A Few Hours Before 2010

Arthur Rimbaud once wrote that life is the farce we are all forced to endure.  In many ways, the past year was a farce: a comedy of everything that can go wrong.  A global recession, calamities from nature’s wrath, and the ongoing joke that is Philippine politics.  Still, here we are: a few hours before the clock strikes midnight, many of us fortunate to be alive, to be well, and to face 2010 with much more than force of will and determination.

For many of us, 2010 marks another important turning point in the history of the Filipino people.  Yet again, we will select another group of leaders.  We will shape our destiny through the power of the vote.  We will definitely face more calamities, we will be introduced to more scandals, and we will share more victories as a people.  Yet none of us are gifted or blessed with powers of clairvoyance.  Who knows what’s going to happen next year?  Maybe worst will come to worst.  Maybe our best will shine once more.  Maybe it will be another same-old same-old for the Philippines, which no longer holds too many surprises in the headlines of its national papers.  At least for the news and the affairs of the State, which concerns the Filipino Voices reader or writer the most.

Every year is a crossroads to somewhere: to the better, or for the worst.

I sit here with the familiar things that help me write: beer and cigarettes, perhaps the last ones I will have before I bid this year adieu.  While the familiarity of alcohol and nicotine is something that would probably still be there a few days into 2010, the anxiety and excitement of 2010 awaits.  I do not know who will lead our people come 2010; all I expect is that they do a good job at it.  I do not know if Nature will unleash her wrath to the nation again; all I expect is that she should act with a bit of mercy this time.  I do not know who will die in 2010; all I expect is that we value them today while they are still alive.

For the moment, let us value our friends, our families, and the people who made us who we are 365 days into the past year.  Let us cast aside all aspersions to anyone and realize that what didn’t kill us this year only made us stronger, and that strength should translate into national strength.  Let us look into 2010, and realize that we cannot betray the kids who will grow older – and wiser – 365 days into the next year.  Most of all, with all the anxiety behind things we cannot know, life must no longer be a farce that should be endured, but a continuing interval of moments that should be lived to the fullest.

Stay cool, and for those of you who want to, be somebody’s fool next year (so to speak).  Happy new year, ladies and gentlemen.

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