Quiet time

I am looking forward to some real peace and quiet this week. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are the only two days in the year that the newspaper office is closed, with no day or night editor or deskman on duty, no reporters manning their beats, no call to do a page remat. This of course means readers won’t get their daily dose of news with their morning coffee on Good Friday and Black Saturday.

With all that has been going on in the country and the world in the past few months, that may be for the best, for perhaps we do need a break – from corruption scandals, gunbattles and skirmishes, congressional investigations, exposés, lawsuits and TROs, and – worst of all – early posturing for the elections next year.

It may be a cliché but this week is a time for reflection and introspection, for tuning out the noise and tumult around us, for going off to seek a place of quiet. One does not have to physically go off to a mountain or isolated kubo in the middle of nowhere – although that would be nice – to get away from the hustle and bustle; the quiet place can be right in your home as long as you quiet your mind and your spirit – and turn off your cell phone and disable Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Viber and whatever other electronic tentacles you have connected yourself to in order to stay in touch with the rest of the universe – and for the rest of the universe to stay in touch with you.

The metropolis is a pretty nice place during Holy Week. The streets are finally rid of traffic jams (I remember my first drive down EDSA was done on a Good Friday) and we can reclaim the roads (those that aren’t under repair or reblocking anyway) from those murderous maniacs who drive buses, jeepneys and huge cargo trucks – and that in itself is something to celebrate. That also means the air is cleaner, and the city is quieter. Although malls have taken to opening on these days – they’ve realized, I guess, that more and more people are staying in the city – it is a good idea to stay away from them.

My friends and I have this ritual of cleaning out our cabinets during these few quiet days. It is a very therapeutic exercise, in more ways than one. Every year we do this we always manage to unearth things hidden in drawers that we have forgotten about; one year my friend found a whole pile of t-shirts from when he was a dancer several lifetimes – and many, many pounds and inches – ago. This also represents a cleaning out of our minds, hopefully getting rid of old hurts and unresolved issues that we have pushed way back into the dark recesses of the cabinets of our lives.

This also hopefully will enable us to look at the world around us with a renewed, less cluttered view – to look at situations, however pesky, with a clarity that will allow us to separate what is truly important from all the frills and frou-frou that mislead and misdirect, and as well to see people and things with greater charity and compassion and understanding.