BUSINESS IS TO CREATE

I’m rarely caught in my cups. But for the last twenty-four hours, I drank two glassful of cheap wine. Before I slept I had a glass, and this morning after I came home from weight training, I had another one. I had this "unconventional" business venture that just popped into my mind. Poet and painter William Blake wrote, “I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” Picking the quotation from running P.S. I love you (I wish I was Irish; Gerard Butler by the way is Scottish) twice, I thought that is exactly what I must do: to create. Anything. Something. Or else, be enslaved by another man. I’m tired of being a glorified prostitute, one that sells himself. In layman’s parlance, I’m tired of being an employee. I’m tired of being a glorified help. Heck, I’m tired of being tired with what I do. Now, my business is to create. To paint, to write, to manufacture! To create! (But what?)

Back home, we have a shelf that my father filled with wine glasses, and bottles of wine. It had been attached to two different houses and now lies, unattached to any wall but propped on the floor. My father wanted a bar, where perhaps he could entertain his friends. He knew exactly what he wanted, and what he did not want. I think life is so much simpler when you know exactly what you want. When you know what you want to be, where you want to be, who you want to be, things just fall into place. In my father’s case, his personality was just not up to what he wanted. To want something, is to ruthlessly want it. To want something, is to want it at whatever cost. To want something, is to want it like air, when you are gasping for it, drowning. I like to think he knew this, and preferred to stick to his principles, contented to meditate on the lessons from Hope for the Flowers. As for me, I knew these things, too and I like to think my personality is up to the challenges. After all, paraphrasing Coelho, when you want something, all the universe conspires with you.

I had always been passionately interested with micro-finance. I believe that providing access to capital for to the poor, or as Augusto Zobel calls them, the "unbanked" is the first step to alleviating poverty. I think we should work out a finance model that allows those without collateral to gain access to capital that they can use in enterprise. Of course, we need a more holistic model, one that also provide assistance to small and medium enterprises in business strategy and other technical and legal matters. I am currently thinking of writing to the BPI Globe Savings Bank, to offer them volunteer work and in exchange I'll be credited for the work and research I will be making. I want to study the Bangladesh model, for which the Bangladesh Minister of Finance won the Nobel Prize, and with some improvement try to replicate it here in the Philippines. I know, there are a lot of micro-financing entities in the Philippines, and I like to think they are succeeding. However, no one is yet to study their impact on the lives of the borrowers. I'm not familiar with the proper methodology by which the impact could be measured, but I like to find out.

I’ve been talking to a feminist office mate about this certain business venture I want to try my hand on. She advised me to visit a certain store located at the corner of Quezon Avenue and Timog (I think she said the first corner after that) and check the merchandises which I could sell. I tell you, the venture will be controversial. As for now, it’s in the back burner. I’m yet to talk to my cousins, my prospective business partners.

A lot of things had popped into my mind these past few days. Some of them includes choking somebody for the hell of it. One of them is applying for a study grant abroad, most likely in Europe. The most probable undertaking for in the future is studying law. I need to go home to talk to my uncle, how he could help. But I’ll take the entrance exams first, from two State Universities. (UP is out of my list; LAE had wrapped up last November) Another thing is taking a masters degree in either communications, women development or community development. For now, between hunting for a job, talking to some people who might help me, and enjoying my last days at my present job, I’m trying to figure, just what exactly, that something and waiting for that point in time, when finally I could say: “My business is to create” with an object of my creation, completing that Blake quotation, and making it mine, in the end.