True Comfort in Life

June 01, 2010
1:00 p.m. Tuesday


The year is 2010 and I belong to this much younger generation where in everybody is emphatically shouting stop corruption and end poverty in the streets. It's like the end of the world is very near. The recent surveys and reports showed that the condition we're into right now is very difficult; so many families are deprived of basic needs.

So many families are living below poverty line; When you walk outside and observe the common people in the streets, in their faces you'll see the hardships that they have gone through. You will see their fears, worries from day to day lives. For this young future generation, life has not been very good; at least that is the impression.

Everybody wanted to leave the country and seek greener pastures somewhere else. Calamities like the typhoon Ondoy, el Niño, the senseless kilings; all these things only added disappointments, misery in the lives of every Filipino.

But we're in the modern age already, and people can watch TVs with remote controls, you can even classify TVs now into HD TV, plasma TV, LCD TV, 3d ,etc..; we can eat in Jollibee, McDonald's etc. with air conditioned rooms and with clean comfort rooms. Resorts and Hotels are very common also in the country.

There are shopping malls and cinemas all around the city where even ordinary people like us are very much welcome to enjoy.

There are computers, laptops, internets, cell phones for better communications; there are MRTs, LRTs for mass transportations. These things can all be enjoyed by common people today. I can watch for example news on TV and at the same time surf the internet with ease in a comfortable air conditioned room or internet room, listening to mp3 player and texting or calling my friends with my cell phone.

Which brings me to my main point. There were questions in my mind that really kept nagging me. Is it true that we live in a much poorer situation today? Do our grandparents and parents enjoyed their generation the way we enjoy ours today? Probably, they did alright... but do they have better privileges in life as compared today?

The year was 1940’s. Those years were very depressing for the country. Japanese invaded Philippines and our beloved Lolos and Lolas, were very unfortunate because they experienced such harrowing event in our history.
I remember one of many telling stories of our grandfathers. He was 24 years old, together with other kababayans; they were evacuated for several days and nights. They journeyed on foot stopping only to rest. When Japanese sees them, they bowed low to them as a sign of submission. It was a pretty scary time.

There was also an 84 year old veteran soldier who recounted that his family fled their town to the mountainside; he was only 17 years old. There were killings everywhere. The last thing that they could do is to put to safety their own children or love ones from the Japanese soldiers. Imagine the agony and the stress that they were into during Japanese occupation. You can't even shout your rights the way they do in the streets today. The "h'wag matakot, makibaka" thing

And finally, I got acquainted with an 80 year old man and he told me stories about his ordeal during the Japanese occupation. He said to me that he saw with his own eyes the Japanese soldiers violently bayoneting infants in Manila. The soldiers, according to him, will toss the babies up and then catch it with their bayonets. I was aghast; this gives me the goose bumps. Imagine, if these things will happen today, what will I do?

Those scenes kept on creeping in his mind that is why he said he never looked at anybody's casket nor attends funeral ceremonies anymore. Picture an 80 year old Grand Pa, spending his last years still trying to comprehend what had happened during the World War II. To my mind, I'm afraid, those telling events may linger up to the last breathe of his life, sad to say.

That, for me, is the most dreadful years in the history of the Philippines (probably the other one is the Spanish occupation). In all honesty, Our Grand Pa and Grand Ma had done so much in order for us to live more comfortably today. We need to learn from them. We need to respect them. Remember we are the second worst hit country in the world during the World War II next only to Poland; that by itself proves the resiliency of Filipinos. And resiliency is the trademark of our Kababayans even overseas. I myself do not know where this trait came from.



Until I read a column of the Inquirer newspaper about Fr. James Reuter who is 94 years old already and had been here in the country for 72 years.

He said: "It's because the Filipinos - and God forgive me for saying this and it's really 100% true - are the most lovable people in the world. You don't realize that what God has given you. When I came first here, I thought I was bringing God to the Philippines, but what I discovered was (the Filipinos) brought God to me."

Of course not all Filipinos are like so.

thanks for the images:
zedge, anakbayan-nynj blogspot, nupxl.com, flickr.com
incredibleimages4u.blogspot, emersonkent.com
www.ww2incolor.com, www.Ibfilamevents.org