“While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.”—Lyndon B. Johnson
 
CANDIDATES in the May 12, 2025 Philippine election can’t be blamed for acting like children in the classroom of adults.

Some of them would be hounded by terrible heartaches in only about two weeks from now; they would submerge in the boulevard of broken dreams.

Their combative and irrational behaviors are signs of panic and fear of losing, an enigma that has been with the human psyche since we learned to compete in life’s chariot race. 

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave can best explain the point we’re trying to raise in connection with the forthcoming Philippine election.

Sometimes these behaviors surface during unguarded moments, when they mistakenly think they are acting normally and saying words rationally.

This can be attributed to stress, anxiety, and burn out after several months of hooping from one barangay, district, municipality, city, and region to another all over the archipelago and spending oodles upon oodles of money; the tired and weary mind and body can produce eerie reactions that are verbalized.
 
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We wrote in the previous elections that no candidate in the election believed in defeat.

Once the candidates began hitting the campaign trail, they thought nothing could stop them from winning. If they lost, they were cheated. No one admitted they were simply bested by their rivals fair and square. 

The realization or the coming to terms with objective thinking has always been late.

When the mind and body are well-rested, certain chemicals circulate and replenish our internal ecosystem and guide us to accept the reality.

We can actually move on if we show respect to whomever or whatever has defeated us. After being vanquished, let’s summon enough courage to shake hands with our opponents, and congratulate them on a job well done. Yes, we can if we want to do it.

Whether we lost a fight, a debate, or a competition, let’s try not to resort to pettiness. We won’t be able to reverse the results by complaining about them, or by acting bitter toward the winner.

Be as polite and gracious as possible.
 
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Three years ago, we wrote that most Filipinos didn’t care at all if Twitter (now X) would be owned by a man many critics have long suspected to be the “devil” (I personally reject this absurd “suspicion” and we didn’t tolerate it if some Elon Musk bashers made such south-of-the-border accusations). 

We, Filipinos, didn’t mind it as long as X has been giving us quality service and quick access to what was happening around the world as part of our daily life as social media addicts.

After Mr. Musk made an offer to takeover X then, tensions started to run high across the social media behemoth as news of the billionaire’s takeover bid of the company spread across the service, with users contemplating what the service could look like under his watch.

Things were reportedly little different inside X. The New York Times reported that “many employees felt rocked by the news over the last 10 days that Mr. Musk wished to purchase the company and reshape it in his image.”

To quell employee concerns, X management had called an emergency all-hands meeting led by Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief executive, according to five employees who attended and were not authorized to talk publicly, according to a New York Times report.

Among the most pressing issues: Was the takeover bid for real? And if so, would Mr. Musk overhaul the service that many of X’s employees have spent years thinking about, tweaking and refining with a painstaking level of care?

Perhaps we now know some of the answers in 2025.
 
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IT’S OUR FAULT, ACTUALLY. We were created with flat teeth because we are not supposed to be carnivore; therefore, we can’t eat meat but only vegetables.

But when Prometheus discovered fire and handed the knowledge to mankind, we learned how to cook and thus we started to eat meat–and started to suffer heart attack due to high cholesterol.

Let us eat more vegetables and fruits and less meat. Let us minimize if not totally stop the wanton slaughter of animals.

STAND UP STRAIGHT. This sounds so ridiculously simple, but it’s one of the most evidential traits of those women we so admire. Stand against a wall with head, shoulder blades, and heels touching, and buttocks pushed into the wall.

THE SUN IS OUR SKIN’S NO. 1 ENEMY. We should always make sun protection a priority. Let’s use a sunscreen formulated for our skin along with our moisturizer. Much of the evidence of aging, rough skin, wrinkles, age spots, etc. are really the result of too much sun.

CONTROL THE EMOTION. A man’s bad temper is the number one cause of his downfall.

Millions of people today know of Nebuchadnezzar, and have never heard of Pericles, simply because Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned prominently in the Bible and Pericles, the father of Athens, is never mentioned at all.

HOW DO MODELS STAY IN SHAPE? Cindy Crawford: “My breakfast is cereal with banana and skimmed milk. Pasta or salad is usually lunch, sushi, brown rice, and vegetables for dinner. Dairy products go right on my rear end, so I avoid them.”

(PG 13) The tip of the clitoris has about 8,000 nerve endings–more than anywhere else on the human body. (Cosmopolitan)

Alex P. Vidal, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.