What’s your excuse?

Remember all the things you said you would do if you only had a chance? Like how you would love to clean up your room, your house, repaint, renovate? Remember the times you said you would go on a retreat and meditation if you get some free time? What about all the books and subject matter you’ve been wanting to read up on or do serious research for the many projects you still have not started on? Look around you for a few minutes. Have you checked on all the stuff you’ve accumulated that needs thinning out or actually needs to be unboxed, opened or installed?  Oh and by the way, remember all the times you’ve felt bad because you don’t spend enough time with loved ones and made a mental memo to self: “make time.” Well now is the time to do it!

Given the restricted movement, and de facto curfew, what are you waiting for? You can only wash a car so many times a day, quality time is not Karaoke by yourself, and binge watching may be entertaining but in the scheme of things, don’t you have more important things you can do with this free time? I just had a hearing test before the lockdown, turns out I hear just fine, I just have a listening problem. I’ve managed to restore a power washer and discovered I was better off buying a stronger one. I’ve managed to fill three seed trays of upland kangkong, a dozen papayas, okra seeds and a tray full of pechay. My only regret is that I did not follow my instinct and bring home two dozen broiler chicks to grow on our roof deck or fill my fishpond with tilapia and grow some apple snails or kuhol. If I’ve learned anything from the “Enhanced Quarantine” it would be to seriously get into urban farming!

Sure we all want to run off to Boracay, Subic, or Baguio. I want to go check on our house, the chickens and pigs in Lipa City but the mere act of travel or unnecessary movement endangers others in the event that you or I are possible carriers. In the reverse you could also endanger yourself like a couple of guys who played golf healthy and are now on the sick list. We now have a perfectly legitimate situation to evaluate and rewrite our priorities and lots of time to do it methodically and rationally. If lives are on the line, how would you manage your company or office, how would you run your business? If exposure were extremely high risk how would you adjust or “prep” for your family and yourself? Why not spend time making an impact assessment of COVID-19 on your life, family and business during the next 30 days and figure out what changes you could or should make. Last week, media flooded viewers with discussion points on how COVID-19 forces companies and families to step up or level up in terms of adapting technology particularly IT. Many of us seriously tackled reduced office bound working days and for once people listened in to talks about home schooling or distance learning. You now have more time than usual to step back and walk through “your life” and distinguish between the need and the junk, priorities versus distractions and the stuff you need to let go.

While you’re at it, try to figure out who would be your “down the line” concern or community responsibility. If companies have a corporate social responsibility, each of us have a community social responsibility. As an employer, manager, or as someone “higher in the food chain” it does not end at paying wages and following labor laws. After making all the profits or getting the best packages or perks, we need to help those who have no options. As the President suggested, it would help a lot if we “gave” earlier or simply helped out others who earn on a daily basis.  

Another interesting point has to be how much time you spend on praying and quiet time with God. Whether you admit it or not, almost all of us are running scared, anxious or worried about getting infected. In a motivational speech, Arnold Schwarzenegger once mentioned how he spent five to six hours in the gym, how Muhammad Ali spent the same hours working out and would only start counting how many sit up he did only when it started to hurt. Schwarzenegger pointed out that the number of hours we spend working out or reading a book reflects on our focus to achieve our goal. That really convicted me because I don’t read the Bible nearly as much as I should. So that’s what I’ll be working on. In terms of prayers, I recently adopted a suggestion of Steve Harvey to get yourself a notebook to write all your prayers on and shoot for the 300 mark.

When I started out, it was mostly I want, give me, grant me. It did not take long for all that self-centeredness and selfishness to hit home. I started to write the names of friends, officemates, and people in need of prayers. Soon I got my wife Karen and daughter Hannah to set aside 7:30 p.m., put it on my alarm clock every night except Sundays to gather around and take turns reading the prayers. We now pray for our national, local, church and community leaders aside from friends and family. Please try it out and be amazed as you see each prayer being answered in God’s time because of what our Lord Jesus Christ said:

“Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there in the midst of them,” Matthew 18: 19-20.

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