“This being human” — as one immortal writer began a poem that still resounds today — is all sides of perplexing, bewildering, dismaying and disappointing.

Rumi was a 13th-century poet. He was Islamic, and his words, when taken in our time of great divisions — about religion, skin color, sexuality and gender — still deliver a universal truth. They are about love. They are about openness and acceptance, and everything, it seems, that humanity is NOT today.

Why don’t we think about that?

I have, and lately I have tried to take my eyes off the hard news to find some semblance of relaxation.

It’s difficult when you work in this industry.

It has been nearly impossible to avoid dinner table talk on the way Xi Jinping issued a barely veiled threat to those opposing China’s aggressive claims to territory. No UNCLOS or any other superpower attempts to stamp that desire to own space and all its resources can seem to stop China’s advance.

One is tempted to mull over the current leadership and its actions toward this end. Still, one will always be left to wonder because, as we should know by now, transparency and truth when it comes to political interests are mere words — meaningless without action — claptrap.

And what other forms of obscuration do we see every day?

The candidate appears to be empathetic in a television show they came up with — starring themselves, of course — tut-tutting the miserable problems of the miserable and offering temporary solutions to look scrubbed and influential at the same time.

But how easy is it to zero in on politicians? Their foibles and fakeness already fill the news and history books.

What is much harder is to acknowledge such pretenses in our daily lives.

We see it in people who are deeply prayerful yet find no compunction in being unkind.

We may feel it in generosities that come with conditions. Or in almsgiving that seeks fulfillment in acknowledgment. One can call you a friend and throw you under the bus the first chance they get. An envious neighbor can ply you with praise and tear your name to shreds when you’re not looking. And people who smile at you even though they believe the crap about you.

Oh, grow up, the cynics go. Yet, I would not wish to go that way.

The Oscars, in the year 2024, still reeked of gender bias in the glaring snub of Barbie director and lead actress in the much-coveted nominations. Hollywood observers noted that director Greta Gerwig and actor Margot Robbie were left out of the distinctive roster, smacked by the very issue the movie tried to impart.

A BBC article cited AP News on Gerwig’s exclusion as “one of the biggest shocks in recent memory.”

Forbes accounted it to the “polarization found in female-led films” based on a “new analysis of IMDb ratings for films with male and female leads.”

Biases indeed remain; they persist everywhere. It comes from a deep-seated superiority complex — one that makes you believe that you own the high seas or can run roughshod over laws.

The issues today are like Oppenheimer and Barbie: possibly explosive tensions over territory against the unending gender biases that many continue to endure today.

What’s painful is when women are pitted against each other, like the Heart Evangelista versus Pia Wurtzbach fan rivalry, or they demonstrate the same biases they claim to abhor in other women.

Perhaps it is fitting, in a world aiming for peace and unity, to pause as well, even if we are not Muslim observing Ramadan or Catholic observing Lent, to “strengthen kinship” and “embrace a spirit of harmony” among Filipinos as the President had urged.

It’s a little Barbie world, but he added, “Together, let us build a future where love and understanding prevail and where the light of hope shines brightly for all.”