Gratitude is not soft. It is the calloused hand that built the feast. Thanksgiving is drawing near. The leaves are dying beautifully, people are pretending to like pumpkin spice, and supermarkets are waging wars in the frozen aisle over turkeys the size of small dogs. For many Americans, this is nostalgia season, the one time of year when family, food,
Tag: identity
I once met a man with a PhD in Chemical Engineering. He introduced himself and said, Just call me Bob.That was it. No letters. No performance. Just quiet certainty.And that is when I decided I would never need M.S. after my name. The Question I was asked once why I don’t put M.S. after my name. It was said kindly,
Sounding “American” does not equate clarity or comprehension. Fluency is not imitation. It is ownership. I Grew Up Speaking in Two Worlds I grew up and spent a big part of my life in the Philippines. Yes, we used English in school. It was the language of instruction, of authority, of announcements shouted through broken speakers that nobody really heard.
I wish I could talk the way I could write — calm, precise, and unafraid. But maybe silence and ink were always my native tongue, and speech was just a language I never fully learned. There are moments when I sit quietly, words tumbling freely in my head, forming lines that could have silenced a room or rescued a conversation.