As I sneaked out in the computer this morning, I read a topic "Facebook Addiction Disorder. I was so curious to read what was it all about. I discovered that people nowadays are getting addicted with facebook. There are plenty of things you can do in this social networking. Chatt with friends, share photos, videos and messages. What was most exciting is you can indulge into its online games, stories and many more. Indeed, facebook offers a lot of online programs, activities and leisures that gives pleasures to the person using it. Yes, it is helpful so as to know and keep updated to your love ones' whereabouts. However, there is a bad news! Excessive use of time on facebook is no longer healthy. It makes you become slave. It is because as I have said, anything that gives you pleasure, leads you to become an addict. You might not be aware of this but this kind of addiction kills your time little by little until yo become hooked by it. Little by little, your most valuable time will be wasted. Unknowingly, the disease of addiction becomes your own disease and your day will never be complete without it. You tend to become irritable everytime you lose your time and skip for a day without checking your facebook account. Little by little your social functioning will be affected. You even hurt yourself by sleeping too late at night because of facebook. You spend more of your time on it than your family, friends and loved ones. In short, your life will never be complete without it. Yes, this is the new trend of the world today. "Kailangang maging sabay sa uso" You fool! The world is dictating you to be enslaved by the things which does not give us everlasting pleasures and happiness. And if you say, what's wrong with facebook? Absolutely, I say nothing is wrong. That is if you know how to use it moderately. I am not excluding myself for this thing because I too has a facebook account. It is just a matter of responsibility and maturity of our limitations as a person. As individual and of course as religious, we have the great tendency to waste our time. Sad to say, there are plenty of them who become addicted to it. Seminarians, religious sisters, priests and brothers spend so much time on internet and on facebook. They spend their leisures in games, chatting and a lot more. Instead of helping our co-sisters and brothers who are in need, we tend to close our doors and comfortably sit in an ergonomic chair inside the air condition room playing and chatting on the internet. Where is chastity and poverty there. Common, people of God! Hear you who have ears, listen! For who and for what you are? Why are you there when many people outside needs you? I know of some seminarians and sisters who woke up early in the morning just to open the computer and continue playing the unfinished game in the night because it was already very late. Then when meditation and eucharistic celebration comes, they are there sleeping. When given a task or a responsibility to be assign somewhere or sometime of a day, obedience became a question. Why is that so? No energy! No life! Burned out? Yan kasi ubos na ubos na ang lakas sa gabi sa kapupuyat sa internet, lol!(It's because you spend so much of your time on internet). Better not to comment, though I have commented a lot already. Anong pakialam ko sa buhay ng iba? Sa akin man lang, we are gifted with a religious vocation to give life and be a life to others. Not to waste our time and spend so much on things which are not necessary. We are supposed to integrate ourselves with others and share our lives to them and be ready to be with them in times of need.
Our life as a christian is supposedly given like Christ who died for our salvation. Not for our own selfish desires and pleasures but for the kingdom of God. Religious people dare to be different. A life of selfless giving up to the point of making it empty because it was poured out to satisfy the thirst and hunger of the person whom you love and serve. Instead of putting all energies and time on those things, it could be better if we put ourselves habitually on things which could please God. Dying from our own will is living in the light of holiness. This is what God wants us to be. That is why we wanted to become like Him...to put on the armour of light and cast the darkness away. In this regard, we become conscientious and aware of our own limitations and strength. Thus, we say that being a religious sister or brother is worth dying for.
What is then my point of letting you know the significance of using our time wisely and living a life with transparency and credibility as a religious? Just one thing for sure, that we will not be misplaced and carried away by the standard of the world. The world now demands us to be popular, more secularized and highly technical but I hope we will not forget that we too as Christians ought to be a living sample of being simple like Jesus who is true, meek and humble. Jesus who has the strong willpower to say NO to sin. That like Him, we as religious may become more aware that the more we wanted to be like Him, the more we become available to people who are in need like Jesus who is ways available for us if we need Him. Our relationship with other people may not only contain within the four square and corners of our computers and waste our time there, but for us to go out from our comfort zone to cross the frontiers in reaching out our brothers and sisters who are in need.
