In retrospect, while the rushing Christmas season came, we  witnessed two costly mistakes of colossal proportions—one in the world of fiction, while the other one in biting reality.

First, we watched the showing of Star Wars Episode VII “The Force Awakens” where the plot was supposed to be shrouded in secrecy lest it would spoil the suspense, specially among thrilled movie fans who have been awaiting its screening.

One of the highlights was seeing the eternal retirement of the character of Han Solo, played still by actor Harrison Ford, slain by his own son Jacen Solo.

Jacen Solo is the love child of Princess Leia and Han Solo, who transformed to become Darth Caedus, the emerging powerful lieutenant of the Dark Side, a post vacated by  Jacen’s grandfather, Darth Vader in a previous episode.

In this story, Han solo committed a fatal mistake of believing that he had won back his son from the Dark Side.

In their father-and-son encounter, Han Solo approached the seemingly repentant Darth Caedus, but only to be lured to meeting his violent death literally in the hands of his own son with the use of a fiery light saber.

That ended the  character of an aging Han Solo, in the Star Wars saga, brought about by a huge mis-reading of the pre-disposition of his own son.

Meanwhile, in the real world, another galactic error was committed earlier in the week by a literal mis-reading of the winner of the 2015 Miss Universe pageant that sent shock waves across the globe particularly in  the Southeast Asian region and countries in Latin America.

The host of the annual beauty event Steve Harvey, mistakenly read Colombia as the new 2015 Miss Universe, instead of the real winner, our own Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach.

The mistake has caused a volcanic eruption of  fuming reactions, particularly  from the embarrassed camp of Miss Colombia and her compatriots and fellow Latinas.

It would seem though that the cosmic blunder would not cost Steve Harvey his job, nor any of the hairs of his head for there is none of it left, but it will expectedly spawn a natural hesitance to engage him to host a similar contest.

Unlike the mistake of Han Solo in fictional Star Wars, no life is wasted in Harvey’s universal faux pas, but this does not mean he is already off the hook.

Harvey, along with the organizers of the pageant could possible face a multi-million dollar lawsuit for this tortuous negligence.

The obvious indispensable  victim is Miss Colombia, who had to bear the  brunt of such monumental embarrassment of being crowned Miss Universe with all its armaments for about two minutes, only to see herself dethroned as rapidly as she was installed, all for the entire universe to see.

Moments later Steve Harvey committed another series of mistakes when, in apologizing in his tweet, he referred to the Filipinos as “Philippians” as if in  attribution to the eleventh book of the New Testament.

Philippi is near Greece and Macedonia nestled north of the Aagean Sea, while the Philippines is left of the Pacific Ocean.

Harvey’s errors spanned the universe, cruised across oceans.

To aggravate matters, Harvey in his tweet, spelled Colombia as “Columbia”.

These were notable mistakes of recent past that stuck to our minds as we draw close to another year.

As we look ahead to a new  and politically-charged year, we cannot expect to avoid mistakes ourselves along our ways.

After all, we are only human.

My only wish is that whatever errors are we bound to commit, may it not be

as galactic as those of Han Solo, nor  as universal  as those of Steve Harvey.

Here are New Year wishes that Gwen forwarded me:

“May you be slapped by Duterte blessings…may all your troubles be disqualified like Poe…may illness lag behind and never catch up with you like Mar’s campaign…may happiness hound you like Binay’s corruption charges… and may bad luck be snatched from  you like the crown from Miss Colombia!”

Happy New Year! (By Atty. Jay I. Dejaresco)