My world has been turned upside down—I’ve been without a maid for nearly a month, and we lost the election. But it’s precisely in times like this that I discover my strengths and a whole new set of coping mechanisms.
When feeling down and uncertain, I make an effort to count my blessings. Despair is never an option. The cliché holds true, things are never as bad as they seem—not while there’s something to be grateful for.
I look at my friends and relatives and have come to the conclusion that we are all blessed, if in different ways, and we all manage with each other’s help and our spiritual beliefs.
Thinking of others makes me forget my woes. I make time to visit temporarily homebound friends for mutual comforting. I love each of my children, with a deeper appreciation of the comfort and joy they give me—they could have given me headaches and heartaches instead. We see each other often enough—for a talk and bite mostly—but without any burdening sense of obligation. Texting is good enough when meeting up is not possible.
Practical and sensible
I don’t know when exactly I became practical and sensible—maybe around the time my happiness no longer depended on anyone or anything other than my own attitude in life: I love and feel loved back.
On May 13, I felt as if someone I knew punched me in the face, and had not seen it coming. Of course, I wasn’t so naïve as to expect all eight would make it, but to have not one of them in the winning 12? Reminds me of Charlie Brown’s own disbelief when his baseball team lost: “How could we lose, when we were so sincere!”
As it turns out, there were many irregularities that the Commission on Elections could have anticipated and prevented, had they been themselves sincere.
I worried when Namfrel opted out of its partnership with Comelec, apprehensive of the prospect of having to share the blame for something it had been deprived the capability to help prevent or correct. Only someone other than pure-minded, I thought, would refuse a tested citizen watchdog like Namfrel for a partner.
Information-technology experts are now pointing at how very possibly cheating could have happened in the midterm elections. Automation has given rise to electronic cheating. All the Comelec commissioners happen to be lawyers, not one an IT expert. Strange that Namfrel says we have the most sophisticated voting system in the world. Now it is asking the Comelec some hard questions.
Karmic retribution
I have my own long-lingering questions. Why did we let Gloria Arroyo take her oath of office after she had admitted having rigged her own presidential vote? Is it because we feared the presidency, however legitimate, passing to her movie-actor rival, and preferred a confessed cheat?
How wrong we were! Are we now reaping, perhaps, our karmic retribution?
When all the surveys showed the candidates on the opposite side leading strongly, why were they campaigning seemingly desperately, spending money outrageously, buying votes—a practice practically sanctioned by the president, by the way, trivializing the crime as an “integral part” of our elections?
Were they conditioning our minds to accept cheating in general as an integral part of our elections?
But how can Comelec really do a good job, even if it has three years to prepare for every election, when, as some wise guy said—keeping a presidential appointee’s job depends precisely on not doing it?
Winning some
From the looks of things, we might have really won some, which is enough comfort that restores my faith in the Filipino people.
In any case, I expect the ladies of Aware to surely be in the forefront of positive activities. I could hardly keep up with them, even as a few of them have had hip replacement or other similarly remedial surgery. But, when I had the privilege of joining them, I saw enough to admire them for their selfless dedication to the causes I myself espouse.
Whatever happens, I will tap, if I may, the energy of the ladies in Aware to do what I can for the next election, perhaps by helping those qualified to educate voters and supporting those who would alleviate the plight of the poor, like Leni Robredo, who has dedicated her vice presidency to improving the lives of those living on the society’s fringes—laylayan. That seems the way to go.
But, again, none of the ladies seem to be doing their most practical math, and neither am I. Three years added to our ages come to quite a sum!
Perhaps my world had to be turned upside down to force me to learn to deal with whatever is in front of me, with no excuses. One must simply engage, while still able, in the exciting business of living purposefully in these trying times.
I can’t think of a better way to grow old.
