TO OUR old folks, “tengao,” or “teer” is sacred. I have known it as active rest. It is willed by the whole community and visitors alike, the moment it was determined and declared.
In Mountain Province and elsewhere in the Cordillera, communal rest as a practice has many names and purposes. There are regular rests and there are those determined and declared by the community elders. They knew and understood the value of rest to the physical, emotional, and mental wellness of human beings.
The tengao observance in some villages of Mountain Province immediately starts when a designated member of the village has shouted “tengao” several times in the “ator” or “dap-ay,” the community’s social and religious square. This practice is fast being lost as a community or individual observance.
We live at the edges of our nerves these days trying to be very good, doing duties that are not ours. In the end, we have not really done good but bad, our works are poor, accomplished with frayed nerves, giving lie to products that come in excellent labels.
We ought to know better. Excellent work behind quality products are outputs of rest, active rest.
That was supposed to be a common knowledge - a lesson learned from the Information and Knowledge Management Unit (IKMU) of the Second Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resources Management Project (CHARMP2). I hope that the members of our combined information group at the DA regional office here were really paying attention when it was shared to them. I deliver it in this column once more.
The CHARMP2 IKMU, following its unit name has only one duty. It processes, manages and shares information and knowledge for the benefit of the stakeholders and beneficiaries of the project. It is only one duty that actually comes with so many expectations and activities that can overwhelm the staff of the unit. They must plan and organize their activities and do it as a team. They have done that well for me, I should say.
There were five members of the IKMU team then who managed the School-on-Air (SoA) program in four provinces of the Cordillera. Managing the program entailed several activities from preparing the learning modules, promotion, enrolment, broadcasting, monitoring the lessons, preparing contracts with radio stations, evaluation of lessons learned, and graduation.
Those activities have yet to be broken down into details in order for them to effectively and efficiently prepare and follow through the processes of the work and draw out good outcome for every activity. The activities and their itemized details are distributed to the staff.
Overall, the work is led by someone who carry most of the weight of this duty and oversees its day-to-day affairs and concerns. Our unit planning, monitoring and report staff says that the other four are like braces or support staff whom the SoA officer can call upon anytime she needed them.
Like in the SoA, the other staff are also lead or support staff in the unit’s other functions like print, special events and information and education campaigns (IEC)), planning, monitoring, management and administration, and art works, photography and audio-visuals.
It can happen that in every task an individual is doing something for the group and vice versa, the group does a work for somebody. They are actually pursuing a task that they have listed as part of their individual performance targets. They are working as a “one for all, all for one” team.
There are times you find them all doing work for SoA concerns, or gathered together in one room writing stories for a book project, and critiquing a photo or a work of art. Anyone of them can go out anytime and take photos for any of the print works in progress like the newsletter, a manual, brochure, etc.
Doing the work as a team, planning and equal sharing in the execution of work are good practices. It is not enough.
Something yet bothers the quality of our work – something that I am now working on for the Regional Agriculture and Fisheries Information Section (Rafis). The IKMU is winding up its work and only two staff now remain out of the five staff it used to have. The RAFIS staff must learn and practice the IKMU team thrust and the art of active rest. I learned this quite late in life.
After a stroke that I went through last January, I am such an invalid that suffers mild vertigo every day. This condition can get worse depending on situations and conditions. I avoid tense and stressful conditions, for instance. This includes accepting too much work and I have to see to it that the work is really part of our duty. So much work is stressful. It affects the delivery of a quality work for me.
I also observe natural times and conditions. The time for work is 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and sleep is a medicine that conditions the mind and body so well. Without it or lacking sleep, my body ails in many parts during the day – the mind does not perform well and the work and my relationships are affected.
From such situations I encounter with achieving sleep, I formulate concepts like “active rest,” the affirming knowledge and information gained in exploring it are soon shared with the staff. I tell them to stop working at night, or browsing the internet, or going to parties, or consuming anything that drains the freshness of life. If they must do quality work, they need to do it with well-rested bodies and minds.
Enough sleep, generates the needed mental, spiritual and physical energy reserves necessary for freshness and health. Knowing what this is about, I hate it when energies sag; are wilted, dry, and the staff cannot deliver well. That is now bad in my books. I understand if a staff is drowsy sometimes, but I want my people to be fresh as much as they could throughout the day.
For those who manage and lead human resources, we do not need to do so many things and waste so much with poor outcomes. We need to do work one at a time, do it well and conserve the life of our people and the other resources of the land.
We do not need fagged men and women reporting to work. They do us and themselves no good under such a condition. Besides, we do not really need to take everything and using them all up in our lifetime with poor results.