Skewed priorities, misplaced pleasures

The Philippines has just acquired new bragging rights when it set a new Guinness record for the most number of sky lanterns -- 15,185 of them -- let loose simultaneously into the night sky from a single place, the football field of UP Visayas in Miag-ao, Iloilo.

This is not the first time the Philippines made it to Guinness. I doubt, however, if any of the previous Guinness records we have set are still in the books. Aside from being frivolous, these records seldom last very long. I do not even remember any of them.

That it took the Philippines only 11 months to beat the previous sky lantern record shows how fleeting and ephemeral these records can be. The record the Philippines beat in this category was set in June 2012 when Romania let fly 12,740 lanterns into the Balkan sky.

Before the Philippines eclipsed that record, and started bragging about it (the story of the feat has appeared in virtually all newspapers in the country), almost nobody heard about the Romanian record except the Romanians themselves and, of course, the people at Guinness.

So why do Filipinos keep shooting for such records? I think it is because, with no real achievement to speak of, feeling good about ourselves is easier to accomplish by way of these records, no matter how inconsequential to real life as we know it.

Despite how temporary a Guinness record can be, we find solace in its acquisition. It blissfully numbs us to the greater challenges that we confront everyday. For one thing, it makes us forget briefly the terrible humiliation China forces us to endure in the South China Sea.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with making it to Guinness. That so many try to overdo themselves just to get into the record books proves its popularity. And that can only be good because having so many people doing the same thing at the same time and enjoying it can't be bad.

What is bad is to be consumed by an inordinate desire to set some frivolous and fleeting record at the expense of truly aspiring for greatness in the things that really matter to country and people.

I can equate this inordinate penchant for setting records with the similarly inordinate sensitivity with which we regard criticism. Just look at the “gates of hell” flap Dan Brown caused. For I while there I truly feared the government would declare war on the American author.

Setting records would have been more meaningful if we also excel in providing for the real needs of the nation. But to hold the record in most sky lanterns lighting up the sky while the whole of Mindanao continues to endure darkness makes me wonder about our priorities.

There is almost no end to opportunities for setting records. But the chance for Filipinos to make better worth of themselves is increasingly getting hard to come by. Windows that open out to hope are getting shut because of our reluctance to even try peeking out from them.

I will cite one very clear example why, other than setting frivolous records, we just cannot seem to excel in anything else -- an election winner who has not even taken a seat as a senator is already the subject of speculation for a possible run at the presidency in 2016.

How can a country set course for a meaningful destination if all it knows is set sights on a Guinness record or divine meanings from a political crystal ball. There are more productive things that require our attention as a nation. That is where we should expend our energies on.

If there is one Guinness record we should aspire for, it is in a miraculous transformation of the national ethic, in the manner that South Koreans did when, faced with collapse from the Asian financial crisis, they all lined up to give their jewelry to government.