by Aurelio A. Peña
A HEAVY HEART and deep feeling of frustration kept me from fully enjoying the joy of the Christmas season two weeks ago as I struggled to get out of the rut of an empty pocket due mainly to uncollected debts from services rendered to some establishments.
No matter how much we tried to avoid the temptation of materialism and commercialism of Christmas, the images were always there staring us in the face during the Yuletide holidays in December— from shoppers rushing to the malls and supermarkets to the thick nightly crowds admiring the 12 fully lighted Christmas trees at Casa Mana in Bajada.
One can’t be too sure whether all these Christmas images around us really reminded us what this season is all about or even helped us to remember an obscure event 2,011 years ago in a little town called Bethlehem somewhere in Israel..
Perhaps a lot of people also go thru these feeling of frustrations and helplessness when things aren’t working in their favor. And when they see their hopes collapsing around them, they usually see them crumbling down around Christmastime when everyone is supposed to be happy.
This could be the bleakiest Christmas for many people. All around us amid the sound of Christmas carols like “Joy to the World!” over a thousand people are found dead under the mud in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities while some friends of ours us lost loved ones to ailments or old age.
While we try so hard to make Christmas as merry as possible for our kids today, the grief, the helplessness, the frustrations and sufferings are still all around us, dampening our mood, even if one still hears Jose Mari Chan’s “A Perfect Christmas” in the airwaves.
No matter how much we try to pretend everything’s all right—it’s still so hard to write anything, even short email Christmas greetings, when you don’t feel good. And this often happens, most specially, when you see no light at the end of the tunnel.
Let’s cross our fingers on the business prospects for this new year 2012, but right now it doesn’t look too good for many bankers interviewed on Bloomberg or BBC. While the EU might survive a deep recession, it’s still a big question whether US could see real recovery as China is stepping on the brakes to slow down its red-hot economy to escape inflation….
( Comments? Email : tradingpost_davao@yahoo.com )
