Consider the Birds...

I used to work for the largest semiconductor manufacturing and test subcontractor in the world, and for most of my employment with them, I was based in its plants located in the techno park in Sta. Rosa, Laguna.

I usually rode with my boss and mentor to work, and we took the route that brought us to Gate 3 of the techno park. It was a route that cut through what was once a really slow, rural area, with only a two-lane road cutting through endless rice fields on both sides. During the planting season, you would see refreshing green stems swaying in the wind. As the rice matured, they would turn from their refreshing green to a golden-brown hue, signaling to the farmers that harvest was fast approaching. After the harvest, there would be tons of cut rice stalks piled into stacks much like those we used to see in our grade school textbooks.

And then there were the little houses – and the people who lived in them.

There is this one house in particular, made mostly of wood, AND the old man that lived in it – that I remember very clearly. I saw him everyday, both on my way to work and then in the afternoon on my way home.

He would be sitting on a wooden bench, just beside the open window in the front of his house, with one foot on the bench and the other foot on the ground. He was usually alone, but sometimes he’d be with a neighbor who’d either be standing beside him or sitting beside him on the same bench.

Alone or not, he was there every morning and every afternoon – he and his ever present cup of coffee (I can only assume it was coffee).

What made him stand out? The toothless smile that he always seemed to be ready to give to passers by who noticed him.

Amazing. Who would have thought that this laid-back, relaxed, peaceful, rural and contented lifestyle was just on the other side of the fence from a high-tech, fast-paced, demanding, bone-breaking and heart-wrenching corporate jungle? Every morning, I’d be rushing to work. And that old man with the toothless smile would be there, seemingly not a care in the world, content at his easy going life.

And, at the end of every day, he was there still.

He obviously worked hard – his hands and the color of his skin showed years of work in the hot sun planting and harvesting rice. But he also knew how to live.

It was as if God had placed him there deliberately to remind my mentor and I of why we worked – and of how we worked.

In a world where most of us have began to work to live – or, as workaholics like me would say, “live to work” – this old man with the toothless smile both worked AND lived. And he was content with the kind of life his work had afforded him.

“Consider the birds” says the Lord “they neither plant nor reap, yet my Father provides for their needs”.

Time for a cup of coffee, don’t you think?