Giving Season

When I was in college, one of the good books I have read is entitled My Losing Season. It is about a basketball team meditating on how they weren't able to manage winning a peat in a basketball season. The author, Pat Conroy, tried to narrate in his memoir how as a starting pointguard, he was able to unveil some of life's secrets and pains. That in every losing season there is an opportunity for players to reflect what they have done wrong, strengthen the ties they have with each teammates and their coach and train harder so as not to disappoint themselves the next time.

My November 25 journal entry I chose to entitle "The Giving Season" and indeed it is. It is officially the start of Christmas carol trips, in just three more days we are about to remember the Thanksgiving Day of the Americans. In just a month we are about to remember the birth of our Lord Jesus and how His Father, our Father, gave His Son to us as the primordial act of giving.

Just today, ALicia Keys visited the typhoon victims to do the giving. To serve as inspiration so that the people can have something to hold on to. It is the same way with Manny Pacquiao winning his fight yesterday with Brandon Rios. It is the same way with artists mostly local artists sending the warmth of their loves to the typhoon victims as a way of giving back. How is it? Giving back, a project that I have always wanted to accomplish as I start working in a big company.

I want to giveback. It is a promise of everyone to their every self. It is rooted in the very nature of mankind to donate and offer. It is our way of sending gratitude to our maker.It has always been this way.

Yesterday, we were able to watch "The Hunger Games 2; Catching Fire" my friend Aizee was with his girlfriend Fericka who I have seen for the first time. We went to Alabang Town Center and enjoyed the window shopping and sight seeing there. Feeling the coolness and the ambience I had almost forgot that 1/10th of my people are suffering. There comes Hunger Games. A depiction of what futuristic world could be one day when we're gone. It is also a depiction of corruption, of betrayal of public trust, of deception, of malevolence and extreme poverty.

What was good about the movie? It never make you felt that the violence is around. It was overpowered by the outpouring of love and dedication manifested by the tributes. How sacrifice matters. How dignity is established by truth and how a person who uplifts the moral of the suffering can become an inspiration and icon to set things in a new world order. It is a search for humanity in each and every individual and did I not say, HOPE covered most of the plot.

HOPE. I believe it has been the core message of my blog all along. I always end my journal entries with sentences that looks up for a brighter tomorrow after reporting whatever happened in a particular day. It is also the same message that I found seven years ago as I waited in a tricycle near Brgy Palayan Liliw Laguna. I was waiting for my Empress. Then she came unexpectedly without warning. I was stunned and it lead into a lovely day. How lovely she is that day as she appeared in her magnificence riding in their van. I was looking at her in a close distance while the sky is beginning to shed her rain. It always rain in Laguna every November 25. November 25 2003, It also rained in Liliw and it was one of those days whose I cannot outgrow. I wouldn't want to. The day was a day of HOPE. Yet, more than that, it became a day of love.

LOVE. At the end of the movie, Catching Fire, one will notice how love encapsulated the entire underlying theme. Katniss, finally found love inseide her and probably was able to learn how to love others. Christmas is not just season of giving. More than giving and donating, It is a season of love. My former choral group used to sing "Seasons of Love" during caroling activities. I saw love yesterday as we celebrated the Christ The King Sunday, in the sacraments, the readings and the cooperation of people. I saw love yesterday in the hearts of FIlipinos sending their support to Manny. I saw love between Aizee and Fericka the same as with Dimitri and Zet. I saw love ten years ago and seven years ago. I saw love today in how our celebrities give back. I saw love during the wake of Tito Tony, in the eyes of the bereived. In the eyes of my uncle and aunths who visited us the last time I was home. I had my four day vacation and thanks heaven for that.

More of love I will be able to see in Batangas probably as Vien and I visits there next Sunday. Giving is not that significant without the heart beating for the receiver. Without love, giving is futile. It is a season of giving and we should not forget that it is first and foremost the season of love.