Standing amid chaos
Compassion sometimes reaches its limit when one’s own backyard is littered with issues gathering dust or rotting in the sun.
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Compassion sometimes reaches its limit when one’s own backyard is littered with issues gathering dust or rotting in the sun.
Most Filipinos still struggle to understand the geopolitical issues presently wracking the world.
A group of workers of a popular Chinese food chain, rallying outside one of its branches recently to demand higher wages, could not care less if Spain’s refusal to acquiesce to the US request to use its bases was readily supported by China.
Homemakers trying to squeeze what they can from the family budget these days would rather discuss how to start a vegetable plot rather than how the war against Iran began. Farmers wondering how to move their crops and workers feeling the pinch of the transport strike and higher fuel prices focus on their daily strife instead of the children killed by air strikes in urban areas somewhere in the world.
It’s not that they do not care. Compassion sometimes reaches its limit when one’s own backyard is littered with issues gathering dust or rotting in the sun. And when humanity seems bent on destroying itself, one is left with only the choice to survive.
Spanish Premier Pedro Sanchez on a visit to China from 11 to 15 April agreed with President Xi Jinping that the international order is “crumbling,” even as Europe has begun to express discomfort over the current US policies. Beijing is intent on protecting “multilateralism,” and it is getting support from other world leaders set to visit the eastern power as well this year, perhaps leading to deeper ties that no one saw coming.
Political observers are smelling a shift in the power dynamics, but here in our sunny archipelago, it is different kinds of political moves we are seeing. Once again, our cares seem to be off-tangent and as we remain embroiled in our own battles, others are ensuring their protection from possible future disruptions.
Long will the hot sun bake our agricultural lands before anything major comes out of the flood control ghost projects investigation. Impeachment is on our lawmakers’ lips or, if not, it is 2028 that is on their minds. Meantime, we endure backbiting and bickering that only stunt our growth as a nation.
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Right now, Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon are in the midst of deadly strife. Their travails, one should think, are not that far off from where we stand. As time passes and the global turmoil and tensions continue to upend our hopes for development and progress, we will not be able to distance ourselves from what is happening around us.
Beliefs and ideals are constantly under attack, sometimes leading to some of history’s darkest moments. When it feels like the ground beneath could open up at any minute, when events have gone from disgusting to profane, when blood is spilled for someone’s powerful ego, when living begins to feel pointless in the face of endless struggle — it is only right to ask ourselves where we stand in all this.
