Today is Friday and another work week is over. Most of us are getting ready to enjoy a weekend of rest, while many are finishing organizing their Palmares plans. Tomorrow I look forward to getting back on the road and running as I did until the December marathon. I’m looking forward to the family time that a Saturday or Sunday allows me, as well as the time I’ll take to review the LatinSpots magazine and dvd that just arrived.
With January’s cold winds and cold weather, with the empty school rooms and this feeling of a stiff and somewhat empty start to the year, something happens in me that provokes a kind of uneasiness, vagueness and uneasiness. For some reason, and it must be the habit of a lifetime, I feel better the heat of Easter, the rains and bumblebees of May, the summer of San Juan or the flags of September. To be honest, January is not my month.
What is true is that this January in particular has different illusions than other years. In general I perceive optimism for a better year, businessmen and investors anticipate better opportunities and everything seems to indicate that, in the approval of the FTA, the unions in our country will not be able to make the mess they would like. Like many, I have confidence in the current government, in the leadership of Oscar Arias and his competent cabinet. In particular, I have very high expectations of the management that Fernando Berrocal, Alfredo Volio, Marco Vinicio Ruiz, Leonardo Garnier, Karla González, Bruno Stagno, Rodrigo Arias, each and every one of the heads of ministries and institutions will continue to carry out. They deserve our trust and support. They have an enormous responsibility, all the obstacles of our country ahead of them, which are not few, and a clear direction in their plans. I trust in God and in the way he will enlighten this entire team to carry out the best public management in the history of the country.
In such a positive context, however, I am very concerned about the polarization of our society, the multiplication of poverty, the escalation of crime and violence, the massive sale of the country, the many who seek an easy way out and the unquenchable thirst of the majority to buy even what they do not need. I am concerned about the spiritual emptiness and the negative consequence of tourism, because of the way it inevitably brings stimuli for prostitution, drugs and gambling in casinos of all kinds. The verticalization of our society brings differences that the Tico does not know or want, and because of this, I anticipate more resentment and possibly even more violent crimes and assaults.
Pessimism is informed optimism. If we do not make a collective effort to modify culture and exalt the highest values, to fill physical and emotional needs, today, Friday night, I feel that there will not be a better Costa Rica in our future. It is not a matter of airports, highways, positive economic indexes, but of a country focused on the prosperity of all its inhabitants, with a legitimate desire that no one is left behind. This is a survival mission where everyone has to come out alive… although it is clear that no one comes out of this one alive.
It must be the windy winds, the January that half starts the year, or simply the night. Today I feel uneasy and a bit insecure. Fortunately, tomorrow will be another day. As Annie says in her song: Tomorrow. I love you, tomorrow.
