The choices we make are choices that matter
By Melba Padilla MaggayHow does good come about in the world?
How does good come about in the world?
There’s nothing like being in a non-Christian country during Christmas to realize just how special the season is in the Philippines. In Taiwan, it was mid-December but the holiday fever was nowhere to be felt. True, tinsel and holly festooned the hotel lobby and hallways, and Christmas carols were piped in constantly. At Taipei 101, the humongous skyscraper that sits in Taipei’s business district, there was an obligatory Santa’s Cottage and even a life-size snow globe. But elsewhere, there was hardly any sign of Christmas cheer.
My family live in a once trouble-wracked neighborhood or purok in Barangay Bahay Toro, Quezon City, where robberies, holdups and burglaries often occurred, even in daytime. Many times at night, noisy street drinking sessions were rampant—so with alternating rowdy, supposedly birthday celebrations bellowing irritating videoke sounds that shattered the stillness of the night. These nocturnal nuisance activities distracted me from doing my take-home school work. It also deprived my aging parents and their fellow senior citizen-homeowners and weary day-shift workers of much-needed sleep and rest at night.
What’s a hero and what does it take to become one? There were several attempts to answer that before and after National Heroes Day, ranging from emulating Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio to saving the Philippine flag from a flood. The latter, in case you still haven’t heard about it, was done by 12-year-old Janela [...]
LAST SATURDAY, April 9, marked the 69th anniversary of the fall of Bataan. In 1987 President Corazon Aquino issued Executive Order No. 23 declaring April 9 a regular holiday nationwide in memory of the valor and heroism of the men and women who fought and died on the battlefields of Bataan and Corregidor during World [...]
