Babies

As a broadcast journalist, I have to deal with a persistent collage of nerve-wrecking personalities – a darkly weave of spit-spraying egocentrics, back-stabbing degenerates and metamorphosed social cockroaches.

Sometimes, I feel like cutting their thick heads off or dicing their putrefied faces or stabbing their owl-eyes or salt-peeling their slimy skin or stomping on their charcoal bones or burning their grimy souls for damned hell's fury.

But - whew! – why oh why should I do those things?

I do not want to be a brass spittoon that eats and absorbs their stinky personalities. No, I certainly do not want to be a carrier of their deadly and creeping social virus.

How, then, do I manage my anger on them?

Simple, I picture and treat them as babies. Yes, my dear, you read it right – babies!

Every time they start emptying my self-esteem with their motor-mouths, I also commence on imagining how their faces looked like when they were still babies: lovely, cute newborns just learning to mumble; needing full care and attention from their proud moms and dads.

Well, it is truly hard to conjure up the baby faces of these present social feces. Imagine trying to view a crocodile politician as an angelic tot or a bloating businessman as a meek toddler or a vicious authority as a kindly kid or a garrulous neighbor as a bashful child – truly energy draining.

But the antidote to the stress is the beating of a parent’s heart – the instrument of affection, forgiveness and rational tolerance. For even if the world stormily despises a man, his parents would still wrap him with the greatest love and care. 

Thus, as I view these unbearable beings as cuddly babies, I painstakingly try to exude the gifts of God to parents: love, understanding and extraordinary patience. Then, in an instant, these filthy, stroke-causing personalities turn into glowing drive and inspiration to live on, go on and move on.