Reclusland

March 30, 2010

- Manny Pacquiao on Agape -

“God is love. Love your people. Keep them close. If you always keep them close, no matter what, because you must love, then you must forgive. Yes?”

quotes —

  1. 1 Corinthians 13: “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

    Comment by Ian — March 30, 2010 @ 12:02 pm


  2. Quote from this amazing article in GQ. Read it. Please.

    Comment by Ian — March 30, 2010 @ 12:02 pm


  3. Disturbing. What am I looking for?

    Comment by speedbird — March 30, 2010 @ 12:34 pm


  4. Ha! The whole article, the description of him and the way he works. Its awesome.

    Also, for the record, I do not find it disturbing myself, though it is a little strange. ;)

    Oh, and the Corinthian’s quote is from this Wiki article. Not related to the GQ article at all, except in my head.

    Comment by Ian — March 30, 2010 @ 12:46 pm


  5. I dunno. The whole superman thing. And that goodness is beating up people. Wigs me out. Never mind the style of the article itself. Or maybe I’m missing the point.

    Comment by speedbird — March 30, 2010 @ 4:28 pm


  6. The Governor Hammering the guys dick off and carrying a picture of it in his wallet was kind of disturbing, I thought the fighting stuff was kind of cool. I like fighting. I follow MMA though more than boxing. I hadn’t heard of this guy. There are a couple really good mma fighters that can fight in different weight classes.

    To me he kind of seems like a mafioso guy that ends up giving money to his church and to his community, you know, becoming a repectable pillar of the community. I think he was in an issue of Sports Illustrated of ESPN magazine where they highlighted athletes bodies, some were naked but I think he had trunks on. I remeber something about him saying he was like a machine.

    Very interesting.

    Comment by ted — March 30, 2010 @ 6:08 pm


  7. Yeah, OK, valid points all around on the disturbing aspects of the article.

    What I liked (or at least, like to imagine) about it though, is how its all held together by the intent to do good stuff for people, that putting genuine unconditioned care and attempts to accept all things as they are (while doing what you can to improve them when possible) as the most important thing, leads to a pretty impressive tidal wave of goodness, REGARDLESS of all the disturbing crap going on around it. That there’s a force that comes from accepting bad shit with an open heart.

    From the I Ching:

    The destinies of men are subject to immutable laws that must fulfill
    themselves. But man has it in his power to shape his fate, according as his
    behavior exposes him to the influence of benevolent or of destructive forces.
    When a man holds a high position and is nevertheless modest, he shines
    with the light of wisdom; if he is in a lowly position and is modest, he cannot
    be passed by. Thus the superior man can carry out his work to the end
    without boasting of what he has achieved.

    Comment by Ian — March 31, 2010 @ 11:02 am


  8. I think being able to kick everyones ass is a big part of his success. But then he probably figured “Why not be decent to people, now that I have proven myself to be a complete bad ass? Why stress?”

    Comment by Ted — March 31, 2010 @ 1:16 pm


  9. Did you even read the article Ted? His life story is pretty much the opposite of that:

    You think that when you talk about Manny Pacquiao, you’re talking about just an athlete? You’re not. You’re talking about a man born to Dickensian tin-shanty poverty in General Santos City, a dry-baked scab on the Philippine nation’s equatorial bottom. You’re talking about a man who spent every hour of his childhood stomach-hungry, shoeless, and stinking. A man whose father abandoned the home when he was a toddler, stayed away for many years, showed up one day for several hours, just long enough to cook and eat his son’s dog, then vanished again. A man who never finished school and left for Manila as a teen not because he was pulled, not because others sensed a destiny in him, but because he felt duty-bound to decrease the mouths under his mother’s roof. This may be the strangest twist in Pacquiao’s athletic history: He grew up in a nation where the cultivation of boxing talent amounts to a civic duty, yet those who saw him compete as a boy considered Pacquiao, at best, a local talent. After arriving in Manila at the age of 14, he spent a year selling doughnuts in the street, working construction, training in a gym, at times sleeping under a bridge swaddled in newspapers—and fighting for one-hundred-peso purses (about two U.S. dollars) in illegal back-alley brawls. You’re talking about a man whose consciousness was reduced to the purely physical by the time he hit puberty, a nasty little fighting cock, everything about him that could have been supple and imaginative scraped down to and off the bone…yes? Well, no. By all rights, that’s how this guy’s life should have unfolded. But then that other element, the strange—which meant this was a fighter who often subjected the gym where he trained to…speeches.

    “Sometimes there’d be somebody there, sometimes there was nobody else around as far as he knew, but it didn’t matter to Manny— he was dreaming out loud,” says Nick Giongco, who handles the Pacquiao beat for the Manila Bulletin. “He would announce himself as the mayor and speak about his plans for improving things. He would move his arms around like a politician. I could never tell if he was just trying to entertain himself or if he was, you know, practicing.”

    The fact that someone who went through that didn’t come running to the US as soon as he was making millions of US dollars but instead stayed to support the people and country that he, for whatever reason, loves, is what I find so impressive.

    Comment by Ian — March 31, 2010 @ 1:25 pm


  10. I read the whole article Ian. I went to Bible College with a rich Phillipino kid. He was a so so basketball player, playing in Bible college against NCAA div 3 schools in PA.

    So through his Dad’s connections he got to be on a team in the Phillipino version of the NBA. He said Basketball players live like kings there, with Mable palaces.

    I am a li

    Comment by Ted — March 31, 2010 @ 2:06 pm


  11. …I am a little skeptical that he is under hardships for staying in the Phillipines. My impression is that Its like Brazil, with a mega rich upper class that lives like Kings while most are poor.

    I am more impressed by how tough he is. I appreciate really good fighters.

    But, Ian, I am just not that in awe of people. He seems like a movie star or someone with a big worshipful enterouge, and that he’s proud of where he comes from and so helps people out.

    That’s not that uncommon, when people become rich. Most people are basically decent and wat to help others, especially when it reflects well on them and their pride of “their people”

    Comment by Ted — March 31, 2010 @ 2:13 pm


  12. I am impressed by his compassion. Though he is a great fighter, you don’t often find fighters with so much love in them. And he seems to want to genuinely do the right thing, which is a very rare thing in successful people. I find him inspiring for those reasons. The acceptance of opposites that he embodies and represents is a beautiful thing.

    Comment by Ian — March 31, 2010 @ 2:27 pm


  13. You can live like a pimp in the Phillipines on 1k a month, you know that right?

    I will say this, all the best MMA fighters have a humility and a zen like stillness about them and are at peace with themselves.

    That’s my experience. This one guy Fedor Emmelianenko is like that. There is another guy Anderson Silva that is like that also.

    They don’t talk trash, or try to have a mean “stare down” before the fight starts. They are true martial artists.

    This guy Fedor is really patriotic about Russia also and won’t move the the US or join the UFC. He is a devout Orthodox Christian and absolutely destroys all his opponents.

    Comment by Ted — March 31, 2010 @ 3:21 pm


  14. So Ted, should I not find Pacquiao to be an inspiring human being? That is what I am taking away from your comments here, that I am somehow wrong for looking up to him. Is this what you mean to say?

    Comment by Ian — March 31, 2010 @ 3:37 pm


  15. I never objected to you being inspired by him.

    Comment by Ted — March 31, 2010 @ 4:12 pm


  16. Thank you.

    Comment by Ian — March 31, 2010 @ 4:30 pm



Leave a comment»
















Leave a comment





WP