RETHINKING SENATORIAL AMBITIONS

When I read about what the senators are doing, Miriam is being complained about, about actors being able to swiftly get reelected and even landing up there in numbers 1 and 2, and Sen. Pimentel, whom I used to idolize for his very down-to-earth analysis yet, nationalistic stance on many issues, I am beginning to rethink how I could be stronger to stand being a senator amid those issues and conflicts that are bouncing up and down, left and right, and all around the Senate. There should be a way by which we could make people aspire to the highest positions and also imagine shaping a new Senate that would have caring members, caring of one another, needling each other to be incorruptible, sharing ideas without putting down each other, in others being nurturing individuals. Or am I being too idealistic? I remember when I used to hear the elders in my childhood talk about how respectable people like Senators Recto and Tanada were at the floor and how Sen. Roseller Lim filibustered over a certain issue for many hours. The scenes in my mind were so great and I felt that these people were really caring of our country and of my little self. But now, as I read about the government, I see only officials with their government positions treated as careers, as jobs, and not really as functions that could make them leave a noble legacy to the generations to come. I think that every government official should undergo meditation every month, go to the beach, look at the horizon, breathe in and out, to feel that spiritual uplift and make them aspire for something higher than the day-to-day grind inside the Congressional halls. Maybe then they could create that greatest law, just one, that could help us stop all forms of corruption and raise our country from the depths of desperation and hopelessness. The public can start it for them. Let us start now.