The Metaphor of the Pukpok Palayok

Source: inutiles.wordpress.com

Pukpok Palayok is a popular Filipino children’s game. Blindfolded participants are to hit the goodie-filled palayok (clay pot) using a wooden rod. The task is made difficult by the fact that the participants are made to turn in place to get them dizzy and the audience distracts them by yelling all kinds of directions. The participant who hits the pot despite all of these wins.

It was one of the children’s games I never really got to enjoy. An effect probably of my ineptitude to hit the palayok because my aim has never really been my best asset. Of the few times I tried, I think I only grazed the side of the palayok and rarely hit the palayok hard enough to shatter it to pieces. It was always a challenge of mine I suppose.

Speaking of challenges and problems, my recent musings had me tinker with the metaphor of Pukpok Palayok and relate it to dealing with the aforementioned.

You cannot shatter the palayok if you don’t completely aim for it in the first place. If you don’t aim to solve the problem, then you won’t be able to solve the problem. As simple as that. The first step to deal with a problem is to believe that you could completely solve the problem. Without this self-belief, any attempts at solving the problem would be pointless.

You cannot shatter the palayok if you let yourself be distracted by yourself and by the crowd. Careful consideration and critical analysis of internal and external factors is necessary to solve a problem. Careful and critical are operative words. If you let distracting internal and external factors get the better of you, then chances of solving the problem definitely become slimmer.

You cannot shatter the palayok if you just chip it. If you only deal with and solve certain portions of a problem, then you won’t be able to solve the problem completely. Just like grazing the palayok, you’ll be able to chip a part off it but you won’t be able to shatter it completely.

You can shatter the palayok if you cheat the blindfold. However, can you smash other palayoks when you cannot cheat anymore? You’ll probably be able to solve that single problem with your own devious tactics. However, would you be able to solve more difficult problems when your tricks don’t suffice anymore? Cliché as it may sound, the individual you cheated most in this situation is yourself.

Just as you can only legitimately shatter the palayok if you hit it hard directly, you can only rightfully solve a problem if you deal with it with all your capacity directly.

Thus, let today be the beginning of identifying and appropriately dealing with the palayoks in our lives. And by appropriate, I mean that they have completely shattered into pieces. Unless of course, we’d want them to hang over us forever.

Pukpukan na! (Time to hit!)