Wishes. Wishes. Wishes.

So, you change the calendar, maybe throw out the old doormat, dust up and discard old boxes in the house or office and perhaps too, inwardly pray or utter a fervent wish that in the new year, everything will be more peaceful, more joyous and happier than the year you’re about to leave in ten,.. nine.. eight… seven minutes and counting.

Whatever it is they say about old years and new years, the fact is we don’t often will change. It comes upon us thru a variety of factors, clusters of events, forces of circumstances.

Like all of Mankind, we can only consciously desire to change our attitudes and ethics at the start of the year, only to retrogress or backslide the next few months of the year. Often, because of pressure or out of physical convenience. We know we are going back to old ways but for some reason or another, we refuse to or can’t rein in our emotions and feelings. And then, we’re back where we were before.

Rizal couldn’t have anymore changed his feelings about the oppression from the Spanish rule with a change of the calendar or Ninoy, about his nemesis Marcos’ ever giving up or sharing power easily even in the throes of a debilitating sickness upon his homecoming from Boston on that fateful August 21.

Still and all, like the Filipinos we are, in the new year, we cling to and nurture hopes that change would come among our present leaders in this benighted land; that somehow one day soon, a new crop of them will emerge to shun corrupt and thieving ways in their offices, forget about sly maneuvers that leave the greater majority of Pinoys shortchanged and generally and sincerely look after the many suffering countrymen, not after their own welfare and those of their bejewelled kins and associates.

That will be the day. That will be the year.

That will indeed be the Happy New Year we all wish each other about, almost automatically, through the decades!