A New Year

 

 

This year, I resolve to have no resolutions again.

 

Resolutions make New Year's Day into a day for reinvention, a do-over, or "Ctrl Alt Delete" Day. I'm not scoffing at the idea of striving to improve one's self. I have my share of self-help books. I suppose the idea is to reflect and resolve what is wrong with one's self. Too often, the resolutions I hear and read about are to be "a new me."  It's unrealistic and an easy set up for failure.

 

I don't remember making resolutions as a kid growing up in the Philippines. It's a Filipino trait to be fatalist. (It said so in my nursing textbook describing Filipino culture.) I take whatever the universe gives. When others wished me a "Happy and a Prosperous New Year" in the Philippines, I always felt they were really saying "I hope you get more good things than bad." Sounds passive. That I am not a master of my own fate. Maybe so. What's so bad about that?

 

A fatalist mentality has made me work with what I've got since I can't trade in this "me" for another. It has made me a proponent of self evolution, not reinvention. To learn and build every day, not just today.

 

Here's to more good things than bad in 2014!

Saints and Souls

All Saint's Day and All Souls' Day are observed holidays in the Philippines.
Besides having no school (it usually falls during a "semester" break), they're holidays where going to the cemetery is fun - especially at night.
I have a vivid memory of visiting my grandfather and uncle's graves on the night of All Saint's Day.
My grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins trekked to the cemetery together bringing candles and fruits to offer the dead.
I was frightened on the way there since it was nighttime and it was dark.
But upon entering the cemetery, the horror movie in my mind vanished.
The place was brighter than day from all the lit candles.
People were smiling, laughing, catching up with old friends - and I don't mean the dead ones - that it was like a big fiesta.
It is one of the reasons I miss the P.I.

I was watching the news last week.
They reported that the severe typhoon season caused some flooding in many cemeteries.
Some people worried that they wouldn't be able to visit their dead loved ones.
The newscaster joked that for those people who can't visit the cemetery, their dead loved ones will pay them a visit instead.

PINOYS KEEP ALL SAINTS' DAY TRADITION ALIVE

VD