They Are What We Cannot Be

March 31,2011

Featured Editorial

They Are What We Cannot Be

Again Japan, why this crippled nation is teaching us so many lessons about strength and dignity in face of such great challenges and adversity. Just watching the Japanese do what is right amid so much chaos and disarray sometimes makes us embarrassed about ourselves.

When it becomes clear that some farm produce, including milk, may have become contaminated by radiation from a devastated nuclear power plant, the Japanese did not wait for any government advisory. They voluntarily destroyed or otherwise kept these products from reaching the market.

In other words, the Japanese did not want to comprise the health of others, as well as their own, despite t heir own creeping hunger brought on by the sweeping devastation, and whatever great use a little money could bring into their devastated lives.

Then quickly switch the scenario back to our own cheeky realities. Take the case of what the people in Luzon call as “bocha” or twice dead meat or how some people have no qualms making a living about introducing them to the market.

While the Japanese are voluntarily pulling out contaminated farm produce, there are some Filipinos who deliberately flood the market with contaminated meat. Perhaps no greater difference can be had between the two peoples. Discipline, pride and self-respect are at the very core of the Japanese being. That is the way they are. A lot of Filipinos also have discipline, pride and self-respect. But it takes a lot of doing for us while to them it seems to come as a matter of course.

Of course the fierceness of our nationalism may often tend to blind us to the great realities we refuse to acknowledge, that is until somebody pricks us awake at some great display of character shown by other people in their moments of trial.

Many Filipinos show greatness in triumph. But that is easy to do when you have the world feeding off your hand. But to others, such as the Japanese, or the Koreans who delved into their personal treasures to help shore their government in the Asian financial crisis, they simply are. (Source: The Freeman, Cebu-based daily newspaper)