Friday, April 11, 2008 Malilong: Trip from Tubigon and a parable By Frank Malilong The Other Side
SOMETHING funny happened on our way home from Tubigon, Bohol last Saturday.
The tide had ebbed at the town pier and our collective weight, whipped up by round-the-clock feasting, had caused the aft section of Ben Sun’s pump boat to touch the bottom. The crew couldn’t start the engine without damaging its propeller so the boat had to be moved to deeper waters.
That proved to be easier said than done. The boat was huge (with a passenger capacity of 70) and the reflux of the water to the ocean was so fast that we had to race with the tide or stay marooned until the water came back.
Imagine a group of businessmen and professionals, most of whom couldn’t distinguish between portside and starboard, pretending to be master mariners. There were as many ideas on how to re-float the boat as there were people on board (at least 20) but in the end we surrendered to the inevitable: we all had to disembark and push. Talk about getting wet to gain the experience.
It was a sight to behold. The average age of the Walk Talk and Eat Friendship Club is only a shade lower than sixty so with twenty members plus a couple of crew members and another of good Samaritans, it is safe to say that 1,400 years of experience went with the effort to push the boat some thirty meters upstream.
No mean feat? Consider this: we had five septuagenarians in Park Lane Hotel owner Maning Ting, pediatrician Jovito Lee, lawyer Dito Florido and businessmen Jack Rafanan and Louie Alicano.
We also cut across both ends of the economic spectrum (as defined by USC law professor Butch Gemarino): B+ and B- to XYZ. Maning, Cebu Oversea Hardware’s Caloy Co and Ramon Dacay who owns the company that manufactures Lion Tiger mosquito coils are in the former class; I am in good company at the opposite end.
Alex Monteclar and I were still talking excitedly about our experience while we were sailing towards Mactan when a thought crossed my mind. Twenty men, most of whom were either aged or aging and who had spent most of their adult lives pushing only pens, papers and remote control buttons, managed to get a boat to safe waters.
We knew the consequences if we did nothing--–we’d be left cooling our heels and fidgeting over missed appointments---and shared the same goal of re-floating Ben’s pump boat. We all went down and did what most of us have never done before, braving such discomforts as finding bare feet stuck in the mud and getting into unwanted contact with jellyfish. But as hard as we pushed, we never gained headway until we listened to one voice barking the order when to push.
How far could we go and how much could we achieve, I asked Alex, if 80 million people who know what is at stake, who share the same vision and who listen not to a cacophony of discordant voices but to a single direction, roll up their sleeves, wet their hands and do the right thing even if it meant sacrificing personal convenience or ambitions?
Very far and very much, I’m sure, if and only if. Unfortunately, until now we couldn’t even agree what the problem is so that most of the time, we become part of the problem than of the solution. Our goals are beautifully defined but nobody’s willing to work towards it unless he is the one who is barking the orders. Otherwise, he’ll just sit and wait or, which is most often, carp.
No wonder while our neighbors have sailed to higher seas, we continue to be stuck in the mud.
