I knew that the transition to medical school was going to be anything but smooth, and I was correct. I had a lot of misgivings before the start of classes and a lot of imagined problems with my soon-to-be classmates. Somehow, however, I was able to persist and flourish: perhaps this is the reason that they call man to be the superior being, as his capacity to adapt is nearly limitless. (more…)

In the past week, I’ve only watched a single episode of a certain anime, and I realized something: the best only get better with time. The DVD re-encodes of niizk of Honey and Clover, the anime that still remains to be my favorite among every anime series I have watched, have reminded me of how majestic the series was. I absolutely loved the prognostication of the first episode: life, indeed, is like a wheel (and this wheel symbolism is something that pervades the entirety of the series). It goes up; it goes down; but it keeps on going on. At the end of the first episode Takemoto explicates to us that there are some things we do yet we don’t know the reasons why, just as there are some things and people we like without knowing the reasons why. Despite everything, however, life must go on.

This belief somehow reminded me of a line in Pablo Neruda’s poem, No Hay Olvido (There’s No Forgetting). It’s actually the last line of the poem. The line goes: ‘and so many things that I want to forget.’ All our lives we are beset by the face and the fact of our own humanity and failures, yet we must go on. We keep on, because to keep on is to keep on living.

I love Honey and Clover. You should, too.