Summer with my new mantra

A few days ago, our weather bureau, PAG-ASA, announced that summer is officially here. I felt a little cheated. Since grade school, I associated February and early March with sweater weather. It was the only time I could wear long-sleeved knitted clothes without having to worry about getting stuck in traffic because of floods. This year, there were a few nights with Baguio-like weather but it seemed like the winds, which the weathermen usually described as coming from Siberia, never got here.

Just the same, I welcome summer even as I brace for the heat. Over the weekend, I noticed that the neighbors’ caimito, mango and tambis trees are starting to bear fruit.While I don’t particularly like eating caimito, green mango or tambis fruits, it is always a joy to see trees laden with fruit. If the Garden of Eden were located in the Philippines, I imagine it would have been filled with similar-looking trees.

The announcement of summer also coincided with the closing of the school year—the time for proms, and graduation balls, and commencement exercises. My son has cleared out his locker and will be done with school in a couple of days. I’m starting to see posters announcing art, dance, and cooking classes for kids in the bulletin boards of coffee shops around the neighborhood. Last Sunday, I saw high school girls dolled up in pink and blue gowns waiting for a taxi in UP Village. They must have been on their way to their prom at the Balay ng Alumni in UP Diliman where I saw more girls in gowns and boys with gel-slicked hair who looked self-conscious in their suits.

The announcement of summer also brought a jolting realization that the first quarter of the year will be over soon. I wince when I see my old to-do list and wonder when I will ever get to finish them. While I thought I had learned to say “no” to things I only felt lukewarm about, I’m discovering that doing so is a lot tougher than I imagined.

With the realization that time can pass so quickly, that there are very few hours in a day, and that it will be the end of 2012 very soon, I have adopted as my mantra a lesson that a mentor reminded me of a few weeks ago: Always choose joy and creativity.

This has meant not watching the TV coverage of the impeachment trial. It has also meant not reading the news about the recent mining conference and the upcoming mining executive order. I have heard everything I needed to hear about the pros and cons of mining when I attended the technical working group meetings on the various mining bills in Congress last year and I’ve made up my mind about it.

It has meant devoting more time to studying the National Integrated Protected Areas System Act, the watershed approach to environmental protection, and various models for community-based rainforestation. How can one combine sustainable development and forest conservation? What do we do with the forest communities who depend on charcoal-making for sustenance?How do we teach them to take care of the watershed? I have accumulated various books on the subject over the years and feel disappointed that the recommendations found there were never followed.

When this happens, I remind myself: Always choose joy and creativity. And to enjoy the bright and sunny weather because it looks like the weathermen don’t know when the rains will come.

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