Just dig the hole

As we begin the New Year, I am certain that many readers have made plans and dreams for 2024. The dreaming is easy, but the doing is the hard part, especially if you don’t have the money. Let me tell you a story.

A few years after my father Louie Beltran had passed away, we began spending more time in our place in Lipa City. It did not take long before I realized that the 6x6-meter “gazebo” I built for my wife was no longer big enough to accommodate the growing number of relatives who would visit overnight. The problem was that money was tight. We had baby Hannah, and I was once again an “employee.”

We had space but no cash. What we had plenty of was faith and the ability to dream and so we prayed, picked out the most strategic spot for privacy and I simply staked out what I felt was the right size. No plans, no designs, just wooden stakes and a roll of nylon cord. From there, I imagined where the posts would go, and I drove the bigger stakes in, all 12 of them.

Then we dug the holes.

“Madness!” people thought, but consider this – many readers will start this New Year with all sorts of dreams: a new job, a new business, a dream vacation, a dream car and by the end of 2024, many of those dreams will remain as they began, just dreams, because they never went beyond the gates of our minds.

In response, many inspirational speakers cite the book of Habakkuk in the Bible, chapter 2 verses 2 to 3 as a breakout verse for dreams: “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.”

Allow me to point out that the popular verse is just point 2. Point 1 was where Habakkuk had a conversation with God. Start your year right by having that conversation or, even better, that conference with God, then write down the vision or dream he gave you and not the desire you or the world manufactured. When I set out to build a bigger sleeping area, that was it. I had no dreams of a farmhouse, a big house or a place with several rooms, just a bigger sleeping area.

You’re welcome to throw in