I’m so happy for Brazil today for bagging
finally their first ever gold medal in Olympic men’s soccer/football. I never stopped believing in them, I knew
seeing that country gold-less for long would be next to impossible.
But my heart belongs
to their women volleyball team after they were ousted in the race by the newly
crowned champs Chinese. I felt the agony
of the crowd in tears, knowing that among their religions, next to soccer, I sure
think volleyball is the biggest.
And to think that
their tormentor was, of all countries, China which I really thought
did not even have a Chinaman’s chance.
Yet, to paraphrase my favorite cliché, all is fair in love and Olympics,
even if what you hear only are your enemy’s chants. Perhaps the still dumbfounded Brazilian ladyspikers
would like to think that when they were soundly beaten, they were not
awake. And I could only wish the Chinese
victory was, especially the latest, like their products the world always known
to be: fake.
Please don’t judge me
harshly if my sympathy is to Brazil instead of our Asian
neighbor who gave the heavily favored South American squad such surprising
loss. Between me and China, yes, there’s
no love lost, yet don’t blame it to the West Philippine Sea row but to the one
and only love of mine in volleyball: Ms.
Leila Barros.
Yes, Leila Barros came
at a time when I was healing myself back from emotional destruction while I was
still a fumbling nocturnal student of friar-run University of San Agustin . It happened one night when after my last
night class then, I saw her being watched by my mucho gigolo housemates on TV while
she was playing in a world volleyball game.
Since then, for more
successive nights I would think only of volleyball and skip my class that started
at 9PM .
I loved to make a viand out of her games, I watched her while I ate
dinner: that was in 1997.
Yes, I loved Leila
three years before the starstruck Filipino male idolaters worshipped her when
she strutted around her wares here in Manila back in 2000. Yes, I was already an avid, no, crazy
follower of Leila although the newly installed very first internet service in
San Ag had yet to hear about FB and Instagram.
I have loved Brazil just because of
Leila then and even sworn to her posters I’d do forever and would never ever
change. But alas, when I met my
soon-to-be-wife classmate in Marketing the name Leila Barros went beyond my
lying heart’s range.
Truly, as far as
loving and paying vows are concerned, it seems no one has ever been constant in
this Earth, living or dead. People love
to vow on someone’s grave but sooner or later we find the heart to be quite deceitful
and desperately wicked (Jer.17:9). For we
know that all flesh change frivolously. It
is in its nature, being born imperfectly.
Only one Man in
history and the Scriptures never changes and is a perfect lover.
Who else but the Man-God Jesus Christ, the same
yesterday, today and forever (Hebrew 13:8).
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