A future that “works”

Happy New Year, first of all, and belated Merry Christmas.

As optimism creeps back into our lives, I think you would all agree when I say 2011 is a welcome year. From a President Noynoy Aquino beginning to live up to the symbol behind his name, to a President Obama reclaiming for us the hope we jointly lost, the world finally turns in a normal speed, once more.

Needless to say, we can’t stop doing everything we can to do just a little bit more. We are not out of woods just yet. That extra gig will continue to be necessary, either to make ends meet, or to have health insurance. So will that pursuit of a higher, more advanced degree become even more necessary to remain relevant and competitive.

Yet, as we welcome some degree of the normality we lost, we cannot avoid how our life has been dramatically transformed.

As we learn to accept and live with the irony of a life more basic in the 21^st century, may we also make our good potential more manifest. Optimism and despair, while these sit apart in extreme tension, are not contradictory; they are functional. Taken together, they sharpen us with the pressure they build; they take us out of our comfort zone, stir us anew from our old ways, so that we may be more and do more. After all, along with the need for a job is also a more fundamental need for a future that works, something which only deliberate action today can deliver.

Let us be even more brave, more forward thinking, more refined in 2011. Go out there and seize, not wait for, your second wind.