Only a day left before the world says goodbye to 2010 -- a year that for some people should have gone on its way much faster than it did for most of the past 12 months. The past 364 days have shown us in an in-your-face manner how vulnerable we humans are, how brittle the ramparts we have built around us to protect our lives and livelihood from nature's unpredictable ways, from the things that other, more evil people and countries can do, and from ourselves.
Here, on these islands, the year has never been less unforgiving than it was for other lands and peoples. In fact, few would disagree with one who would say that the past 12 months were more unkind to Filipinos than they were to other nations.
Man-made and natural disasters we had more than our fair share. Too much rain one moment; too much sun the next -- mountains fall upon our villages and farms and a little later on, our fishponds and ricefields dry up faster than you could say, "disaster unpreparedness."
Our rural places are ruled by roaming bandits and self-declared saviors. Our cities stink like ill-maintained urinals and outhouses. We kill each other for power. We kill and maim each other for money. Sometimes, we kill, maim, and blast each other for no reason at all.
Most of us are poor. We have been this way for as long as we can recall. The microscopic minority that call themselves rich do not give a damn about how the rest of us fare. We survive or perish, they never give the slightest care.
For the foreseeable future and beyond, we are most likely going to continue our dismal and pathetic existence. And, hence, it does not make any sense at all, why most of us are brightly optimistically looking forward to whatever the next year brings us.
Our own pitiful way of compensating for the harshest of realities we find ourselves in? Or are we engaging in a social, mutual feeding of false hopes and collaboratively putting on each other's blinders?
What the heck. I am putting on my own, too.
Goodbye to you, 2010. And good riddance.
Hello, 2011. Here we go again.
