Here’s a salad of a column for New Year’s Day.
With joy and hope, not with fear and trepidation, we must approach the coming year. Doomsday soothsayers have sent people to the edge. We are desperately in search of epiphanies. The crunch has not yet hit in a big, big way, but the way the pessimistic forecasters talk, it’s as if an asteroid is hurtling in the direction of planet Earth.
Hey, it’s New Year’s Day and we must laugh a little, sing a little, hope in a big way. See, despite the so-called economic crunch there was no stopping text messages from crisscrossing space and reaching the farthest corners of the globe. Emailed greetings, animated and with music, funny and serious, one-liners and in so many MBs—they all came as surely as Christmas came all aglow.
****
With bold steps we welcome 2009. And because we shouldn’t be too serious and worried on the first day of the year, here is something for the wise and wishful. Write the following on your cell phone:
“Dis s a puzzle sent only 2 wise persons lyk u. After solving it, send the same puzzle to someone who needs to smile. Solve the puzzle on your cell phone: R+CAT+HOSE-RAT+SUN-CHOSE+MOON+I-NOON+GOAL+T-GOAT-U+E.”
Here’s one more to bewilder you. I found this on the Internet. The math wizards among us would know the why of this.
This math test could tell with 100% accuracy who your favorite person is. Please do not look at the list of choices before you’ve done the computation. Here goes:
Pick a favorite number from 1 to 9.
Now multiply that number with 3.
Add 3.
Again multiply with 3.
You will get a two-digit number. Add the two digits. The sum would be the number on the choice list that corresponds to your favorite person.
1. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
2. Osama Bin Laden
3. Oprah Winfrey
4. Joe de Venecia
5. Barak Obama
6. Joma Sison
7. Nelson Mandela
8. Hillary Clinton
9. Me
10. Your parish priest/pastor/guru/teacher
A smiley for you! Yes, you. You should be your own Person of the Year, not in an egoistic way, but because you alone—with the help of those who matter, God among them—can make the most changes in your life and make things happen.
****
But there must be more to all that is shaking up the world, there must be more beyond all that—the economic crisis, the wars, the violence, the hunger, the anger. We shouldn’t be swallowed up in despair. So hold on just a little longer to the afterglow of the Christmas season, savor just a little longer the Christmas sweetness that settled in your soul. We need all the peace inside us to see and be convinced that there is more to all that is happening.
It is light versus dark—literally—even as the new year is just beginning.
It had been bad piece of news after another if that is all we want to see. We cannot allow the bad news to erase the dreamy haze of the Christmas season. It shouldn’t snuff out the blaze that ushers in the New Year.
We must conserve the little peace we have inside us, harness whatever energy we have gained (not lost) during the holidays (not that it could be converted into electricity) for what is ahead. The elections are just a year away. Some look forward to it with hope for deliverance from this vale of tears, others with dread. The exercise could lead us further to the edge....
But what the heck. Let us welcome the new year with great expectation. Let us look for manifestations of hope.
****
Jobs—this is what is worrying so many people all over the world. Batches of overseas Filipino workers are beginning to come home even before their work contracts have expired because their employers are closing shop. Finding work, earning from work, finding meaning in work are what occupy most minds these days.
I just pulled out Matthew Fox’s autographed book “The Reinvention of Work”. Written in the 1990s, it should address both those who live to work and those who work to live. If this book were printed during the Industrial Revolution, the world might have proceeded differently.
The book asks: “How many of us can really say that our work life is in balance with our personal life—that our values and desires are reflected in our daily vocation, that our personal life and professional life are integrated, or that we find satisfaction, not a crushing defeat of the spirit, in our workday existence? According to most polls and reports, very few of us do.”
Fox discusses work versus job: “Today close to one billion human beings are out of work…At the same time, in the whole industrial world, a large number of persons are overworked, they are, in the words of 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart, ‘worked’ instead of working, giving rise to the new addiction of workaholism.”
I cannot help thinking of many Filipinos in America who are holding down several jobs in order to give their families what they think is the best of America, meaning a nice home and consumer goods galore, a good education for their children.
Fox proposes a kind of work spirituality rooted in the interconnectedness of things created. There’s got to be a model other than the post-industrial one. The universe is a great work in itself, a great symphony, and when we find ourselves attuned to it and working in tune with it are we indeed fulfilled.
I wish you all a fulfilling year ahead. May the divine cosmic symphony permeate your soul.
Posts
