I woke up this morning feeling depressed. I was told just before bedtime that a close contemporary was discovered to have metastasized stage 4 cancer. My batchmates are also slowly being decimated one after the other by cancer and heart attacks.
I clicked on the TV not really to watch the latest depressing newsbreak, but to check on the day and date to get my bearings. “What’s up? What are the fresh challenges for octagenarians like me?”
With that as background, I decided to write a blog about my favorite topic, healthy aging, for my favorite elderly audience.
I decided to use “Wake Up” as the most apt term for my concern of the moment. The lyrics of this song are most appropriate for what I have in mind.
I have always wanted to be in control of my environment – to act at a comfortable pace - my pace. Lately, I get stressed trying to keep in step with events in my life. The usual advice is to take it easy – take deep breaths, pray and live longer.
And this I find ironic, frustrating, because modern living is so fast paced and unsavory events seem to be overpowering us keeping us from doing something productive. Taking it easy will mean stagnation falling back. If one relaxes too much it is like just waiting for your barangay first-aiders to barge into the room and to take you away in a stretcher! I still find difficulty in just taking deep breaths and keeping faith.
There is so much evil being discovered threatening the lives of our grandchildren. At no time in our history from the reign of the insulares, peninsulares and frailes, have we discovered so many negative corrupt practices in and out of government, why our galloping population remains dirt poor despite PNoy’s impressive economic gains attained at the risk of his credibility and at the expense of his popularity. PATRONAGE POLITICS, POLITICAL DYNASTIES, permeating greed has been riding on the weakness of our democratic political systems and institutions. So many logical counter moves are presenting themselves waiting for the right people to act decisively.
Many years ago, a smart young lawyer saw this flaw and on the pretense of correcting the defective system, took advantage and wrought havoc on the country for over 20 years relegating the Philippines as the “sick man of Asia”. His nefarious shadow is still lurking in the shadows of our curent political system.
The Former Senior Government Officials have expressed their findings. The greedy sector has organized for their own self-interest and is fighting back trying to negate the gains we already exposed before the international financing community.
But my faculties say: Take it easy – relax. I guess I’m just too old and tired to do anything except to voice out my protestations to wake up our lost apathetic friends. Let us not just lie down and die.
