‘You can cry all you want and even get me to cry with you but all you’ll get from me is an opened box of unscented Kleenex.’
IT seems that many politicians take this advice to heart, believing in their hearts that God helps those who help themselves.
And help themselves they do, except that they help themselves to the public coffers. They do it as their predecessors did it and as their successors will do it. In many instances, all over the country (“mula Aparri hanggang Jolo”) the incumbents and predecessors and successors are all from the same happy family.
And with the way this is done brazenly, unabashedly, unceasingly, from generation to generation, it is easy to conclude that, indeed, God is helping them.
Interpreting the saying differently, I’ve chosen to do the work of God and help those who help themselves. But not in the manner I refer to above: in this instance, I’ve chosen to help those who seek help – and they are many – but choose only those who have demonstrated their willingness (if not ability) to solve their problems while turning my back on those who in fact create their own problems, or make existing problems worse.
Turning my back is difficult to do but I have done it even to some erstwhile close friends. I can imagine them thinking that I am a selfish old man or a heartless one; so be it. But my policy in life is: if you created your own problems, then learn to row your own boat.
I do not have the time, the energy, or the resources to pull from the deep end anyone whose actions or inactions put him there.
You can cry all you want and even get me to cry with you but all you’ll get from me is an opened box of unscented Kleenex.
Imagine a young man who loses a college scholarship because of low grades so he decides to work. Lacking a college degree, he gets a job that does not pay enough to get him above the poverty line. So he is often short.
Then he falls in love (which is fine) but then he is short even more often. Worse, he gets her pregnant so she has to stop working.
And if that weren’t enough, she had a difficult pregnancy (additional expenses) before giving birth. Now he is even more short.
And two months after his baby was born, he gets her pregnant again.
I’m not making up a story. It’s a real one, of a friend of mine who has time and again run to me (last na to, kuya) for a “loan” (babayaran ko sa sweldo) that has accumulated and has never been paid.
So I’ve had to make the painful decision to say “pasensiya na, madami pa akong ibang tinutulungan,” because I am certain that this is not the type of maturity that God would want me to help develop or the character that He would like me to help build.
You got yourself into a hole? Be man enough to dig yourself out of it.