A good year to be a ‘hermit crab’

The New Year 2016 will be different in more ways than one.

People assume that the coming presidential election will be the game changer and many Filipinos want to believe that a new President and a new administration will bring in new opportunities. That might be so, but it would be for a limited few: those who happen to have built up enough wealth and capital that makes them ready at the starting line.

The second group would be the ones who invested in the winning candidate and are intelligent enough to see opportunities instead of imagined power or influence. What both have in common is that they invested even before the New Year and the new administration.

While I believe in being hopeful, hope that is based on a wish is much like having great faith but having done no work of any sort. Even hermit crabs move around foraging, fighting and protecting their homes, and even before they need to, they go searching and are on the look out for a better and bigger shell to move into. If there is one creature I know who understands the concept of “growing bigger while moving on” it would be the hermit crab.

I sense that this will be something many of us will have to learn and act on in 2016. Move we must, as Yoda might say it. My friends Will and Lindy live at the opposite ends of Metro Manila and in 2015 they served as traffic advisers for people coming from North Luzon and SLEX while losing so much money, time and fuel wasted following the daily parade of workers in cars. My niece Ara does much of the same except she commutes which is worse. The irony is that they’ve all become “so used to it” that following the hermit crab’s example never occurs to them.

But move we all must, whether to a temporary place for the week, a new job, or lifestyle if it will result in a better quality of life, financial savings and better time management. Personally, the mantra that has been replaying in my head for 2016 is: To live by choice and not circumstance.

Whether you noticed it or not, the “carmageddon” on EDSA prior to Christmas week was so extensive and consistent that it actually caused a cultural or mental shift among how many middle and upper class Filipinos celebrated Christmas. Even companies or corporations manifested a “rethink” on Christmas traditions that turned out to be good and acceptable for many.

This year there were fewer corporate Christmas parties for clients and stakeholders. Even text messages, cards, or emails were significantly fewer. What really told the story or showed the “change” was all on Facebook; most people posted photos of their Family Christmas dinners, reunions, and trips abroad or in the provinces as a family. In short the focus was on the family.

Even for the Beltrans, last Christmas was different. 21 years after the death of our Dad Louie Beltran, my siblings and I were complete and celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas breakfast in Lipa, Batangas. This Christmas, we unwrapped home made gifts made by nephews and nieces, my wife Karen got the “gifts she always wanted” mostly bought from surplus stores or home made.

Even the natural gift givers gave gifts that were really useful more than impressive. No one was being a cheapskate because they gave multiple gifts per person. But what was new in it all was that we all gave what people needed or wanted and not based on a “shopping list” available at the shopping mall.

Traffic may have kept us away from the malls, but it led us to discover just how great “simpler and cheaper” can be. The best thing of all is that instead of wasting time in traffic, many folks in Metro Manila dug in and spent the time catching up with family or getting out of town with the entire family!

If we can redefine Christmas, we can redesign many things in 2016. Allow me to share with you a message that popped up on Facebook numerous times as if telling us what’s in store for 2016. Please read it slow and easy and imagine it in the modern day context like a PM sent to you by God. Happy New Year to all of you.

Isaiah 43:18 to 44:3

This is what the Lord says – ¹⁸ “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. ¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. ²⁰ The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, ²¹ the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.

²² “Yet you have not called on me, Jacob, you have not wearied yourselves for^[b] me, Israel. ²³ You have not brought me sheep for burnt offerings, nor honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with grain offerings nor wearied you with demands for incense. ²⁴ You have not bought any fragrant calamus for me, or lavished on me the fat of your sacrifices.

But you have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses. ²⁵ “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. ²⁶ Review the past for me, let us argue the matter together; state the case for your innocence. ²⁷ Your first father sinned; those I sent to teach you rebelled against me. ²⁸ So I disgraced the dignitaries of your temple; I consigned Jacob to destruction^[c] and Israel to scorn.

Israel the Chosen

⁴⁴“But now listen, Jacob, my servant, Israel, whom I have chosen. ² This is what the Lord says – he who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you: Do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant, Jeshurun,^[d] whom I have chosen. ³ For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

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