Over Cups of Coffee

Balita’s previous issue reported on Cebu-based honorary Canadian Consul Robert Lee being here to talk to several personalities, including businessman Steve Pagao and retired Judge Ric Manankil.
Over coffee, the report said, Mr. Lee “cobbled together a think tank on ways to promote unity among Filipino-Canadians…”
With all due respect this is a lofty and noble intention on the part of Mr. Lee. But whether it is achievable or novel is another story.
Unity in the ideal sense is a struggle to achieve. As an idea it is abstract as goodness and as relative as beauty. While unity is desirable it is almost impossible to achieve. Cooperation or collaboration may be a better option. The word unity should be banished from our vocabulary and will only be allowed to re-surface in our consciousness when each of us is ready to be selfless, leaving behind selfish personal agenda, in favour of the common good.
Many attempts have been made to achieve a united front only to fall flat because while people froth in the mouth of unity at the back of their minds percolate ways of how to advance their own individual interests. Most of the obstacles towards achieving even just a semblance of unity are not even based on principles but rather on clash of personalities and colliding egos. Talks (mostly it’s all talks) to achieve unity is like Sisyphus pushing a rock up the mountain, only to roll back downhill again.
You don’t have to look far because as we speak, groups, associations, or organizations continue to breakup mostly because of reasons which are selfish in nature – hindi natupad ang pangmakasariling pangarap. As Nick Joaquin, aka Quijano de Manila, a Philippine National Artist, once said “we grow like an amoeba” – mitotic. Growth is not expansion but division just like how one-celled amoebas grow.
Now comes Consul Robert Lee and his planned hordes of business people from Cebu to descend to Toronto in July this year. “Consul taps brains for Filipino unity drive,” says the title of the item in Balita. No problem with that as there are so many smart and intelligent people in our midst to tap but how many do have the heart ready to put in the backburner their own selfish agenda for the collective agenda? And how could a trade mission of 70 companies from the Philippines bring unity?
Well, what do I know? There will also be a “Filipino Unity conference in 2012 at the Rogers Centre enlisting big names from the Philippines to draw a crowd that would fill the centre’s 80,000 seating capacity,” the report written by journalist Kenneth Lim also said. So, let’s watch 80,000 Filipinos unite at the Rogers centre in 2012.
While robust trade will definitely bring economic windfall making people unite may be another matter. Money speaks and the language it speaks is different from the language of the heart. You may be able to bring people together by bribing them but only lasts as long as money keeps talking. It would be far from a principled harmony.
Sometime in October last year a big hoo-ha also came to town dubbed “Bayanihan sa Canada”. It was from early morning breakfast till past my bedtime (although my normal bedtime is 11PM, I left at twelve noon because it felt like 12 am) affair at the Delta Chelsea in downtown Toronto. What was touted as a unification conference turned out to be a marketing gimmick of the Land Bank of the Philippines. It was such a waste of money especially so that the initiator was the Commission on Filipino Overseas, under the Office of the President.
That money could have been better spent for the welfare of the OFWs who are propping up the Philippine economy big time. Don’t ask me what result came out of it as I even can’t remember now that I was there. Ho-hum.
Talking about remembering, before I forget, let me share with you an anecdote I can’t resist to pass along, – thanks to Romeo Y. Lim, a Malaya columnist, from who this came from:
“A group of alumni, all highly established in their respective careers, got together for a visit with their old university professor.
The conversation soon turned to complaints about the endless stress of work and life in general…
Offering his guests coffee, the professor went into the kitchen and soon returned with a large pot of coffee and an eclectic assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal – some plain, some expensive, some quite exquisite.
Quietly he told them to help themselves to some fresh coffee. When each of his former students had a cup of coffee in hand, the old professor quietly cleared his throat and began to patiently address the small gathering.
‘You may have noticed that all of the nicer looking cups were taken up first, leaving behind the plainer and cheaper ones. While it is only natural for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is actually the source of much of your stress-related problems.’
He continued…’Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In fact, the cup merely disguises or dresses up what we drink. What each of you really wanted was coffee, not a cup, but you instinctively went for the best cup. Then you began eyeing each other’s cups.’
’Now consider this: Life is coffee. Jobs, money, and position in society are merely cups. They are just tools to shape and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not truly define nor change the quality of the Life we live. Often, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee that God has provided us. God brews the coffee, but He does not supply the cups.’
If we have this type of consciousness then perhaps we will have unity. Meantime, we will have to wait even if it is, for — Godot.
And while waiting, the Philippine Independence Day Council is now accepting applicants to its annual SEARCH FOR MISS PHILIPPINES PIDC 2011. FOR DETAILS AND MORE INFORMATION CONTACT THE FOLLOWING: Rory Elefano 416-733-7818 e-mail: aelefano@yahoo.com, Gene Elamparo 416-284-3547 e-mail: gene.elamparo@rbc.com, or Cesar Manebo 6 47-829-9187.