Other than our innate hospitable and welcoming nature especially towards strangers, Pinoys are also known for being a fun-loving and hopeful people. We are blessed with having a generally positive outlook towards life despite living in a beautiful third world nation rife with poverty and corruption and ruled mostly by political dynasties and religious hypocrites.
Despite all these mentioned “challenges”, Filipinos, continue to smile and pray.
We are confident that these will all pass and everything will get better. Majority take it in the chin, day-in and day-out, and continue to grin and bear it, just like the deliriously happy, hopeful and forever smiling people that we are.
This is why this near-sighted Ibaloy writer is not at all surprised to read in one of our daily newspapers that at least 95 percent of Filipinos “will welcome the New Year with hope” according to the latest Social Weather Station survey. It revealed that based on a survey conducted from Dec. 10 to 14, 2022, only five percent of respondents said they will start 2023 with fear, down by two points from the seven percent in 2020 and 2021. Well, that’s what the survey says.
Thanks to my lovely mother (who turns 80 on Jan. 11), I have been taught to believe that it is always better to have hope than none at all. As a line in a famous poem claims, “hope springs eternal from the human breast”.
However, wishing and hoping that our lives will get better and doing absolutely nothing to improve our circumstances is another thing. I believe it was the genius, Dr. Albert Einstein, who described insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
Again, it’s great to be optimistic and hopeful that our lives and that of our loved ones will continue to get better. However, we have to act and do something to make this happen. Otherwise, our hoping and praying will just be in the realm of dreams and wishful thinking and not turn into reality. Without any action on our part, our hopes and prayers will be just be forms of delusion and insanity. Happy New Year, y’all!
May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ continue to bless and keep us all safe.
