Time of the year to reflect on our spirituality and connection to God, man, and nature. This is a rare opportunity to commune with our inner self and be a better person after the rest from everything.
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Many people will do a lot of things this vacation for the Holy Week. For sure the beaches all over the country will be full and every inch of the sand of Boracay, Puerto Galera and Palawan will be occupied.
There will be some who will choose to stay in Manila to feel a different city where there are less people and less traffic. Some will be in the mountain looking for some mystical experience. Some non-Catholic and non-Christians will have a usual daily routine of their lives, making a living and making money through business while a lot take a halt from their lives.
Retreat – is an act or a process of withdrawing from a current position or state of one person, individual or a group. Yes it is a withdrawal from work being declared as official holiday of the year, withdrawal from the current schooling days where all schools are having a long vacation period, withdrawal from the usual gimmicks and night outs because many close their establishment and many more withdrawal from all the things we do the whole year round.
BEACH – being in the beach is not bad at all. It is a retreat from the usual hectic city life where work deadline is killing every employee slowly. Where bills from all basic necessities are present magnifying the hardship of life. It is also the best time to bond with the family or love ones if they are with you in the beaches. But some may do it in solitude to reflect, it is still a good thing and time to withdraw and reflect. Like computers that need reboot to work properly, man need vacation to reboot.
The best time to reflect is in the early morning while everyone is still asleep and in the late evening. Sit down from a distance where one can see all the family members or your love one. Assess the value of each every individual to your life and your value to them. In every decision, words, and your personal plan, answer simple questions of how things will affect these decisions and plans on each other. In the evening while everyone is sleeping try again to look at them and try to answer one question. Will you still want to see them the next morning? Hear them laugh and do the things you both like and those things that annoy you. The answer to the question will vary from each and everyone of us but for sure this will be an eye opener.
If you are in solitude at the beach, try to meditate and answer these questions. Are you having a good time alone? Are you happy being alone? Do other people make life hard for you and it is better that you are alone in the world? Again, answers may vary but whatever the answer may be it will help one single soul.
Mountain offers a diversity of life. From the sky, to the land and the water. The bountiful landscape offer life from all over. Any person who experience life in the mountain always wish to have life in the virgin forest, away from all the noises and problem of the city life. But can one reflect and meditate the harsh reality of survival in the jungle.
How one must eat other creature of the land to survive. Small insects are eaten alive by the larger insect only to be eaten alive by birds and only to be the next prey of a larger animal of the land and eventually the larger animals are eaten when they die by the smallest insects of the forest and the cycle of life and death in the forest continues. So, the truth must be in one’s reflection, in every part of the world life offers different problems to be solved and nice things to look up to.
It is a matter of choice of preference. As the vast forest of the mountain offers life it also offers hardship just the same of the city life where success and failure is a daily routine for all of us..
Some may choose to be in the city during Holy week and have the best of the city with less traffic and less people. It is now time to reflect our contribution to the city life. Are we part of the problem or part of the solution? Our everyday life makes us one of the contributor to the traffic, garbage, pollution and corruption in the city. Rethink and reassess our position.
By mere walking to school and office or any short distance route will lessen the traffic like we do during the city Visita Iglesia. By recycling our garbage and not throwing the garbage all over it will lessen the garbage in our city. By obeying the law of man and God it lessen the corruption of the government and the church.
Wherever we are, we can do the retreat. Actually, the holiday suspension of work and school and even the brief church holiday is a retreat for all of us to reflect and re-assess ourselves. Wherever you are, pray, meditate, and be thankful for the things we have and we don’t have.
Any comment and suggestion can be forwarded to anthonyvivero@yahoo.com