Pandora's Box

I first read about the myth of Pandora when I accidentally discovered my mother’s old high school literature textbook during one of those enforced summer exiles in her hometown.
 
Compared to our textbooks, my mother’s books were hardbound: a seven-year-old’s imagination can entice curiosity. My grandfather’s house was like a mansion to the eyes of a kid who only has a 5 x 10-meter apartment space for a home in Sampaloc.

I discovered the said book in a wooden chest in one room of my Lolo’s mansion. The endeavor reminded me of that 80s film “The Goonies” and it made the discovery, not to mention the secret misdemeanor, more heartfelt—memorable.

Leafing through the pages, I learned of Pandora’s naivety. I cursed Pandora—the world would have been better if she restrained her curiosity. I remember taking a break, running to my Lolo’s garden and splashing my face with cold-stored water aged through time in a clay jar: the myth (story) was too much to take for a kid caught in transitioning from childhood to early puberty.

Having calmed myself, I felt a new feeling—of yearning something that I could not yet describe—to read the climax of the story. After opening the said box, Pandora apparently tried to close it back, but it was too late. From the narratives of that book, it told me that after all evil from the box escaped, there was one entity left, my first symbolic thought was of a dove as in like Noah’s ark, and it came in the form of hope.

Fast forward to a modern desk life and mid-life crisis stage, leafing through the cost data of our prelims, payroll and salaries included, I feel like I have just exposed myself to a new form of Pandora’s box. The information, which also requires the same splashing of cold water in the face, now unleashes a reality bound by prejudice as one will see the petty injustices of a compensation system that resulted in the same naivety or stupidity that Pandora did.

However, I could not ignore the fact that the little people: the hardworking ones, the ones who go on leave every two years, the ones who still work on Fridays, the people who endure their managers’ anger and frustrations, the ones out in the heat, the long nights, embody the same culmination mentioned in that story: hope.