THANK God tropical storm “Jenny” was moving out of the Philippine area of responsibility when I was writing this yesterday. The weatherman on TV said so.
Sad to say, I had developed some kind of phobia due to past typhoons that had put me in harm’s way.
I almost sank into depression when the flood brought by typhoon “Frank” in 2008 wrecked my old typewriter and camera.
I consoled myself thinking that I had survived where others had died.
By chance I saw a spider rebuilding its “home” and marveled at the intricate design of that circular web under construction.
I remembered the famous phrase, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
If natural disasters were literally “acts of God,” I consoled myself, then they should be interpreted as tests to be passed in order to win the game of life.
Each of us has had bouts with hard times, I further appeased myself.
I remembered that at age 24 in 1974 or three years after I had been freelance-writing for a living, I applied for a job at the office of then Information Minister Francisco “Kit” Tatad in Malacañang.
Two years had passed since President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.
The receptionist, however, asked me to talk to a certain Major Vicente Tigas first. I did as told and approached the desk of a good-looking Philippine Army officer in uniform. After interviewing me for about five minutes, Tigas shrugged, “I am sorry. You used to lambast President Marcos in The Quezonian.”
He was referring to the school organ of Manuel L. Quezon University.
He advised me to see another military official at Camp Aguinaldo as soon as possible.
I did, only to be asked to sign an affidavit pledging to write well of the President. I signed but vowed to myself not to go back to Tatad’s office even if I badly needed a stable job in my second year as a married man.
To soothe my sunken spirit, I turned to inspirational books, including the Bible.
Miracles, I read, could happen to anyone with sufficient faith.
I know of a high school graduate running a vulcanizing business, Antonio Tulalian, who dreamed of owning a building. He focused his mind on that dream very intensely until a friend offered to lend him money with which to put up a four-level office building on Serrano corner 11th streets, Caloocan City.
In high school we learned about Sir Isaac Newton, an English physicist who had never been an outstanding student. When asked by a newspaperman of his time how he had discovered the law of gravity, he quipped, “Just by constantly thinking about it.”
The power to harness the magical forces of the mind is available to everybody, according to immortalized positive-thinking American authors like Horatio Alger (1832-1899), Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie (1888-1956), and Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993).
“What the human mind can conceive and believe,” Hill wrote, “the human mind can achieve.”
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.” (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
