LIFE is a game of inches.
Al Pacino's speech from the 1999 film "Any Given Sunday" inspires an image about winning in life, big time. He was a character in the story, a football coach giving his team a pre-game talk. He tells his players that the only way to win against their strong and worthy opponents "is to fight, tooth and nail for every inch of ground."
He was right. At the end of the day, it's the total of those inches won that separates the winners from the losers.
I relished replaying that scene in my mind as I pursued a newly acquired hobby and challenging home activity that, like in football, is being advanced inch by inch. I say challenging because it required materials that are difficult to acquire and painful and strenuous physical activity for me.
I am referring to urban home gardening, a pursuit inspired by agriculture secretary William Dar's program and battle cry, Plant! Plant! Plant! Early this month.
The Program is the DA's main response in ensuring food sufficiency during the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), which placed the main island of Luzon under 'lockdown' conditions as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic starting on March 17, 2020.
The ECQ was scheduled to be lifted on April 13, but was extended to April 30.
In a live appearance last week, President Rodrigo Duterte presented a modified ECQ for some provinces and extended ECQ for Metro Manila and other provinces of Luzon until May 15. There may yet be changes on the ECQ on or before the end of this month.
There are several projects under the Plant, Plant, Plant program that includes palay production and procurement; expanded SURE Aid* and recovery project; expanded agricultural insurance project; social amelioration for farmers and farm workers; upscaling of KADIWA** ni Ani at Kita direct marketing program; integrated livestock and corn resiliency project; expanded small ruminants and poultry project; coconut-based diversification project; fisheries resiliency project; revitalized urban agriculture and gulayan project; corn for food project; strategic communications project; and expanded survival and recovery assistance program for rice farmers & recovery project.
As a senior operative of the DA, I wanted to personally experience and promote the program under the conditions and situations I am in.
In my senior years, my health is affected by the complications of diabetes and a stroke I suffered some three years ago. Particularly, I also endure this lingering aching and inflammation of the nerves.
Be that as it is, I am also tired of the ECQ, a week after it was proclaimed. To be honest, I am doing well in the office. I am stuck in a rut and the conditions are quite overwhelming.
I can simply give up. Still, the harder option needs patience and persistence, thanks to the Plant, Plant, Plant Program. I am going to collect soil for planting, inch by inch, pot by pot.
In over a week, I made a hanging garden and planted four rows of pots where I will grow 20 kilos of vegetables each month.
I have already planted the pots with pechay seedlings and began irrigating the plants liter by liter every other day. I spray-fertilize the plants twice a week.
The growth of the plants is painfully slow, not in inches, or centimeter, but by millimeter. Is that what it comes down to, just millimeters? It seems so common, uneventful, uninspiring. I will not be distracted from my goal of harvesting 20 kilos of vegetables from a few square meters of potted land.
On the 15th day of my home gardening, I have accomplished other things besides my stated goals. I have activated our idle compost bins and recycled plastic wastes and cans as into planting pots. At least this will contribute to maintaining environmental health and quality too. More than anything, this game of inches and millimeters have distracted me away from the pains of old existence.
As I was standing and watching my plants this afternoon -- thinking about how the harvest would look like a few days from now -- I returned to this clip from "Any Given Sunday" -- that speaks to me about the game of life and how we must endeavor to turn our down times into live times.
"We are in hell right now, gentlemen ...believe me and we can stay here ... and get the shit kicked out of us ... or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell. One inch, at a time..."
I gotta grow something folks, or get lost. Plant, Plant, Plant!