ACCEPTING DECISIONS, ACCEPTING THE WORLD

"There is order in the world: war, famine, thirst,/ death, immorality, crime against property,/ all are parts indivisible..."--part of a poem of the blogger in an anthology published in the late 1990s. The unstated are the positives: peace, joy, happiness, name it that will make one happy copy. On the other side of the spectrum are the negatives: anger, frustration,fear, guilt, revenge. The Ilokanos, the Jews of the Philippines, capture the mental orientation of this universe: 'Kasta la ti biag.' There is a nuance in the language that can not be translated simply with the equivalent," That's life." You have to accept it. The theory is that if there is a thesis, there is always an anti-thesis. As natural as night and day, man and woman, light and dark, small and big, rich and poor, good and bad. Manny Pacquiao has accepted his loss to Timothy Bradley in a fight in Las Vegas that the world witnessed as a kind of unfairness: instead of Bradley triumphing, Pacquiao won the fight hands down. Pacquiao went with the flow of the universe. If he did not, it would be him who suffer: that negative emotion spawned by an unfair decision could kill him. As they say, roll with the punches. And the Philippine's boxing idol won the admiration of every body, even Oscar de la Hoya. Bradley? He was taken to the hospital in a wheel-chair after the fight. He was punished hard by Manny and Bradley had his ligaments torn by the impact of the power punches of his adversary.