all be measured in the end by the story we tell of us. And the ultimate measure of the story will always be how beautiful it reads.
For ourselves, we might surmise that by the end of our story we must also recollect the distance we have travelled before we came here, every twist and turn in our meandering course from birth to here, the story of this particular "I". And what will we think? Will a smile cross our faces? Will it be just such a smile as is on the face of this painting of this old friend which now hangs over his casket among the flowers? He will be buried today, yesterday by the time you read this.
How well the painting captures him and tells his story. How well it tells of how he measured himself. He rest his chin on his right hand. His hand is open, not balled into a fist. His smile threatens to break into a laugh, as if to say life is almost funny, it is worthy of a smile. He seems to say: This finally is the true measure of the value of life. This smile. This is my unit for measuring the distance I have travelled so far.
A picture of my grandfather with the painting
