Focus

Netnet Camomot

I’VE been using these facial tissues without giving any importance to the perks printed on the plastic covering their box, which say they have “lotion aloe/aloes & E.” Only to realize I should have given those words some thought. All that lotion aloe and E are excess baggage for the tissues, but they do make them sparkle, like the millions of stars in the sky whose numbers are way more than all the grains of sand on Earth.

Facebook (FB) has its own perks, too. Someone posted that trivia–more stars than sand–and later, there was “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” featuring its host in a Q&A contest with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and one of the Qs was this: True or False, are there more stars than sand? Of course, I knew the answer to that one. Fallon and Johnson, however, had no idea. Had any of them read about that trivia a few seconds before the Q&A began, he would have thanked his lucky stars for guiding him there.

FB floods your news feed with info based on topics you have clicked “like” for. If your news feed is filled with posts on jokes, most probably you’re one funny person whose “like” clicks for jokes have inspired the FB team to make you laugh pa more.

It’s prudent to think twice before “liking” any FB post. But who has the time to think twice while scrolling through the news feed? Especially when your most fervent wish is to read a book instead of scrolling down that bombardment of info. Still, with FB as your main source of breaking news, not to scroll can be likened to avoiding Burger King while waiting for one month to pass before visiting SM CDO Downtown Premier. With the wishful thinking for the traffic to be friendlier one month after the grand opening.

Help FB focus on what you like by “liking” only those posts you truly care for. Don’t click “like” for the sake of clicking something, anything, everything. Don’t confuse FB. Focus is the key.

Cagayan de Oro Mayor Oscar Moreno has this one favorite song, “What a Wonderful World,” whenever he’s requested to sing. And that’s one good example of focus, with each person on this beloved Earth also advised to learn one song and make that as his signature piece for the rest of his life. But at the silver wedding anniversary of our Editor-in-Chief Herbie and his beautiful bride Marites last Thursday, Mayor Oca sang “My Foolish Heart”: “For this time, it isn’t fascination/Or a dream that will fade and fall apart/It’s love this time, it’s love my foolish heart/My foolish heart.”

And since I’m always curious–months ago, I asked the mayor why he now has white hair–I had to ask him why that song instead of his usual “I see trees of green, red roses too.”

Marriage does require a pair of foolish hearts who took the risk and to then focus on “trees of green, red roses too.”

Writing this column also requires focus. If only I can ignore the food items that are now occupying precious space inside the room’s fridge.

Yes, the empty fridge is no longer empty. This is what they call the seafood diet: I see food; I eat it. I see dry roasted peanuts; I eat them. I see a Frappuccino; I drink it. The Frap, by the way, is Mocha Light–100 calories! And, no, that’s not Mocha Uson, the assistant secretary of the Presidential Communications Operations Office.

Focus does mean wearing blinders to help you see things that matter. Because there are many things that may have mattered to you before, but they no longer matter now. It’s the other way around, however, for Uson. She may not have mattered to you before, that is, if you’re not a fan of President Rody Duterte, but you have to accept that she matters now as she has leveled up to PCOO assistant secretary.

How do you gauge one’s importance, by the way? Is it through his willingness to be used, misused, and abused? Therefore, if he can no longer be used, misused, and abused, he won’t matter to you anymore? Discarded like residual waste, which CDO’s waste segregation system describes as “dili na mapuslan.”

Well, if you feel like “dili na mapuslan,” simply look at the stars. The Earth is merely a speck in the clusters of galaxies. The world population is now estimated at more than 7.5 billion. If you believe you’re the most important person in the whole world, start embedding this in your minute brain: 7.5 billion, Earth, speck in clusters of galaxies. But that realization doesn’t exactly qualify you to the level of “dili na mapuslan.”