Sunday, February 24, 2008 Sun.Star Essay: A look at the past By Erma M. Cuizon
GRANDMA used to say life in this world is full of problems---from falling out of love, to global warming, to dishonest elections, to dry hair on a bad hair day. One Louise wrote help! in her frantic letter to advice-columnist Dr. Dana Ruiz in the Women’s World section of this paper. “My hair feels like straw.”
The answer of the columnist assuages the fear---“try an overnight conditioner,” she says. Apply it in the hair and cover with a shower cap. “Leave it overnight and rinse it the following day.”
Thank God for advice columnists. For the so-called small problems, there will always be advice columns in papers, and now in cyberspace like “Problem Exchange.”
I came across one letter written to Dear Carol (columnist Carol Weston): “Does wearing a sports bra keep your breasts from growing? (Signed) –Undeveloped”
And Carol answered: “Dear Undeveloped, Your feet grow whether or not you wear shoes, right? So your chest grows whether or not you wear any kind of bra. Accept your body, no matter what your cup size.”
Advice columns are also called help columns and there’s one in your life, there was even one in your great grandmother’s time, the column of Manding Karya in the Bisaya.
But what advice would anyone give to a problem like the ZTE broadband?
This is a big problem, unlike the dry hair problem. And we don’t know anymore how to solve big problems without joining the dream rally. It means one thing---that we don’t pay attention to small problems when big was still small just because we think small is small.
Small problems need, nay, beg to be solved but we don’t look back. Later in time, they grow in horror through the camera lens, develop star height-and-might.
They come from small problems left unsolved.
Big guys like some big senators take care of the big problem, or think they can, and act as though it never started small and allegations were never also made before GMA’s time.
Watch a scene in a house these days at past 9 in the evening. The parents are watching TV while the young girl is looking at the side mirror. She’s talking and talking.
“Hush, girl! look at that rally,” the woman points to the TV screen. “They want GMA ousted!” exclaims the mother.
“Really,” the young girl reacts in a token alarm. Then she adds quickly, carefully watching her own reflection in the mirror. “Hey, Mom, how can I make my tummy flat?”
What solutions there are---not mixed with politics---to save the nation is important to the parents, so is important to the young girl the problem of a big stomach that could destroy her life (in her view) the rest of the way.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, New York put all its attention on solving problems of murders, the big problems. But at one time, the authorities decided to solve petty crimes, like those committed by drunks and addicts, or panhandlers, or problematic teenagers breaking windows. The result was that the small problems didn’t get worse, the big ones decreased. NY City stopped to be the crime capital of America.
They say, solve small. The point is called Broken Windows. There hasn’t been any robbery, no fire, just someone throwing a stone and breaking the glass window. You’d give in to a traffic enforcer who says, “Pang-merienda lang, bay” after catching you turning into a one-way street.
Broken Window says that if you leave a small problem unsolved, it could develop into a big-star situation for politicians’ moral revolution whatchamacallit.
The idea says we need not reach a point when we’re pushed into a national suicide for something grown big in time. We just didn’t begin solving it, we shook it off, it was small.
We could start by changing our mind about clipping a P1000 bill into the next document we need for a guy in a government office to process more quickly. Others say, take the Jun Lozada big-bang to court (unless we have lost faith in everything, everyone, everywhere). And pray God will help us.
