Last night, as I was reading through the rest of PDI (january 9, vol 22, no 23), I came upon Chuckie Perez Manio's Young Blood contribution entitled “Cold pragmatism?”. Surprisingly, it mirrored several of my sentiments about the call center industry. The article started with the aghast reaction of the young Lasellite on the movement of thousands of new grads towards the call center industry. Me thinks he feared that one day he'll wake up and find his now unabitious self in a highly unrewarding job.
Wrote Chuckie: “Today, it's quite fashionable to discard idealism and espouse cold pragmatism, the attitude you need in the “real world,” they say.” If everybody missed it, this was exactly what I was whining about in my “stirring” entry only in lyrical prose. It's not just fashionable though, it is, in fact, inevitable. Lets just say it is the natural state of things. I use to think that grown-ups are Kjs (kill joys) when they tell me this. But now that I've started to grow up, I've realize that they were telling me the truth. As the normal flow of things go, it's youth and idealism and then lack of it. The “lack of it” stage is coupled with kids and a mortgage. Many are times when a conversation about this “lack of it” stage with my older colleagues ends in: “Wait till you have kids. Then you'll understand.” Yeah, ok.
“Disillusionment,” Chuckie says. “It hits hard and some people can't handle it. Life is hard – everyone knows that. But why should we accept such horrible conditions and allow our lives to go by without giving anything back to this world, or maybe even just to our country?” I've thought about it but I don't think this boy is calling out for a revolution. He just wants us to realize that life is going downhill. Wake up and smell the gutter.
I concur that it is indeed “tempting to opt for a happy but mediocre life” but observation is just the first step.
First sight and Second thoughts
According to my favorite philosopher (who doesn't think he's one at all, but he is), a person who can make a difference, lets say a hero, has to have two important qualities. By that he didn't mean superhuman strength. First off, one must have first sight which is seeing what's really there. What's so special about this? Well, most people aren't actually seeing. Not that they're blind but that they see what they want to see. Like fortune telling, those manangs at Quiapo don't tell you what's really going to happen. They just tell you what you want to hear.
It's not really people's fault that they can't see. Me thinks it's a survival mechanism. The excuse is that you already know life is hard, you don't wanna wallow in it. It's being optimistic, they say. Yeah, ok.
The second quality is the ability to ask WHY. Of course, you shouldn't seem like a child “why this?” “why that?”. It's about asking the right questions. This is an analytical skill and like all skills, this can be learned.
The right question
The right move for this one is not the pry their eyes open with a pitch fork. No. That won't mean a thing without first sight. And first sight only encourages depression or panic without second thoughts. What my philosopher didn't dabble on was to factor in the heart.
The heart is a rather powerful weapon. It is second only to survival/self-preservation. People often disregard it as they see it as a dishonorable tool. I have no qualms with the manipulation of feelings. The heart is the only thing powerful enough to shut down first sight and second thoughts. Like all things, the heart is also the only thing powerful enough to open first sight and second thoughts. When feelings are triggered it doesn't trickle down, it comes out in floods. Feelings don't disappear. Like energy, they are merely replaced with another feeling.
More importantly, feelings are infectious. It takes only one to infect a room full of people. In my case, it took two.
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