Handheld

It is intimidating to be aware that I hold some people's lives and fortune in my hands. I want to shirk the responsibility and avoid it with all the might of rationalization I can muster. But as I have written before, if we disregard the obligations we've been fated to have, eventually we become unhappy. This is probably the reason why in this country, even after killer floods, a killer volcano, and the merciless killing of 57 people by a power-crazed warlord, people are still able to smile and to hope for better days.

As a nation we probably have long accepted that we were preordained to endure curses generation after generation. Take corruption, for example. It has been making its rounds long before my generation was born. I think it is safe to say that it will be with us until time ends, or this country collapses unto itself like some banana republic.

Accepting one's fate is, therefore, a key ingredient to achieving happiness. The sooner one determines the form and direction of one's fate, the better. Going against its mighty current is futile, and we only expend without purpose or usefulness our finite life.

Fate also sets the arena for the battle between Good and Evil. The ones destined to be in the service of the latter act with an enviable sense of urgency and conviction; while those on the side of good perform their deeds with the ambivalence and hesitance of a feeble breeze upon scorched earth. It is all too easy to see why Evil collects triumph after triumph, and Good is often preempted because it procrastinates.

I will do my best for those who rely upon me to see them through, but I cannot make any guarantees. Even at my age, I'm still deciphering the codes of my fate. The time its form becomes crystal-clear to me, is the time I will have to decide whether or not to accept it wholeheartedly or reject its entirety; and whether I shall be smugly content, or unhappy for the remainder of my lifetime.