Investing in the Future

I dislike hospitals and dislike kids even more. So it is ironic that I should be sitting in a hospital lobby, waiting to talk to a pediatrician about a product she can use to help her patients.

I’m not fond of kids because they are noisy and undisciplined. They cry, talk in loud voices, touch everything in sight, and break even the unbreakable. But what make them totally annoying are their parents who allow them to run around and be little pests.

Then there are hospitals. Built to provide health care to people; they now represent greed and death. Thanks to the new breed of doctors, curing patients is not the priority anymore; getting money is. And
if you can’t pay, well, you’d better be religious because you’ll be meeting your maker soon.

But enough of my anger with the world, I am here, sitting in a bench, waiting to talk to a doctor. I won’t pretend to be righteous as I’m here to sell her something so I can earn money. But the doctor I am selling to is not interested in my earning extra income, she’s interested in healing patients. And it is this sense of honest care that has me sitting in a hospital lobby, tolerating the chaos all around me.

I’ve been here for over an hour, waiting until she finishes all her patients. I have had to tolerate running kids, shouting kids, and parents that speak in baby talk. I see kids wiping their noses on their sleeves, picking stuff on the floor and eating them, and parents who are just too old to be pregnant. It’s driving me crazy.

The worst part is that I don’t see how I can earn from her because she works charity cases. Neither she, nor her patients, can afford the product I am about to offer. I guess I’m here because I want to see her patients get well. Corny as it may sound, I also want to do my part in this world.

As much as I dislike kids for being noisy and annoying, they are the future of this world. And it is in them that I place my hope of a better tomorrow.

My generation was given the chance to fix things, but after complaining about our parents as teenagers, we turned into them. We even surpassed them by making things much worse.

My parent’s generation destroyed the Pasig and other rivers with their mining and uncontrolled desire to build structures and create products that damage the environment. My generation is responsible for destroying the mountains and turning farmlands into condominium units. While my parents nearly killed off species of reptiles, avians, insects, and mammals, my generation finished the job for them.

As a teenager, I disliked my parents’ generation wholeheartedly and whished their time would pass. But now I wish it is my generation’s time to pass.

The sad part is that the generation my children has taken things a step further. While my parents only lived the life of loose morals in movies, this current generation has taken things to heart thanks to the Call Center boom.

And while I may have felt a pang of guilt for wishing my generation to be over, the current generation may end sooner than it thinks. Sexually transmitted diseases, unhealthy eating habits, and the idea that the future is limited to just “Now” will be the death of them.

So that leaves me with one more generation to pin the future on. It’s not something I’d like to do, but it is the only thing left to do.

These noisy kids, running and shouting all over the lobby are my last hope. And it is for this reason that I am here, waiting to talk to a doctor who probably won’t contribute a dime to my income. But then I’m investing in the future and not in myself today.