Monday, December 31, 2007 De Fiesta: Seize the day By MR de Fiesta Carpe Diem
A DAY or so more, and it's gonna be another new year - another year to reflect on the past and the future and mull over the present. That's what all of us have been doing... pondering over the imponderable. No wonder we have gotten nowhere.
As the Year of the Rat ushers in, have you thought about how you spent the year? And how you're going to spend the next? Probably not. We're going to welcome the New Year still pondering over the imponderable. Ho-hum.
This year is the first I have spent Christmas here in Manila. The past six years, I have spent most of the Holiday Season in Pampanga - a place I miss so much because of its prosperity. And of course, my unbelievable luck in raffle draws (one year I won two flat irons. Last year, a dryer. Missed the 21-inch flat TV by one draw, tsk tsk) and the numerous Christmas baskets, ham, groceries and wine I received during those oh-so-fruitful years... Sigh...
Here in Manila, Christmas was as dry as dry leaves scrunching under one's feet. You could literally hear the sound it makes (crackle, crunch). Even my kids did not have fun. They were miserable. And that's a sad fact because Christmas is supposed to be for the children.
This New Year, we don't know what to expect, really. With funds already dwindling after Christmas, what else is there to spend? Lucky those rich people who just have to lie on their backs and wait for moolah to literally drop into their laps. Practically swimming in their own money, they don't have a care in the world.
While those who belong to the majority of people who have to work extremely hard to earn money would most likely just lie on their backs and sleep the rest of the New Year celebration. Never mind the noise of firecrackers all around. They're going to sleep the sleep of the dead, as they say, for there's nothing much to go on anyway.
This kind of negative thinking grips us all, every now and then. Admit it, you've been there. But always... always, there's hope around the corner. Would you believe there have been times when my pockets were empty except for a 25-cent coin? And that happened when at least one of my kids was sick. But whenever that happened to me - having no money at all, literally - I didn't lose hope.
A positive thinker, I do not look at life like it's the end of the world. I know that, eventually, something good would happen, and I have proven that time and again.
During the past years, I have promised myself to embrace optimism. This year, it's going to be the same, as with the years to come. At my age, I have come and gone through life not just twice, not just thrice - I lost count already - because of my belief on the positive. It works for me, as well as with anybody else who would just learn to believe.
Now is probably a good time for me to say that like me, everyone should look at life's plus sides, for living is not all about minuses and multipliers.
With this in mind, have a great year to Sun.Star Pampanga readers. It had been a pleasure working with you before as this paper's editor-in-chief. I hope you would let me work with you this time around as your humble columnist.
Like this column's name, Carpe Diem... Seize the day!
