I EXPECTED the worst and I got the best; either they found a bullet in my luggage or I slipped on a banana in the immigration line. I flew back on Cathay from an eating binge in Hong Kong and stepped out of the walkway into a spanking-clean airport. Nothing grand; it was just the same old one and, yet, different.
Everything was shiny. The walls were clean with no smudges. The linoleum floor was shining and spotless. Young women were pretty in their uniforms; the young men, more or less the same. Only the old guys were still in T-shirts too short to cover their bellies when they held up Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) cards. People were sitting on the shining floors, leaning against spotless walls, giving the airport the homey feel which brands our public spaces in a good way. We did not need another P100-billion airport.
We needed to clean up what we had. And we needed Apec for that. This is the way everyone does it: Americans, Europeans, Chinese and us. We, all of us, leave everything as dirty as we find them and so everything stays squalid—until a grand excuse comes around to spruce everything up and then, we are motivated to keep it that way. This is like the grand stuff Imelda put up for a film festival and it stayed grand for decades after. The reason is that no one will keep anything clean if it is dirty to start with. If something looks bad, why keep up appearances that aren’t there in the first place?
So, it was with Roman emperors. Marcus Aurelius of Gladiator fame wrote in his Meditations (the best translation is Maxwell Staniforth’s) that he wouldn’t have trained to be a good emperor if he wasn’t made one already by adoption. If he was told by the reigning emperor, “Hey, Marcus! I am adopting you and if you train hard for war, master the Greek classics, and excel in declamation, I might pick you as heir.”
“Well,” said Marcus, “that’s not gonna work for me. What if you don’t?” Marcus wrote that the mere expectation of exaltation would not have motivated him to become emperor material. He had to be emperor first, and then he would train himself up to the part. So Marcus was named all but co-emperor.
So it is with airports. If you are told to keep a dirty airport clean, you won’t. Sweep it all you want, but it still feels dirty. This is why when we feel out of sorts like a dirty airport, we get ourselves a haircut or a perm and we feel brand new.
This is what Apec is doing for us: Giving us the incentive and the inspiration to keep up the sort of appearances that, for now, we are just putting on for the conference. But if you keep up appearances long enough, they sink to the bones and become an enduring reality. And so, thanks to Apec, we are giving and getting ourselves a fresh look.
3 comments
Ah. But you came from Hong Kong. What’s their grand excuse for all the orderliness?
Cantonese haughtiness.
LOL!
Philippines, always the Laggard.