Sunday, July 13, 2008 Luab: We all have blundered By Evelyn R. Luab light sunday
WE have done things, which were not so smart. The mistakes and errors in judgment may have concerned big or small choices but they were blunders just the same.
A man may have married for money. He becomes a doormat to the girl’s family and then regrets the union for the rest of his life.
A boy may have taken a course chosen by his family instead of the career he wanted for himself. He stayed far too long in college, flunking subjects left and right. After graduation, he didn’t know what to do with himself and became a lazy good for nothing individual.
A wife decides to become a martyr just so the marriage would not break up and for the sake of the growing children. The husband goes philandering and the marriage does break up. He decides to live with the other woman, after all.
One of the big blunders I’ve seen was when a family bought a farm and decided to live in the farm instead of the city.
The farm, however, was up in the hinterlands with no neighbors within a safe distance. Before long, the New People’s Army started asking them for protection money. They decided to oblige for a time.
When the fee went up, they refused to pay. As a consequence, their house was burned and their livestock slain. They barely escaped with their lives.
What I’ve mentioned so far are the big fiascos (messes). There are thousands of little ones.
Sometimes it’s buying something that is very cheap, like a pair of shoes on sale. By a month’s time, the pair of shoes has fallen apart.
Even dishes on sale can make us sorry that we bought quickly without scrutinizing every plate out of the set. Sometimes one plate or saucer has a tiny crack which our eye missed.
At one time, in our younger days, my husband was ecstatic because he came upon a t-shirt with a price tag of only P400 and it was a signature t-shirt. Upon washing it for the first time, we discovered it was just a very good, cheap imitation.
Who among us has not stumbled over a pebble or over a toy? When we fell flat, did it hurt? You bet it did! Did we look around to see if somebody had seen us fall? As we got up, did we cry? Of course not! We were too proud to accept that we did stumble.
Believe me, none of us is perfect. I remember a funny incident. One of my friends blundered into the men’s restroom because she was busy talking to her companion who preferred to remain outside the door. Imagine her embarrassment when she discovered she was in the wrong place.
Incidents like these we can laugh over.
The tragedy brought about by the sinking of ships, the crashing of an airplane, the runaway houses on raging rivers, etc. — these are blunders which cannot be laughed at.
Children left behind (by their parents) to fend off for themselves, locked in houses with grilled windows, burned in a fire of their own making (is an example of) unforgivable choices.
We know the terrible dangers yet we took risks. Sorry, the excuse “we did not have a choice, we have to earn money” is still no excuse for parents who leave a two-year-old in the care of a six-year-old inside a locked house.
So many ill-timed deaths could have been prevented with enough soul-searching.
We are truly not perfect. We make mistakes. However, when hundreds of lives or even one life is placed into the area of our responsibility, there should be a no-risk challenge!
However, a word of caution. We mustn’t speculate or analyze or criticize whatever blunders other people make.
We do not know the circumstances which abound before a blunder was made. I don’t think we would like to be judged either, right?
