Holiday thoughts

I only got snatches from a busy schedule to shop for Christmas gifts but it was well worth it. With so little time one is led to intelligent shopping or looking for gifts with lasting value. It was fun to make discoveries. Like looking for Christmas cards and ending with a boxful of quotable quotes discovered at A Different Bookstore just behind Rustan’s. Although just a tiny nook the owners of this bookshop have shown good taste and a solid intellectual background in their choice of books.

Here are some of the quotable quotes I sent out to friends:

DANCE as though no one is watching you, LOVE as though you have never been hurt before, SING as though no one can hear you, LIVE as though heaven is on earth. The small print says the author is Souza. I have not read him but the quotes are lovely and gives you the kind of lift that will bring me into holiday mood.

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To a friend who thinks the future is bleak I sent the card with this quote: Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ":Grow, grow." It comes from the Talmud.It would be a good quote to remind him that if that happens to a blade of grass, what more to human beings?

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From the supreme satirist, Oscar Wilde, the saying "Life is too important to be taken seriously" I gave to friends who think the worse of the country because of its politics and think the quality of their lives have gone down with it.

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The "Never, never, never give up" quote from Winston Churchill, I gave to a dear friend who used it in a speech he gave after a wedding ceremony. I am sure he did not wish to cast any aspersion on the groom but merely to send a message to an audience that was slowly losing any hope that campaigns and advocacies have any real efficacy in changing things in the Philippines.

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I did not quite understand what Eleonor Roosevelt meant by it but knowing now that she inspired the Declaration of Human Rights that became the cornerstone of the United Nations, her words "Do one thing every day that scares you" must have been the mantra for pursuing difficult goals she set for herself. I sent it to friends looking for causes or just things to do in their otherwise bland existence.

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I chatted with the bookstore manager and said in fact we can do a local version. The cards came from abroad. I have my collection of quotable quotes this Christmas, as guiding thought s that I would pass on to friends and advocates of constitutional change in the coming year. This advocacy has a frightening urgency because it is our last chance to bring about genuine political reforms in governing this country or facxe catastrophe. And still there are those who will sacrifice the welfare of this country for their selfish aims as if there was still time. If we do not take this last chance, the window of opportunity may be lost forever. We face crisis after crisis and a shameful legacy for our children..

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Here are some thoughts that may help from Words on Strength and Perseverance:: Dag Hammarksjold’s "Life only demands from the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to have to run away." John Kennedy’s "Without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived. The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality." Walter Elliott ‘s "Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. Albert Camus’ "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." Alfonso Ortiz "Whatever life’s challenges you may face, remember always to look to the mountaintop. For in so doing you look to greatness. Remember this and let no problem, no matter how great it may seem discourage you, nor let anything less than the mountaintop distract you. This is the one thought I want to leave you with."

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These are thoughts and are essentially not commodities but they can be packaged and sold to the multitude like any other product. We can fill the Philippine air with such thoughts like we spray a room with fragrance. By next Christmas, I will have collected my quotable quotes from our more gifted kababayans for words of wisdom. How about that for enterprise?

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Tough job for Ambassador Al-Ghamdi in New Delhi. The series of despedidas and send-off parties for the esteemed departing Saudi Ambassador Saleh Al-Ghamdi has begun with the Indian Ambassador ‘s. HE Al-Ghamdi will have the difficult task of putting together a more presentable and substantial embassy in a country with whom Saudi Arabia has cordial relations but which, I am told, had been neglected for a while. Did you know that there are more than a hundred million Muslims in India? It is the second largest number of Muslim population in the world after Indonesia? But as my Indian friends say, the number does not matter. Muslims and Hindus have lived peacefully in the past until politics cultivated religious difference as a point of conflict. I have no doubt that Ambassador Al-Ghamdi will be up to the challenge of what needs to be done in New Delhi. By the way, it was through his persistence that Filipinos are now more aware that many Muslims live with them in several parts of the country, not just in Mindanao. If we greet Merry Xmas to each other in celebration of the Christian holidays, we begin also to greet each other Eid Mubarak at the feast of the end of the Muslims long fast of Ramadan. There was a time when it seemed that the law making Eid al Fit’r a national holiday would never be passed in Christian Philippines. Now it is a reality. How about that for a change?

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Speaking of initiatives for peaceful Christian-Muslim relations I received a letter from Farhan Ahmad Nizami, an Indian Muslim scholar and professor in Oxford who was here recently as a guest of the Manila British Council and the British Embassy. As Director of the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies, Mr. Nizami has the critical job of communicating a more informed u nderstanding of Islam and the Islamic world, something very much needed in this part of the world.

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My email is [email protected]