A 'One-der-ful' year ahead
Today marks the beginning of a new year — a new decade, in fact. It’s about time, I say. The last decade certainly ended with a bang. The year 2009 was not an easy one to get through. It was full of challenges, change, and funerals, too.
I don’t think it could be denied that it was a bad year — just short of rock-bottom, really.
The good thing about going through a bad spell is the knowledge or the belief that things can only get better. Surveys about folks’ outlooks for the upcoming year are always conducted some time before January. And no matter what, the results always say that people believe (or at the very least, hope) that the New Year will be better than the last.
Perhaps, this time around, this hope is more of a prayer that the Lord will not send us any more hurdles — 2010 has to be better. But, like the old Filipino saying says, “Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang gawa.” What we choose to do will make or break this fresh start we’ve been given.
The first step in improving the coming year is to look back at the last 10 years. Remember the mistakes we made, and learn from them.
After all, what have we humans, we Filipinos, accomplished in the recently concluded decade?
We don’t even have a name for the period from 2000 to 2009! No catchy name like “the Roaring Twenties,” or “the Disco Seventies.” Was it the “Twenty Hundreds” (like the 1900s) or “the 2Ks” (like Y2K)? Or simply the “Two Thousands” (which can refer to any year from 2000 to 2999)?
Years from now, DJs all over the world will be frustrated when they play hits from this decade. Imagine Ryan Seacrest or whoever replaces him (although I doubt it — the guy’s gonna grow old like Larry King on his show) in 2020 saying, “And now, some hits from the ‘90s, and the years in between then and today!”
I guess it is appropriate that the whole period’s name remains undecided because it mirrors the confusion, the disorder and the extremes of the decade.
The year 2000 started with wild parties celebrating the new millennium, and worries that computers would break down at the stroke of midnight, January 1.
The following year brought about a significant change in the Philippines with the second EDSA revolution, ejecting “Erap” Estrada from Malacañang and installing GMA in the president’s seat (where she’s been sitting pretty for almost 10 years).
In the US, the World Trade Center was toppled, and the word “terrorism” became part of the common man’s lexicon.
The year 2002 marked the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, and the rise of the euro (and fall of the Franc, Lira and Mark).
The SARS scare marred the year 2003. It is also when the Iraq War started, and when the Human Genome Project was completed. In the Philippines, the Oakwood Mutiny rocked the business district for 18 hours, when more than 300 soldiers took over the Oakwood Premier Ayala Center in Makati.
The year 2004 was full of races — for medals and honor, during the Summer Olympics in Athens, for power and, well, all the trimmings that come with it during the elections here in the Philippines. I really don’t know how athletes train for sporting events, but the preparations, the money and the effort exerted for the elections could probably finance a whole team of star sprinters.
It was also a year of tragedy because one day after Christmas, a tsunami hit Indonesia. Hundreds of thousands died.
George W. Bush celebrated the start of 2005 with his victory in the US elections. North Korea brought the fireworks when it revealed that it had nuclear weapons.
The Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce global carbon emissions, was put into effect to help the environment. The move didn’t seem to help at all as only a few months later, Hurricane Katrina hit the US.
Also, Pope John Paul II passed away, handing over the papacy to Joseph Ratzinger, or Pope Benedict XVI.
2006 was a year of disaster, both man-made and natural. First the Wowowee stampede in February killed 74, followed by a mudslide in Leyte that claimed more than a thousand lives; and in September, Typhoon Milenyo blew over the country, destroying property and lives.
The next year, an explosion at the Glorietta shopping center in Makati raised fears of terrorism. It was also in that year that Erap was convicted (and pardoned one month later).
By 2008, a little sunshine came our way with the Summer Olympics in Beijing. But before that, an earthquake had killed 69,000 in China, conflicts over the Gaza Strip intensified, and in the Philippines, the MV Princess of the Stars capsized.
And of course, recession, the climate change crisis, natural disasters like typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, social turbulence and deaths, both famous and anonymous, marked (or should I say, marred) the year 2009.
So how do you measure a decade? In years? In achievements? In the number of lives lost to war and disasters? In the number of medals won at the Olympic games? Or maybe in the number of famous people who bid their final farewells?
Maybe the years from 2000 to 2009 should be called the Exodus Decade. It was a shift from the glorious 1900s to what is often referred to in sci-fi movies as the “future.” It was a time of hardship, of great social and political change.
Hopefully, 2010 will mark the end of this long journey, and, as cheesy as it sounds, maybe this is the year we will finally attain world peace — peace among nations, and peace with Mother Earth.
After all, with the Australians dubbing the coming ‘10s the “Decade of Oneders,” what else can we expect but something good?
