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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Coping with life’s ‘typhoons’
TWO days from now, we will be commemorating the third anniversary of the disastrous typhoon “Yolanda,” which killed thousands of residents and leveled big and small houses in Leyte and Samar, and in lesser proportion in Iloilo, Aklan, Capiz and Antique on November 8, 2013.
It seemed only yesterday – more so because there are still survivors of that tragedy who remain homeless and hungry, who have yet to feel the “tender loving care of government” despite the billions of pesos worth of donations that have poured from both government and non-governmental organizations worldwide.
I can feel the anguish still being felt by the victims; they would never forget that natural disaster. I, too, had been a typhoon victim. Typhoon “Frank” – which devastated Iloilo City on June 18, 2008 with floods and landslides – divested me of my expensive new camera, books and an old typewriter.
In the wake of that disaster, I heard one of my nieces muttering, “This is our karma for knowingly polluting the environment with garbage that obstructs the free flow of rain water to the sea.”
I wondered whether the typhoon fatalities were better off than those they had left behind – homeless and anguished, with everything they had worked for in a lifetime gone with the wind. They needed guidance counseling; otherwise, they could die of depression
I asked my niece not to yield to depression. I reminded her of the famous quotation, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
Fires, floods, earthquakes and many other natural disasters that are inappropriately called “acts of God” should be taken as tests to be passed. It’s by passing them that we win the game of life.
I quipped that I had had worse ordeals, as in getting a woman’s “no” for an answer to my literal love offering. She laughed. To further soothe her sunken spirit, I enthused, “All you need is faith. Remember when Jesus Christ walked on the sea before the unbelieving eyes of his disciples? That done, he asked Peter to walk likewise. Peter believed him and walked on the sea, too, but later sank when he began doubting.”
I tried to boost her self-confidence by recalling nuggets from inspirational books I had read, stressing that the power to harness the magical forces of the mind is available to everybody. I quoted American book author Napoleon Hill, who wrote, “What the human mind can conceive, the human mind can achieve.”
Thomas Edison, inventor of the phonograph and light bulb, made this quotation famous: “Genius is one percent inspiration, 99% perspiration.”
Once there was a man who, desirous of having an easy job, sought the advice of the late American preacher Henry Ward Beecher.
“Young man,” said Beecher, “you cannot be an editor. Do not try the law. Do not think of the ministry; neither manufacturing nor merchandising. Abhor politics. Don’t practice medicine. Don’t be a farmer or a soldier or a sailor. All these require too much study and thinking. My son, you have come into a hard, hard world. There is only one easy place in it and that is the grave.”
Worry is the culprit responsible for toppling the foundation of positivism. So many business empires have crumbled because the big boss spent too much time worrying over problems instead of acting upon them.
She listened, no doubt. I know because my niece Cheryl has morphed into a highly-paid accountant in Singapore./PN
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