THE STORY OF EVASION

[January 31, 2014 at 8:46pm]

No matter what his critics—and mine—may say, I will always be a big fan of Robert S. Jaworski. It was not just his basketball ability and prowess that got me attracted in him in his sport, but chiefly his rarer-than-blue-diamond attitude each time he would nonchalantly but dramatically enter the hardcourt.

When he’d start playing, I would see no nonsense in him. It’s because he would always treat each game a do-or-die game. He was a defense specialist that any opposing offensive player then in the league.  Against whom Jaworski was assigned to defend, would find a hard time shaking him off to evade.

For me still, I’ve yet to see any other local player who could play with the same intensity like him, except for the many-time national champion the flamboyant Samboy “Skywalker” Lim. What I liked the most with Samboy was his uncanny ability to evade a defense in the air. He could twist any part of his body in suicidal way that each and every dare was enough to raise a spectator’s hair. No wonder, he retired without completing a season in the PBA. He did spend most of his time on the bench due to various injuries.

In the senate, movie actor-current senator Bong Revilla alias “Pogi,” a true-to-life brother-in-law of ex-Senator Jaworski, is likewise too good in evading an issue that would come his way, especially about his alleged involvement in a controversial PDAF scam story. Instead of answering matter-of-factly one by one all of the charges, he chose to evade the issue and segue to immaterial and irrelevant matters in a privilege speech.

Just like Senator Jinggoy, reportedly coded “Sexy” by Janet Lim Napoles and company. Instead of refuting all evidence against him by producing evidence to the contrary, he too obviously evaded the issue simply. Well, you can’t blame both good senators for doing similar tricks. Even the impeached Mr. Renato Corona, an ex-Chief Justice, now formally charged by the Ombudsman, employs as well the same tactics.

If the ghosts of girl friends past—please take note of the words “girl” and “friend’s” gap—would confront me and ask, “Talk honestly in telling us, who is your all-time greatest love?” I think it is evasion likewise if rather than giving a straight answer, I’d just sing it like Rod Stewart: “I don’t wanna talk about it, how you broke my heart…”

But on the flip side, evasion is commendable if we do it because we don’t want to be caught lying, or be compelled to commit sin, as what’s said in the Bible: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful…” (Psalm 1).

We can defy temptation by evading its dwelling that temptation in return would evade us through. For the same Bible said it further clearly too: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).