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Netnet Camomot

SO, uhm, Miss Universe Pia Wurtzbach is not coming here? Instead, the city has a photo exhibit starring her? Hmmm, what happened?

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I had to ask a friend, who’s a Miss Cagayan de Oro organizer, about Miss U’s “visit” to CDO, and when she said it’s not happening, I said, “But her supposed visit was featured in a national broadsheet!” Must be a bad case of don’t-believe-everything-youead. Tsk tsk.

Well, there’s the photo exhibit as a peace offering to her Cagayanon fans. Staring at her photos is not exactly a big change from seeing her face here, there, everywhere–social media, newspapers, TV–but it’s the word “exhibit” that spells the difference there, it’s intended and not simply a random post that you accidentally see in your Facebook news feed.

Miss Cagayan de Oro 2014 Bea Alvarez and Wurtzbach were in the same batch of Binibining Pilipinas candidates. At that time when I learned there were two candidates representing CDO, the first thought that came to mind was, Pia who? Well, if you’re asking that same question now, you must be living under a rock, and that’s not a simple idiom but a reality that you have to change if that rock is becoming too heavy for your sanity.

The Urban Dictionary defines “live under a rock”: “It is to be a person who lives in isolation from and has limited knowledge of what is happening in the world around them. Used to describe an ignorant or obtuse person. Usually someone who lives in the basement of their mother’s house.”

Is that the same as someone who behaves like he’s wearing a horse’s blinders? There are many who live like they’re the center of the universe, and if you’re not behaving the way they do, then you’re the bad guy and should be punished for being one. They’ll compare your behavior to their behavior, with them of course as the winner of the game, and you as the loser for being the epitome of their definition of bad. You know what it’s called? Emotional abuse. Yup, it is.

These are the people who feel uneasy whenever you’re around because they’ve been spreading stories about you, stories which they themselves did not see with their bare eyes but they heard from others, and they’re now spreading them like as if they’re witnesses to your alleged badness. Their motivation could be this saying: To put you down in order to make themselves shine.

“The Shining” is a Stephen King horror novel whose movie version was No. 1 in a list of the 25 greatest horror films. In other words, scary! Which proves shine is OK only if the intention is good but never OK when the intention is bad? And when is shine good? Hmmm. Shining shoes, sunshine, and the Years & Years’ “Shine”: “You know that you make it shine/It’s you that I’ve been waiting to find.” And of course there’s Wurtzbach who could be what Stevie Wonder means when he sings, “You are the sunshine of my life.”

Wurtzbach is an example of a woman whose determination outshone the criticisms she received for joining the Binibining Pilipinas contest three times. The third time proved to be a charm, though. Had she let her critics modify her goals, she won’t be Miss Universe today.

There’s constructive criticism, when you want to help someone shine. And then there’s destructive criticism, when you simply want to destroy someone and let your own self shine. The gap between the two is as wide as that of CDO’s political parties–the yellows and the violets, the yellows and the oranges.

One particular color–orange?–was most eager among the three to ask Wurtzbach to drop by her adopted hometown, and critics immediately suspected that CDO’s politicians and political wannabes would merely use her visit to catch a ray of her sunshine in order to make their own selves shine. Now, was that suspicion constructive or destructive criticism?

But her visit was supposed to be for the city, to make it shine in the universe. Hmmm.

If there’s one city that should be popular by now, it’s General Santos City, the hometown of Manny Pacquiao. Can people outside of the Philippines connect Pacquiao to Gen San now? Like the way you can connect CDO’s yellows to the greens of Barangay Carmen? If yes, then it’s worth using Wurtzbach’s ray of sunshine to make CDO shine. If not, the gold in CDO–the City of Golden Friendship–should be enough to make the whole city shine.

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