Interesting reads I’ve come across lately that I can personally relate to and I wish I had written:From Inquirer.net, Youngblood, Walking Away by Lesley Cordero:

After two months, I was finally convinced that I had made the right decision. When I left for China, I took a leap of faith not knowing what was in store for me there. But when I came back, I realized that the whole experience taught me how to soar and soar higher. What made the letting go and moving on easier was the realization that it is difficult to work for someone if you no longer believe in him. Like everyone else, I want to work for a boss who can inspire me, a boss who does not only have the ambition but the conviction to make tough decisions.

But my story does not end there. In December 2006, I came home after completing the exchange program, worried to death because I was jobless and had no concrete plans. But as they say, God writes a straight line in crooked strokes, so if you cannot understand His plan then you just have to trust His hand.

Perhaps the senator still believes until today that I declined his offer because I went to China on a scholarship program. But truth to tell, I had reached a stage where I felt that I could no longer compromise certain standards and values. I realized that settling for less was no longer an option. The good pay and the power one might get from working in the Senate are quite tempting, but they are not enough. The whole experience taught me that in life, character, integrity and credibility are more important. They are non-negotiable, and they cannot be faked. Either you have them or you don’t, and when you have them you don’t sell out.

Someone once told me that men and women of character know when to walk away and when not to take less than what they deserve. True, it is always better to know your worth before you allow yourself to be dragged into the false promises of power, fame and money. A colleague once bet five grand that I would not give up everything I had at that moment. I just said, “Watch me!”

Today, I am in a place that is far enough to give me a good perspective of what is happening in the crowded circle where I used to thrive. And here I realize that my decision to walk away was one of the toughest that I have made in my lifetime, yet, one that I am truly proud of. Walking away does not mean turning your back at an opportunity for the rest of your life. Sometimes, it is just taking a stand and not settling for less than what you deserve. Or it can simply be taking a good break and reinventing yourself for that bigger and better comeback.

From noted journalist Sheila Coronel:

I don’t need to remind you that this was not always so. Technology has opened up possibilities we would never have imagined in the past. We have before us today vast, new, and for the most part, unexplored fields where it is still possible for us to lay a claim, to stake out an arena free from the constraints imposed by repressive states and the restrictions inflicted by profit-hungry media markets. The Web has also made it possible for us to interact, like never before possible, with the audience out there, and to build virtual communities of citizens engaged in conversations about things that truly matter to the future of their community, their nation, their planet.

In our day and age, cyberspace remains the most promising outlet for the exercise of the most elemental of all our rights: the right to free expression. At little cost and with much more freedom than is possible in the real world, the Net provides a space for one of the most profound expressions of our humanity: the need to speak out.

This, after all, is what the media are about – creating community. In another day and age, a TV or radio network or a nationally circulated newspaper could justifiably say, as the BBC did, that it was the nation talking to itself. Today with the Internet and the multiplicity of media, this is no longer the case. Instead we have the nation – or what passes for it, because in this age of migration a nation is not just a geographical space – the nation talking to its many selves. In cyberspace it is possible to have many conversations going on at the same time. That is its beauty. But that is also its peril – with so much going on in the virtual world, how do we keep track of what is truly significant? How do we separate the relevant from what is merely distracting? How do we build a nation in cyberspace, without risking fraying the already tattered bonds that keep us together?