December 31, 2009. 12:50 PM. At Cebu Pacific Airplane with 4 Beautiful Flight Attendants!After spending four days at Manila for a Jesuit Vocation Workshop (and yes, I am going home with a set of life decisions!), I’m now at a sky voyage back to Cagayan de Oro City to celebrate the New Year with family, friends and love ones. While doing so, I can’t help it but reflect about New Year and use the tissue paper and pen I have to scribble down my thoughts.
When I come to think about it, New Year, for me, is a reminder to each and one of us that life is constantly moving. Yesterday, you may still be at your childhood days enjoying the carefree life thinking that today will last forever. But the moment you woke up the next day, reality hits you in the head like a cannon ball (that is, reality hits harder!) and your facing deadlines after deadlines and problems after problems you are responsible of making and solving. Life, in a man’s perspective, is like a woman: beautiful in every way yet complicated and ironic. We love yet hate and love again and hate.
Yet, there’s something more to life than just merely enjoying and suffering it. It’s not simply a “gulong ng palad.” To make life understandingly described, I would like to quote Sir Ernest Shackleton when he once said,
“Life to me is the greatest of all games. The danger lies in treating
it as a trivial game, a game to be taken lightly, and a game in which
the rules don’t matter much. The rules matter a great deal. The game
has to be played fairly or it is no game at all. And even to win the game
is not the chief end. The chief end is to win it honorably and splendidly.”
Thus, life doesn’t only demand of us “to win its game” but to do it “honorably and splendidly.” As the New Year dawns upon us, let us not simply create a list of resolutions that will be thrown at the garbage can for the next days (and no, promises are not meant to be broken but kept!) but to renew ourselves in living the universal principles to our advantage. Principles, such as love, faith, hard work and many others. The way we live these principles is best summarized by the Law of The Farm: we reap what we sow. If we cheat our way in life, we’ll suffer its consequence. But if we live it in accordance to principles, we sow a life of significance. This New Year is a call to see everything in a new set of eyes, and to live life not in backwards but in progress.
As Filipinos, we have faced political, environmental and social challenges. Let us strive to make these experiences stepping stones and an inspiring motivation that, indeed, we are not only capable of surviving such challenges but of becoming successful and significant in making our motherland a better place for our children.
As individuals, we have faced challenge after challenge. Yet, our spirit of hope can’t just accept the word “defeat.” Let us answer what life demands of us and do the things we ought to do not only for our betterment but for other and, more importantly, for His greater glory.
My friends, let us take this challenge together in renewing ourselves as the dawn of New Year demands us to live in this real, ironic yet beautiful game we call Life.
Happy New Year!
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