apat4E (A Place and Time for Everything)

Here's my first blog entry for 2013. Missed writing for so many reasons, main being not so enthusiastic about writing when no one seems to be reading. But writing for fun and not for money is that: fun -- and whether someone reads or not, one gets the satisfaction of learning and being able to share the experience, eventually, I guess.

One of the things I did before 2012 ended was to clean up and organize my tiny studio apartment (an unending task, apparently). I could not believe how a little tidying up, discarding trash, organizing and minimalizing one's world can give so much peace to the mind and relief to the body. For instance, assigning a certain space for a particular use -- say a corner for the TV and sound-system -- and nothing else, removes any possibility of confusing it for other use, such as putting trash on top of the CD player or using speakers as book ends. The latter, I still have to undo. I need another book shelf, I believe, although the red cookbooks look well with the black components.

That led me to a simple general rule for organizing life and a lot of our many mundane concerns. I resolved to. . . ooops! This is not a New Year's resolution. It's an old idea I've had for many years but have not really seriously implemented in a universal scale. Yes, my whole universal significance now depends upon "finding a place and a time for everything" -- EVERYTHING is my whole Universe, if not for everyone else.

In the case of my meager possessions, that means assigning a place for each particular item: a drawer for socks, another for underwear, a night table for night items like a bible, reading glasses, ear plugs and a cup of water, a rack for shoes and a hook for a painting. Duh! Obvious and simple? No! For one who has so much on his mind, the Universe can be a chaotic darkness before order and light come into existence.

I've done a lot of moving from house to house and emptying and filling up bags, boxes and files (both hard or soft) and have not seen the end of it. It takes superhuman wisdom and strength to say once and for all that there must be order and efficiency in one's life before there can be order and life in the Universe. Salvation truly means being perfect before all, if not before yourself. That is, in spite of the Law of Entropy in Physics which states that all things tend to go from order to disorder, we have been given the divine command to be perfect in an imperfect world. To do the impossible in a world cursed with impossibilities.

Cleaning up is truly a godly task.

Women, in general, are trained to be well-organized, meticulous, thorough and clean. Men, on the other hand, are not. We have used this inability as an excuse for our gross ways. Sometimes, to the point that not being so is seen either as being compulsive or gay.

Perhaps, owing to the nature of man's original work as hunter or farmer, he had to deal with the unpredictable or complicated elements facing him in the outdoors. His primary concern was not to put order into his job as much as he had to put efficiency. The way Nature produced "unorganized" forests with fruit trees and lumber and "unmanicured" fields with shrubs, crops, wild herbs and wild animals, all man needed to do was to collect whatever he had to in order to feed the family. It was only much later when more scientific and organized farming and foraging came about.

All the while, woman had to constantly put order into her home and family life early on. It was but natural for her to organize her life and time in relation to the needs of everyone else: her husband, her children, herself and her neighbours. And not necessarily in that order sometimes.

In our modern world, life has become more organized as it grew in complexity. Cities are a testament to the supreme ability of humans to plan and provide for their multifarious needs and preventing so much chaos or strife. Of course, there have been civil wars, revolutions, traffic jams, collisions, city flooding, riots, stampedes and massacres. But these are precisely the things that make our common Universe worth putting order and discipline into on a daily basis. It is an unending task as much as managing a little apartment or any single human life is.

Yes, trash has to be segregated and thrown away at the proper time. And a bed can also be a place to read a book on, to pray on and for so many other things for so many people. (Someone used it once to advestize an album.) We do need to consider, however, if the time we do certain things is the right or appropriate time. Is it time to sit on the sofa and watch a sitcom or is your time better spent reading a book or visiting a friend in need? An engineering student inside a Physics lab is at the right place and the right time, as far as his or her parents are concerned. But, as far as the student is concerned, it may not be his or her idea of the Universe. But what does a young person know about life to make him or her question such things? And what do parents know about the present world that makes them qualified to impose their ancient ideas of the world?

Most of the time, however, we only move from place to place and being carried naturally by time (our self-imposed schedules) that we forget to think about the fact that we have been given by God dominion over "all things" -- pretty much the Universe as we know it. To God, we can be the conquerors He meant us to be.

Or are we victims of place and time? Are we beholden to other people and not self-determined in our vision of our own worth as individuals? Is the Philippines, or any country for that matter, the right place and 2013 the right time for us to make things happen for ourselves, for our family and for our country?

The ring is the right place to put a basketball through at any time possible within a game. Success in that case means making as many baskets as you can. Earning as much as you can in a week or a month is also a determinant many use to measure their accomplishment in life. Others make do with the psychological or emotional satisfaction of doing something that may not be so lucrative.

The place and time (space-time, as Einstein called it) every person finds himself or herself in within the Universe relates with every other person's space-time. A car and bus could not be at exactly the same space and time along EDSA or there will be considerable damage and injury. Managing the order and destiny of the Universe depends upon each one of us managing our small and important visions in our small Universes. Let me rephrase that: For God to manage the Universe well according to His plan, we need to manage our own individual lives well. How exactly? By doing it according to His example.

A forest or a whole mountain way seem wild and unkempt but it is God's way of providing us air, food, houses, phones, clothes, cities, cars and satellites. Wisdom is often derived from all the apparent confusion we see around us. The wisdom we ultimately get from our Creator in this cursed world is meant to be used to have proper dominion over all of this groaning Creation. And that wisdom includes the love and compassion for all of Creation as well.

The Universe, after all, is large enough for everyone to find his or her corner in the cosmos. Borders or boundaries create conflict between individuals and nations. This happens when each person thinks of how big his or her world is compared to those of others. A mansion dweller has a certain pride in his gigantic space; otherwise, he would have built only a cabin. Superpowers naturally want to extend their reach over other territories, physically or economically. Until we learn how small our place is compared to the Universe and how limited our time is in relation to Eternity, we will never see the wisdom of apat4E.

A Place and Time for Everything. Clean up your tiny room, finite human! God gave it to you so He can see if you deserve to live in a mansion in the sky.