Laborers

It is now between household and skilled Pinoys in Kuwait. With the impending ban due to abuses on househelp, the skilled ones beg to be exempted as they are treated well.

Mediation avoids these knee-jerk, ill-conceived and partial decisions.

Clutter

Chit Roces- Santos in her "Not Quite There" column in the Sunday Inquirer wrote, "Everything else is clutter, which has no place in any happy, peaceful home, and even less, Ms. Kondo says, in our inner state, where it matters most."

Mediation is a decluttering process between disputants.

Photographers

Some people are like them, said Fr. Jerry Orbos in his Moments column yesterday in the Sunday Inquirer. "First, they frame you, then they shoot you, then they hang you on the wall."

Mediators act as the processor of the "positive."

Change

In today's CNN PH's tv Mass, the priest mentioned a case of another homilist who was giving the same message every week. When pointed out by a brave parishioner, the homilist agreed to their observation and promised to change his theme if they would, too.

Mediation also requires simultaneous change of attitude and behavior of the two disputants.

Communication

This bedrock of mediation spells the difference of its success or not. So Duterte's suggestion to Aung Suu Kyi to not listen to criticism is a no-no.

Self-Awareness

Had team-building yesterday which they say doesn't have an "i" but building has 2.

Start with knowing yourself and where you're coming from. Just like in mediation.

Two Sides

A recent share about people talking behind your back got my goat- till I read the reasons why.  Backtalkers cannot match you!

Not all sharers are created negative. Some are reassuring like a mediator.

Making America Great

Stephen Colbert's Late Show is always a welcome nightcap weekdays.
He answered that question with,"Send Trump to h---!"

In mediation, a caucus with one disputant at a time helps.

Tenedero

The President of the UST Alumnae Association is calling an emergency meeting to rethink the award they gave Mocha Uson.

Mukhang dapat. If only to prove that he is not Tendero!

True true happiness will follow

That was from an old song which added: "if you'll only follow me."

Can't be sung by a mediator, though he can lead disputants toward it.

Clarity

Young Sheldon sitcom's script is riveting. Once, his father said apologizing would set a bad precedent. The elder son asked if he were referring to Nixon.

It pays to clarify the issues raised by disputants. In Pilipino, a wife is a letter away from cobra.

Biolluminescence

Didn't catch its spelling in CNN's The Art of Movement with Philip Cousteau but this is a sea marvel at nightime in Puerto Rico's 3 bays. Tiny organisms light up the water hit by oars like water fireflies

In a way, mediators do the same for the path of disputants, too.

You First!

Our Daily Bread had an apt message on my assigned day at court-annexed mediation. On their day to first reach the top of Mount Everest, both Sherpa Gombu and American Jim Whittaker stepped up at the same time.

Practically speaking and kidding aside, dangerous to elbow each other at the peak. Better than Me First, so too in conflicts.

Axolotl

In an Our Daily Bread reading, it was defined as an "endangered Mexican salamander that retains its tadpole-like characteristics throughout its life...Writers and philosophers have used it as a symbol of someone who fears growth."

Axolotls come to mediation dealing with conflict like they were still toddlers.

Minister of Reconciliation

That was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who stated, "How do you go about loving your enemies? Begin with yourself...When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it."

Like they say about peace.

Hook us Pocus

Boo, deja vu! Rappler takes the rap for telling the emperor he has no clothes.

If you don't like to be told off, always wear your clothes.

Nobell Prize

At the same time Al Gore won it for his "Inconvenient Truth" on the environment, Irena Sendler was likewise nominated for already having saved lives during the Holocaust. She would smuggle out infants in boxes and toddlers in knapsacks out of concentration camps. She was abetted by a dog who would bark and cover for the noise the children would make.

Mediators from Nigeria had also won for their novel way of dealing with political conflict in their country.

Blasting Speakers

Apt parts of the sound system during the birthday celebration of Speaker Alvarez, who can be quite blasting, too!

Mediation puts a cap to those.

Creative Writer

My daughter is one. I kid her am one myself- a creative righter.

Being a mediator.

Anggun

She is an Indonesian Muslim pop star/singer who studied in an Elementary Catholic School. She stated, "Your belief doesn't determine whether you're a good person or not. Your behavior does."

Could teach the Kardashians!

Swiss Mister

Not your choco maker, but the founder of the Red Cross.
That is why its flag contains the inverted colors of Switzerland's. Now the Swiss animal welfarers are moving to stun lobsters before being thrown into boiling water. And for barking dogs not to be punished.

The Swiss Alpine air must be good for the spirit as well.

Institution

Still from "The Crown," Mr. Parker, the Private Secretary of Prince Philip used to say, "Marriage is an institution and nobody likes to live in it." Well, his wife divorced him soon after.

Attitude is prelude to behavior, as in mediation.

Deference vs Equality

Another dilemma featured in Netflix "The Crown," when a royal critic (who was also a royal so loyal too) listed how the Queen could improve dealing with her subjects. Transparency, reaching out and revealing herself were suggested. Thus started her televised Christmas message.

Mediation also champions equality of disputants.

The Kors to Meet

Not the singing group but the missile-wielding countries. All it took was the South to initiate meeting the North.

That's "self-mediation."

Thanks+Giving

The CNNPH TV Mass presider enjoined attendees to follow-up gratitude with paying back or forward.

Good move for disputants.

Aptology

A pun, not a typo. Someone said there are 3 statements to a sincere apology:

1) I am sorry.
2) It was my fault.
3) I will make it up to you.

Music to mediators' ears when disputants say these to one another.

Round the Bend

Usually that is where the Compromise Agreement is. Our Daily Bread has this tip: "When we bend our knees to pray, God bends His ear to listen."

Mediators, listen up and kneel down.

Me-mory

Read in "Truth Theory" that Professor Blake Richards now says that forgetfulness is a sign of intelligence. Lots of them among the elderly, LOL

But he makes sense in postulating that we have to delete some data in the brain that are deemed irrelevant or outdate to make room for new information for optimized decision-making.
Like mental adaptation of sorts.

Emotional adaptation in mediation too when we overcome ill feelings in search of compromise.

Looking Back

Ambeth Ocampo's latest column had a timely topic- Rizal. He was quoted thus: "I alway found that the prosperity or the misery of a people is in direct proportion to its liberties or concerns, and consequently to the sacrifices or selfishness of its ancestors."

Or of the disputants in mediation.

3 Elements

Can't recall the periodic table except hydrogen being first but in life and specifically in mediation, this quote is true:

Faith makes all things possible;
Hope makes all things work;
Love makes all things easy.

Obama Gray

Care has been dropped and his hair has lightened. Stephen Colbert says Obama has aged more watching the current administration than when he was actually the President.

Mediators have to likewise control themselves from taking over the session from the disputants.