In a time of crisis, the first duty of all affluent Filipinos is to show that they’re capable of empathy—and the ability to check their privilege

To survive this pandemic, we need to relearn how to coexist in a society

There is a simple test applied to children’s picture books that tell us if they are of a quality. Give a child with enough verbal ability any picture book, preferably one they have not seen or heard before, and ask them to tell you what it’s about. With just the pictures, a child should be able to cobble a tale from one page turn to the next. As the name implies, a good picture book should allow a child to understand its story with just pictures.

Children can read emotion in a face, they react to colors, associate colors like blue and green as safe, and red and black as dangerous. Even if they are not spot on in their version, they will likely describe something of equal or even deeper interest. Most prestigious picture book awards are only given to the artists and not the author, and some of the most renowned picture books are completely wordless.

On a train in Tokyo a few years ago, a small picture caught my eye. It depicted cartoonish people of various ages and walks of life, all on a train. Each one of those people (A) were looking at other people (B) on the train. The (A) people had thought bubbles over their heads where they imagined themselves in the place of the other (B) people. The thought bubbles showed seats being given up, people being helped with strollers or heavy loads, folks being given directions, even aid being given to a drunken passenger. There were explanations of this all along the margins, all in Japanese, but the pictures were more than enough to understand that the cartoon was saying: “Imagine if that was you who needed help.”

A Japanese friend gave the concept a name: Omoiyari. It (roughly) translates to “empathy.” I would encounter similar pictures in various public and private establishments, all encouraging people not to "follow the rules,” but asking them to imagine what it would be like if someone "ran on the escalator” or "paid too much attention to their phone rather than where they were going”—all conveyed in simple pictures even any child (or tourist) could understand.

The difference of being ordered from being asked is a powerful one. Even Japanese signs for "construction ahead” always had a silhouetted person in a hardhat and protective gear bowing—always an apology for the inconvenience of the work rather than the imperative of caution so many other countries use. This is a society constantly asked to imagine what it would be like for someone else. I still think about those elderly residents of Fukushima who volunteered to go into the nuclear power plant to spare the younger workers risking their lives. Omoiyari.

“Imagine if that was you who needed help.”

Few have any real experience with quarantines, enhanced or otherwise. Apart from those that suffered through prolonged medical isolation or spent time in prison, most wisdom on this topic seems to straddle everything from varying level of inconvenience to [post-]apocalyptic doomsdays. Decades worth of media depicting bleak, horror infested landscapes and de-evolution to survival-ofthe-fittest mentalities certainly do not help.

But the truth is humans have never been ones to take from the survival of the fittest branch. We are pack animals, most successful when we work together and protect each other. We did not get to the top of the food chain because we were stronger or faster, or just smarter. We survived and thrived because we learned—we lived—that proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.

Unsurprisingly, we have observed that compassion and empathy are not unique to us humans. Primates and dogs, rats and elephants, all have shown a level of emotional understanding we always prided ourselves. These are troop/pack/colony/herd animals that understand the importance of community.

Everyone is talking about how unprepared, how illinformed, how unimaginable the events of this pandemic have been (and continue to be). As time passes, there is a question of what we learned/are learning. One of the many things that are becoming clearer, as a nation and as a planet, is that no one person can be freed from responsibility. We have seen that a less deadly pandemic like COVID-19 is proving more dangerous that ones with higher mortality rates like SARS and MERS. We are learning that globalization means we are more interconnected than ever, for all the good and bad it can bear. And perhaps most importantly, we are seeing that people have a capacity for good even in the darkest of times.

Young children can be taught empathy, dogs and rats can understand it.

More than anything, we are learning that wealth and privilege are like a shoreline made visible by a coming tsunami. There has been an alarming lack of people asking: what if I needed help from the people who need to be asking it the most often? Many of those in positions of power have exposed themselves as apathetic and callow. We have seen several politicians, celebrities and business leaders make demands of their citizenry, fans and work force expecting and accepting no resistance. And while they trumpet that it is for their own good, halos walang pagmamalasakit! They order, threaten and shame, throwing weights on to those whose tiny boats are already riddled with holes. All without so much as a kind word, a promise of relief, or even a believable apology once they are called out. They treat a situation that requires care, information and orderly execution with arms, basta!, and crocodile tears.

But this crisis has also shown us that good leadership is not a pie-in-the-sky dream. We have seen (here and abroad) not only the terrible toll this has taken on communities, but also witnessed folks, in power and on the ground, rise to serve their fellow humans. Business leaders have pledged to forego salaries, people offer to help sew masks or build life saving tools or products, even simple feeding and housing programs for the most vulnerable and frontline workers. There will be more food drives and fundraisers, frustrations and set-backs, and even elections where people will get a chance to look back on what those with the most power did for the least of our neighbors.

There may be a long ways to go, but luckily we are not going fast. We are going together.

“WE SURVIVED AND THRIVED BECAUSE WE LEARNED—WE LIVED—THAT PROVERB: IF YOU WANT TO GO FAST, GO ALONE, IF YOU WANT TO GO FAR, TOGETHER” GO