Pandemic Romance Going Viral

I love following the Instagram account Humans of New York and more recently I followed New York Nico. The compelling stories of Humans in New York and the characters of the people in New York Nicos account provide a window to what many believe to be the greatest city on the world. I've been to New York once when I was probably 10 years old. At that time my goal was to visit all the tallest building in the city we would visit in the US. I got to go up the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers. What stuck to me however, if my memory serves me right, was seeing the police arrest a guy in the streets. It must have frightened my mother who was taking 3 kids along with here to see this kind of scenario. All the movies and songs about the city however, creates such an impression about the city and it's characters. With it's blend of culture and the mix of nationalities I can't argue when people when they say it's the greatest city in the world.

This story just adds to the millions of stories that makes New York - New York. It happened in Brooklyn though. But isn't that part of New York as well? As a Filipino, I hope I'm given that leeway to clump them together. The video can easily tell the story but as a romcom fan, and in the age of social media you can easily look deeper and follow through on their story.

Here's Jeremy Cohen's account:

And here's Tori Cignarella's account:

As I was looking through their accounts I sadly found out that one of Tori's aunts was a victim of the pandemic. Her name was Remy, which sounded very Filipino. One of those who posted a comment asked if she was Filipino and it turns out she 1/4 Filipino. If you are part Filipino, even if it's 1/100 as long as you have Filipino heritage, Filipino's and the local media would love this content.

This story has been on the news for the past two weeks and I just came across it. It does seem the their story continue to develop and I've started following them on social media. I do hope, I'm sure we all do, that this story goes on to their happily ever after since we all need a feel good story to come out of this tragedy.

Imagine

When I was younger, I didn't like this song because of the lyrics. Specifically the line "no religion too". I think this line still disturbs people because they find that it offends their religious beliefs. And that is exactly the point the song is trying to say. Ironically, religion can be very divisive. An extreme example of this is ISIS. They oppress women and will essentially kill anyone who will oppose their religion and their belief system.

Anything that clearly delineates people from one another creates some sort of friction. The song simply invites you to imagine a world where nothing separates our beliefs from one another. Where the world can simply be one unified entity maybe a world simply believing in LOVE.

A Happy Accident

The 'lockdown' in the Philippines started March 15, 2020. Prior to this I was quite anxious not knowing what to do. While there was a potential opportunity, I has some doubts on how I can push it to move forward. When the quarantine started the world stopped and it gave me the sense that now we are all in the same predicament. My anxiety about my situation shifted to issues of the pandemic. Since this was beyond my control inner uneasiness seemed to have been tempered.

While making the most of of the 'break' was all over social media, it seemed like a regular day for me. I work from home with a few clients so I do have a lot of time. When I normally look to be more productive with my time, I shifted to the opposite and spent more time on social media following the pandemic and consuming my miscellaneous interests on YouTube. I did watch or join some online webinars that went on my feed.

Three weeks on the quarantine my mindset somehow shifted to join more of those productivity and business related webinars. This is when I came across Coach Russ' feed and saw a coaching webinar. I've been wanting to reach out to a personal coach for the longest time but resources was always in question. I said to myself one session would be nice and I just wanted to see what it was all about. My expectation was that it would be a big group where the person would be helping us out on how to cope and move forward in this crisis.

- I was about 5 minutes early. Suddenly realized, this won't be a big group thing. I wanted to leave. I did not.

- As it went on, I participated in the exercises. Communicating privately....

- Dinner at my house was usually at 6:30pm. If I was called for dinner I would leave....

- Dinner was late. I told William privately that I was potentially looking to reach out to coaches. He told me to wait till the end.

- Towards the end of the session William was looking for people to share. He called me out. I didn't want to share. I didn't want to be that guy, so I spoke up.

That night I went to check on the post again and realized I didn't read it thoroughly. It was clearly stated that 12 session will be offered for free. Looking back at it, maybe if I had seen that I would not have went to the meeting. I wasn't mentally prepared to go talk virtually with a bunch of strangers.

A happy accident. Serendipity would also be an appropriate term for it but I would rather call it a happy accident. In my sharing I think I consciously said a happy accident because it communicates it much more clearly. It was a happy accident.