SIDE BY SIDE

October 30, 2015

I reported back to work today and once again, pounded on the mounds of paperwork, which thankfully, were cleaned up at lunch time when we were early dismissed (by four hours), which the Honourable Chairman said should give us ample time to go home and prepare for All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days.

However, I spent a little bit of time during the break to catch up a little more on Mr. Carlos Bulosan, the one I mentioned in the previous post.  I learned that he spent the rest of his life in America, and also learned about all the hardships he encountered there from discrimination, even physical abuse he got for being a second-class brown minority.  Even if he became quite successful as a writer for the post-second world war literary audience and labour union activist, that wasn’t enough to sustain him.  He died of TB or bronchopneumonia around middle age.

It’s sad to know that our most brilliant people who are living and working abroad still encounter discrimination.  I believe the situation now may not have been as desperate as Mr. Bulosan’s time, but still there are people everywhere who think they have a license to maltreat others just because of the colour of their skin.  Even here in our country where presumably all of us share the same skin colour, there are others like the Tanim-Bala gang in our very own International Airport, who are so devoid of conscience in framing up other people (especially tourists and our beloved OFWs) just so they could extort money.

It really is a long overdue wake up call for one to see the irony in all these.  We Filipinos are so proud of being raised in the only predominantly Christian nation in Southeast Asia.  We even spend many days celebrating Catholic holidays like All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days and yet we fail to see the relevance of these things and how we can apply them in our daily lives.  When we go to the cemetery to honour our dead loved ones, of course, one can see that rich people are buried differently than the poor, but all of them are on the same level—six feet below the ground.  People who wouldn’t be found talking to each other even though they may be next door neighbours lie side by the side underneath their own tombs.  And when a number of years have passed, their bones are exhumed, tied up in sacks like old paper files, and piled together in bundles underneath the big cross.  Pretty soon, everybody turns to dust.

What we must remember though, is that we all reach the same end.  Hence, trying to set ourselves higher than others, and looking down on them just because we think we are better, is useless.  Nobody could give all the wealth in the world just to keep themselves from growing old or dying.  No matter our skin colour, the length of our noses, or the amount of knowledge inside our brains, we all die.  We are all ultimately side by side on equal footing before our GOD and Maker.  There should be no reason at all to live like beasts out to devour others just so we can survive in the race of life.  Because life is not a race, it is a journey.  And from what I read on Jewish thought and tradition, this is a journey we make with other people even as we learn about ourselves and others, as we learn about GOD, and as GOD learns about our humanity too.