is doing good always good?

an edited version of the ff. piece was published last saturday 11/25/06 in the crossline section of sunstar cebu's weekend magazine

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is doing good always good?

this question entered my mind when a curious thing happened to me on the way home from work one night. i was walking to the jeepney stop where i usually get my ride when i met one of the security guards from my office on the way. he flashed a wide grin when he saw me, almost like a sigh of relief.

"bossing!", we greeted each other. this was followed by some chitchat on what floor of the office building i was actually in and under what department i belonged to. after about a minute or so, my already grumbling stomach reminded me to get home, so i was about to end the conversation when he asked me if he could borrow twenty pesos so he could get a ride home.

this surprised me a bit. we weren't close. i didn't know his name, and he probably didn't know mine. we just called each other "bossing". i didn't even like the guy so much, as he was the guard who always seemed to be so strict on me, inspecting me everytime i enter the office to see if i was wearing the proper attire, while everybody else escapes his scrutiny. but i thought, "uhhh ok... sure, why not? this is my chance to do something nice to someone who's practically a stranger..." i quickly took out from my wallet a crisp twenty peso bill and gave it to him.

he apologetically took the money and thanked me, saying that his salary had been delayed by the security agency. i assured him that it was no problem. after a final word of thanks from him, we parted and i went back on my way. then something unexpectedly bothered me.

i felt guilty.

yes, you read that right. i felt guilty. of all things to feel guilty about, it was for doing a good thing. weird. why? this i pondered on the ride home.

was it really a "good" thing in the first place? it couldn't have been inherently bad. the guy needed help, and i gave it to him. i did it without any ulterior motive behind me, no plan of using it to gain something for myself, and expecting nothing in return. common sense dictates that it couldn't have been a bad thing in itself.

could it have been just my exasperation over the general unfairness of the world? maybe. here i was, with some extra money i didn't need that badly, and there he was, the opposite of me, needing just a little money to get home but not having it. he might even have a family waiting for him to bring something home for the dinner table.

but the world IS generally unfair to everyone, me included. it can't be my fault that the world is unfair. it just is. we are all the walking wounded, as they say. the world piles upon us all layer upon layer of crap and we are all just fellow sufferers in this shared predicament. so it can't be that. so why the guilt?

then it hit me. there is something so deliciously superior about doing a good thing to someone in need. i actually felt a bit smug about doing the "good" deed, as if i felt good that he was in situation where he needed my help. as if i was happy that i had an advantage over him so i could "help" him.

it's the same way you can consider acts of charity as basically acts of vanity too. giving those "bundles of joy" every christmas not just calms your own conscience. it also confirms your superiority over the benificiaries of your benevolence, not just in terms of material wealth, but also in goodness, as if goodness can be bought with wealth.

so is that what the good feeling you get after doing something good really is, a confirmation of your superiority? a mere ego boost?

they say good should not be a means to an end, it should be an end in itself. but human nature always seems to find a way to twist the good. does this stop us then from doing the good?

as humans, we can never be perfect. but it is also human to aspire to be perfect. we live our lives in an endless struggle to attain our ideals.

the myth of sisyphus comes to mind. for his crimes against the gods, sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up the side of a hill and topple it down the other side. but just when he is about to reach the top and succeed, his strength fails him and the boulder rolls back down the mountain. he goes back for the boulder, begins again, and the cycle continues.

like sisyphus, we labor on to reach our ideal of good. but just when we seem to be getting there, we commit mistakes, things that we know are wrong, things that bother our consience. we are doomed to fail in our attempt to reach perfection.

but that does not mean we stop. even if we may never reach perfection in our daily lives, our effort to reach it adds meaning to our life. it is in the struggle that we find meaning.

thus we must labor on and run the good race, even if at times we fall down, even if we fail, because our failures are bridges to Him in Whom we will find perfection.

poor loser(s)

ralf souquet just happened to suck at his game at a very bad time. and ronnie alcano's peaking performance made things even worse for souquet, making alcano the 3rd filipino to win the world pool championship.

i'm not taking anything away from alcano, of course. except for that moment when the score stood at 15-9 where he missed the 9-ball (of all balls on the table...), he played great pool against souquet. his break was efficient: soft yet accurate, which is just the opposite of the djanggo bustamante break with the accompanying flying kick from his right leg. his combination shots with the 9-ball were gutsy game winners which the crowd loved. and his safety game was just beautiful it boggled the mind, much to souquet's discomfort. to reach the final he even beat other big name players in the tournament like efren "bata" reyes and the defending champion wu chia ching of taiwan.

but nevertheless, ralf souquet simply sucked... and he knew it. he struggled with a lot of errors and which alcano took advantage of to dominate the match. even his break didn't help him, not giving him a clear shot to the next object ball. in fact, he sucked so much that during the post game interview, he couldn't help but shed tears in front of God, espn, and everybody. poor loser. seeing a grown man like him cry was so unsettling for anthony suntay (who did the post game interview) that, in a weak attempt to make souquet feel better, suntay encouraged the crowd to applaud souquet, telling him to "feel the love" of the filipino fans. hahahahahaha. schadenfreude, more like.

naturally, the newspaper headlines the following day were all about alcano's win. and president arroyo, the political animal that she is, does the same thing she did with manny pacquiao and takes advantage of the situation, awarding alcano the "champion for life" award (corny name for an award, no?) and a cool 1 million pesos (kaaachiiing). i wouldn't be surprised if members of the house of representatives and the senate, plus his home town's mayor, vice mayor, ... [fill in the blanks] ... up to the baranggay tanod, will all be lining up to give him heaps and heaps and heaps of awards. anything to bask in the reflected glory of alcano's victory, i guess.

but wait a minute... don't you notice something here? try mentioning a list of sports filipinos have excelled at internationally. and when i say internationally, i mean the philippines vs. the world kind of international. so in that definition, our win at the last sea games won't count (we had homecourt advantage there anyway). let's see, we have billiards, boxing, bowling... see it now? aside from the obvious and strange fact that they all start with the letter B, the other thing common with them is that they are all individual sports.

tell me, have filipinos ever excelled in a team sport internationally? let's see... basketball? nope... we can't even win gold at the asian games. football? even worse, i think myanmar just gave the philippine team a good thumping at a southeast asian event recently... uhhh, rugby? does the philippines even have a rugby team? rugby boys, maybe... how about baseball? yeah, we did win once in an international little league competition some years ago, but we did it by sending overage players. holy crap. we can't even seem to win in team sports without cheating!

what the hell does that mean? that pinoys can only excel when they are working for their own glory? that pinoys cannot grasp the concept of a TEAM, much more the concept of a NATION? another result of the notorious crab mentality that we all complain about but never seem to conquer?

doesn't speak so well for us as a people, no?