Lent.

For quite sometime now, I am convinced that the word LENT is of Dutch origin. Maybe it's not. But here's why I think it's Dutch. Lent (lente) means spring in Dutch. Spring means rebirth.

In Catholic tradition, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday which is normally sometime in February, and culminates in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is Easter of course, mostly sometime in late March or early April.

Among Christians, Lent is observed through penitence and self-denial by fasting (less drinking and smoking, no overeating) and abstinence (no impure thoughts, no fighting and arguing). People also try not to eat meat on Wednesdays and Fridays. So during Lent, there's an attempt to try to purify one's soul, one's spirit.... which leads to rebirth.

Anyway, here´s an exerpt of penitence and self-denial Philippine-style. This footage is a bit offensive to some. So please be warned.

work hard, play hard.

When I told my friend JR that I was getting married and am moving to Europe, his first reaction was, "Why? Why are you giving up your life here? Europe does not have a soul. It is dead. Cold and dead."

I thought that he was merely being his cynical self. There is nothing amiss about living in Europe, I thought.

I haven't seen JR since the wedding day but there are times when I think about what he said. Like today. I was checking online for an all-inclusive trip to Prague. Fall break is just a week or two away, and I am actually looking forward to getting out of my little cave here.

It seems almost unfair to make a claim that life in this part of the world is very stressful. But it is. I, for one, wake up feeling sore, and retire to bed at night feeling more sore. True, I only work parttime but running a household and maintaining a social life definitely require a full time job. In fact, there are times when I wish there is an extra hour or two in a day so that I could finish all my tasks.

So to some degree, what JR said is true. This society is dead. Dead in the sense that so much importance is put on leisure that all we tend to do is work. Leisure and culture become interchangeable. You go to a museum not so much to see how ancient heritage is like and how it is preserved, but to sort of rediscover past as a living source of the present. This is why man tends to attach more significance to his leisure here. We work hard, we play hard. In other words, we live to work.

There is really nothing wrong about the word work. As I was telling my former classmate Meren, our job here as housewives also requires a kind of professional mobility, flexibility and coordination. The machines are there not to make our work load easy, but to facilitate any kind of work so that we could be more efficient workers. Of course, we try to avoid objectifying ourselves as machines... but in a way, we are!

That is why there is a tendency to forget the SELF. We wake up and go about our daily activities looking like orphans from Annie, and we retire at night smelling like sweaty stevedores. When we want to give time to our selves, we go to a spa or a health center. We think that pampering the body will help maintain balance in our lives.

Man is no longer concerned with understanding the internal problems... the self. He serves the society best when he remains faithful to his work. Work hard... play hard. That´s why it´s dead.

Life then is the constant oscillation between restropect and prospect. Man lives to work. He works so that he could also have leisure. Leisure opens up the horizon of possibilities. More possibilities, more work. More work means more trip to recreational and health centers. And in my case, more chance to see the world.

So yes, sometimes I wonder if it is life I treasure ..... or, work so that I could have a life.