Hakuna matata, no more worries.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 3 JAN 2014. SAT. N3.
Hakuna matata, no more worries. 

I RAISED TWO CHILDREN, both full grown now, on the 'hakuna matata' principle most of the time. 

No more worries, it is, this principle, even if deep within, to put food on the table for two growing children with their growing needs was not that easy in blighted Manila at the time Cory the yellow president promised a lot of nonsense and then the presidents after her. 

Of course, Lion King came, and those Betamax/VHS stores--what are the names now--that lent those films for a fee, the lending for something like two days, and that one must return them, or else.

When the kids were growing, we had to keep on borrowing Lion King until one day I decided: Let us buy it! 

Two films come to mind now: Lion King and the Sound of Music. 

Between these, the Lion King, with the two children playing out the roles of these animal characters, their child's singing filling up our Marikina home. 

There was much 'positive thinking' in the film, and Norman Vincent Peale ('The Power of Positive Thinking'), God bless him--yes, that guru of the 70s that made us get away from the terrors of Martial Law, reminded us: there is power in positive thinking.

Writers, of course, are a different lot.

Writers are lonely people, and thus, are prone to the opposite of joy even as they try to save the world by thinking and writing for others. 

That is the messianic complex in them, and I know that many writers are like this: afflicted with the vision that the world ought to be better, and that, therefore, they all must write about its ugliness so it becomes a good place to live in. 

In between this malady called writer's loneliness and the Liong King film is this sense of resolve to muster all my energy to hope like, what else, but the Liong King. 

And there, in the vicissitudes of our post-Marcos Philippine life, we had that film to run to, its songs reminding us to be human and to be hopeful. 

And then I stumbled onto this singing of the Liong King, the singing by Israeli police persons, their joy from ear to ear. 

There is so much to hope for in this world, indeed. 

HON/