BY JEROME C. VARON
TIME, in all its infinity, is not constant. The only constant thing in life is change. Everything, big and small, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the beauty and the beast, light and darkness, among others, do not have the certainty to last uninterrupted through a period of time.
Nothing dominates forever, just like a struggle between adversaries. There’s always a time to win and a time to lose for each side.
All the good men with well-meaning intentions to improve life found their works futile after realizing the residual effects that presented more problems for mankind. Advanced science and technology, which serve as yardstick of development and progress, have created monsters out of inventions directly or indirectly affecting humans the world over.
Indeed, we have succeeded in many ways to shorten the distances in making the entire world smaller as a community through modern transport and communications. But we also shortened the length of the space that separates humanity from dying.
We need not elaborate on the observation that man is on a suicidal mode at the present. He seems too eager digging his grave through the driven desire to keep up with the pace of scientific advances, the calamitous effects to his environment and the ecology notwithstanding. Sad enough, he is writing the future notes for “the late good earth”!
Everyone is aware the world is on a survival mode with what have been happening in the past half a century. The global warming which toll we have to suffer with climate changes and natural catastrophes we’ve witnessed nowadays. Worse, greed has distorted the meaning of righteousness to something that satisfies the end whatever it may cost!
It’s not the work of nature, we know that, too. They’re man-made. Mankind is bound to suffer the consequences of his past actions. He can’t blame God. God gave us free will to manage the erstwhile bright, abundant and beautiful world He created. Man has to take full responsibility.
But just as the wise words that beckons man to fully understand what life is, there’s a great expectation to see a better day than what we have today. For, “there’s a time for everything…for every activity under the heavens.”
The book of Ecclesiastes teaches us there is: “a time to be born and to die, to plant and to reap, to hate and heal, to destroy and build, to wail and rejoice, to throw away and gather, to embrace and depart, to search and give up searching, to keep and throw away, to rip apart and saw the pieces together, to be silent and time to speak, to hate and love… A time for war and a time for peace.”
Maybe we are on the eleventh hour before the midnight of our nightmare. This may be equivalent to the “final two minutes” of our championship game against the Devil’s Team, and we are behind by a two-digit margin. The choice is ours, strive to win or play dead till the final buzzer. If we choose to win, we have ball possession in the next play!
Perhaps it will be this New Year 2021 when we can bounce back and regain our bearing to win the game. After all, we’ve made our best efforts to survive 2020 and we did. May our hopes for happiness, healing, prosperity, peace, justice and redemption become realities in the incoming year.
(Postscript: New Year’s greetings and prayers to family and friends, Pi Kappa Beta, Int’l., UPIHi Class ‘74, the Iloilo based media practitioners, former schoolmates, COVID-19 frontliners, and all my peace loving countrymen.)/PN
