…and we must rise again to the stars.

Russian Roulette, sweldo and Padre de Familia July 30, 2010

Thoughts about Legalized Gambling, Jobs for Jobless Pinoys and Gibo lingered in my mind for months – almost a year perhaps.

For a while, I thought I always knew the answers but when I start asking myself questions about gambling, I realize that I am not so sure of my thoughts about it after all.

Maybe because the question of wagering lives of families is a delicate issue?

I always find myself holding off my thoughts. Maybe it’s pride, but my mind always engages itself in a constant battle to arrive at a correct judgment, and to maintain a balanced opinion when explaining things.

When I thought about Gibo’s stand on gambling, I thought, yeah, he’s right. No father would want their children to sleep with empty stomachs.

But what about the little time we should give ourselves? That little time where we lose ourselves, at least once in a week of heavy workload, and relax just a little bit.

But at the same time, no one will never truly want a father who spends sleepless nights in a casino, staking his monies on slot machines or Roulette. They would certainly want them by their sides.

And at the end of the day, who will want to have their mothers intoxicated with expensive wines, the smell of rare tobacco sticks wafting in the ceilings of their childhood bedrooms, if they just had the choice?

I believe we can do better than provide food for our tables and keep our homes warm and comfortable. And I also believe that temperance is a virtue no ordinary human has ever mastered.

Truthfully, we wouldn’t even be thinking about this if greed and decadence never existed as a concept in our societies.