Fearless, sleepless but not loveless
March 5, 2006 | 12:00am
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength. – Robert Frost
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. - US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
The foreign media also has a sense of humor, as shown by Agence France Presse (AFP) recently coming out with a report dispatched worldwide accurately entitled "For ordinary Filipinos, daily life is ‘state of emergency’." However, this partly humorous report was also sadly also part social criticism. The report detailed the daily "emergencies" of the masses, such as the emergency struggles to put food on the table, to scrounge for funds for hospitalized kin or even tuition money.
The AFP report underscored what I believe is the true abominable fact, which should alarm so many of our irresponsible and inutile politicians to wake up from their lazy bahala na state of mind: "40 percent of Filipinos live on less than $2 a day… A survey by the Social Weather Stations research group in January said 2.8 million families reported experiencing ‘severe hunger’ in December, up from an earlier survey in August’." This is a true source of national emergency worse than any alleged coup plot and to be feared more than a thousand battalions of military rebels!
Recently, while I led other young Filipino-Chinese entrepreneurs of the Anvil Business Club as we paid a courtesy visit to Secretary Angelo "Angie" Reyes at his new office at the Department of Environment and Natural Resouces (DENR). The former general confided that he knew the two bemedalled young officers General Danilo Lim and Lt. Colonel Ariel Querubin to be "good men." He was saddened by all the trouble in the Philippine military.
Secretary Reyes recounted the "real" reason behind the recent stand-off at the Philippine Marines headquarters in Fort Bonifacio sparked by the relief of Major General Renato Miranda as commandant. At a top-level meeting, General Miranda wanted to go to the toilet and raised his hand to say: "Ma’am, excuse me, I want to relieve myself." That line supposedly caused the big misunderstanding, leading to his relief as Marines chief and the ensuing angry stand-off? *&%$*&*&^*^ Joke only!!! Don’t shoot!
We kept on laughing at his jokes on politics and other matters; the executive secretary of General Reyes opened the door to peek, probably wondering if we were already off our rockers. A serious man with a deep sense of mission, Secretary Reyes nevertheless showed us that an excellent way to ease tension or diffuse problems is to inject a healthy dose of humor and levity to our otherwise dreary daily lives and battles.
Stuck in an impossible or seemingly impassable "state of emergency" – whether personal, financial, business, professional, medical, political, physiological, emotional, romantic – don’t clamp down with explosive anger or threaten your foes with the full force of fury. Laugh. Smile. Confront all your problems as challenges that can be overcome and relax!
Vice President Noli de Castro contributed his two centavos’ worth of opinion. He pointed out that security alert levels subsided over the weekend. He said that based on his "personal observations, the emergency had already passed last week. The situation of the country is like that of an emergency room patient. When the patient’s condition stabilizes, then he should be moved out of the emergency room into an ordinary room."
It isn’t just charisma which President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo should try to learn from my idol the late US President Ronald Wilson Reagan, but his light-hearted and sunny attitude towards the most heart-rending emergency situations that would have otherwise ignited the fuse of other mortals.
I was still a kid, but I can’t forget reading news in March 1981 that newly-elected President Reagan was shot by a crazy stalker named John Hinckley Jr. Even as a student, I couldn’t remove my good impression of this American statesman in his then worst life-and-death emergency as he still exuded positive thinking, good humor and an unsinkable can-do spirit which electrified his whole shocked nation with inspiration.
One of the news reports in the US recounted how the magnificent Reagan confronted his own state of emergency this way: "Pale and bloody in the emergency room after the shooting, Reagan sheepishly told First Lady Nancy Reagan, ‘Honey, I forgot to duck.’ Later, as he was being wheeled into the operating room, he said to doctors, ‘Please tell me you’re all Republicans.’ The quips masked devastating wounds that drained nearly half of Reagan’s blood, collapsed his lungs and left him minutes from death, his personal physician said."
My unsolicited but well-meaning advice to our embattled and seemingly sleepless President GMA is this: – follow the ancient Chinese proverb which advises us to be "Mouth of a Dagger and Heart of Tofu" or to be a person who is sharp tongued but tender-hearted. Lighten up and relax. Don’t show your friends or foes you’re too uptight, paranoid or mad.
Madam President, for the sake of your own reputation and for Philippine democracy, please reign in your sycophant pitbulls who are barking up the wrong tree by blaming the mass media for the country’s myriad troubles. Instead, kick all of them in their butts and order them to work on the real root causes of our republic’s never-ending social, political, economic and moral woes! Don’t forget the age-old Tagalog adage: Ang magalit ay talo! The one who loses his temper is the loser!
Thanks for all your feedbacks. Comments, suggestions, jokes and even criticisms are welcome at wilson_lee_flores@yahoo.com or wilson_lee_flores@hotmail.com.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. - US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
The foreign media also has a sense of humor, as shown by Agence France Presse (AFP) recently coming out with a report dispatched worldwide accurately entitled "For ordinary Filipinos, daily life is ‘state of emergency’." However, this partly humorous report was also sadly also part social criticism. The report detailed the daily "emergencies" of the masses, such as the emergency struggles to put food on the table, to scrounge for funds for hospitalized kin or even tuition money.
The AFP report underscored what I believe is the true abominable fact, which should alarm so many of our irresponsible and inutile politicians to wake up from their lazy bahala na state of mind: "40 percent of Filipinos live on less than $2 a day… A survey by the Social Weather Stations research group in January said 2.8 million families reported experiencing ‘severe hunger’ in December, up from an earlier survey in August’." This is a true source of national emergency worse than any alleged coup plot and to be feared more than a thousand battalions of military rebels!
Recently, while I led other young Filipino-Chinese entrepreneurs of the Anvil Business Club as we paid a courtesy visit to Secretary Angelo "Angie" Reyes at his new office at the Department of Environment and Natural Resouces (DENR). The former general confided that he knew the two bemedalled young officers General Danilo Lim and Lt. Colonel Ariel Querubin to be "good men." He was saddened by all the trouble in the Philippine military.
Secretary Reyes recounted the "real" reason behind the recent stand-off at the Philippine Marines headquarters in Fort Bonifacio sparked by the relief of Major General Renato Miranda as commandant. At a top-level meeting, General Miranda wanted to go to the toilet and raised his hand to say: "Ma’am, excuse me, I want to relieve myself." That line supposedly caused the big misunderstanding, leading to his relief as Marines chief and the ensuing angry stand-off? *&%$*&*&^*^ Joke only!!! Don’t shoot!
We kept on laughing at his jokes on politics and other matters; the executive secretary of General Reyes opened the door to peek, probably wondering if we were already off our rockers. A serious man with a deep sense of mission, Secretary Reyes nevertheless showed us that an excellent way to ease tension or diffuse problems is to inject a healthy dose of humor and levity to our otherwise dreary daily lives and battles.
Stuck in an impossible or seemingly impassable "state of emergency" – whether personal, financial, business, professional, medical, political, physiological, emotional, romantic – don’t clamp down with explosive anger or threaten your foes with the full force of fury. Laugh. Smile. Confront all your problems as challenges that can be overcome and relax!
Vice President Noli de Castro contributed his two centavos’ worth of opinion. He pointed out that security alert levels subsided over the weekend. He said that based on his "personal observations, the emergency had already passed last week. The situation of the country is like that of an emergency room patient. When the patient’s condition stabilizes, then he should be moved out of the emergency room into an ordinary room."
I was still a kid, but I can’t forget reading news in March 1981 that newly-elected President Reagan was shot by a crazy stalker named John Hinckley Jr. Even as a student, I couldn’t remove my good impression of this American statesman in his then worst life-and-death emergency as he still exuded positive thinking, good humor and an unsinkable can-do spirit which electrified his whole shocked nation with inspiration.
One of the news reports in the US recounted how the magnificent Reagan confronted his own state of emergency this way: "Pale and bloody in the emergency room after the shooting, Reagan sheepishly told First Lady Nancy Reagan, ‘Honey, I forgot to duck.’ Later, as he was being wheeled into the operating room, he said to doctors, ‘Please tell me you’re all Republicans.’ The quips masked devastating wounds that drained nearly half of Reagan’s blood, collapsed his lungs and left him minutes from death, his personal physician said."
My unsolicited but well-meaning advice to our embattled and seemingly sleepless President GMA is this: – follow the ancient Chinese proverb which advises us to be "Mouth of a Dagger and Heart of Tofu" or to be a person who is sharp tongued but tender-hearted. Lighten up and relax. Don’t show your friends or foes you’re too uptight, paranoid or mad.
Madam President, for the sake of your own reputation and for Philippine democracy, please reign in your sycophant pitbulls who are barking up the wrong tree by blaming the mass media for the country’s myriad troubles. Instead, kick all of them in their butts and order them to work on the real root causes of our republic’s never-ending social, political, economic and moral woes! Don’t forget the age-old Tagalog adage: Ang magalit ay talo! The one who loses his temper is the loser!
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