The Plight

(August 18, 2010 Tumblr post)

Comparison is a great knowledge. It is knowing what you and others have in common or not. It is not to make faces fret, it is to make lips smile and people reflect; yet the ends of this knowledge are always dependent on the thinkers’ minds, whether they are set in optimism or grave envy (I wish in humongous hope, that you are in good set.) By this ability of seeing things, I discovered beauty and satisfaction; misery and frailty. These discoveries tend to amplify my young sympathy for others and having so several—or perhaps, infinite—encounters of people whom I regard as those in misery and frailty, I completely become saddened but spirited in reaching my own goals to provide help for the poor. Beggars (some with illnesses) everywhere in the city; mais vendors who roam different barangays, rain or shine just to earn; an old woman with a bad posture carrying a sack of bottles and cans on her back; honest sikad drivers, all of them I have seen and familiarized myself. How I adore them! They never resolved their problems with crime. And I am the one who longs for their own alleviation. I can envision giving them awards. If only I were wealthy, that vision would become so real in an instant. Their doing clean jobs in order to survive, simply conveys a matter so significant to all. When the minds of our own people were programmed with this ideal attribute, then how our country would prosper! And how our individual lives would be in eternal peace! That is, if that ever happened. But reality is thinking and accepting that the opposite of anything and everything is existent.

This reality I have not seen yet. Not in actual. I only have seen them on TV or heard on the radio, and they affect me but not to a degree so high. Being ordered by my sister to acquire something from my aunt who worked in the Hall of Justice, I felt much incredibly enthusiastic possibly because I always have been in the house for many months with only a few getting-out-of-the-house. Doing this is a plight I could say— even though it gave me slight gladness— due to the very small number of Carbide jeepneys in the city that I had to wait for hours. But thankfully, one came by the moment I stood to wait in front the Cathedral. A commonly small vehicle, I had to squeeze my legs for there was a fish vendor who brought at least 3 big pails of fish. I painstakingly avoided the touch of the containers for I am considerably disgusted by raw meat. Minutes later with the vendor already gone, the jeepney was already turning right away from Poprock. As the driver continued on that direction, he passed a van and I saw this boy of age not older than me and not very, very young either. At my first view, he was seemingly ordinary. I decided to scrutinize him and to my disheartening surprise, I learned he was holding right to his nose a brownish, translucent bottle with a fulvous liquid inside. He was smelling it… sniffing it. My eyes contracted and probed. I had not extinguished my hunger of investigating him yet. I scrutinized still, and I believe he had glanced at me once but I mattered to him not, peradventure. The vehicle moved farther as I pondered. It was bad. I saw it with my own eyes. And unbelievably, I felt a strange sense of accomplishment seeing him. Nevertheless, I told myself he must be hungry, he must be miserable, he must be lost. His mother might be sick, or he might have been abandoned. Whatever reason a person has, resorting to such an act is inexcusable. Was he influenced? Was he desperate? Does he seek attention? Is that all he knew in life? I tried to put myself in his situation but I cannot picture it out. I would cry, seriously, in thanking that I was not born to be him. I was glad that I have wisdom… enough wisdom to know how to handle downfalls… enough wisdom to be content. It was the feeling greatest of all, I certainly claim now. To have ever seen him is most touching. I urged myself to believe that he must be captured and brought to an institution that could forever change him. Soon he was out of sight, and I stared blankly at the bright, blue sky. Indeed, my journey this day was never a plight.