Inverted iceberg
Ithought I knew physical pain until I fractured my left tibia in a freak bike accident more than a month ago. I am still enrolled to finish a Bachelor of Pain degree, 90 days after my surgery, with the help of consistent physical therapy and doses of hyperbaric treatments. Days immediately after the surgery, were it not for a sedative or anesthetic, the excruciating agony would keep me awake for nights on end. But the pain I experienced pales in comparison with the latest uncertainty in the national fabric of Afghanistan. upon ephemeral recollection, my leg injury would hardly come even close to the tragedy that a disabled Afghan is thrown into. Memories of Afghans losing their lower limbs, altogether getting disabled because of war, are back and in earnest! Landmines served as thieves, robbing them of precious legs and arms. Suddenly, my momentary suffering was inconsequential.
Zardou, a 12-year old Afghan, lost his left leg during the Afghan war. He was orphaned when he was barely three months old. The vestiges of civil conflict were real. In 2002, while a Filipino crew led by celebrated journalist Jessica Soho was conducting a TV coverage in Afghanistan, a left-over furtive landmine exploded just 2 kilometers away from them, which instantly killed five people aboard an ambulance! Such was the actual backdrop where Afghans, unfortunately, were thrown inside a “laboratory of terrorism”. During the war following the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan lost an estimated 1.8 million people, with1.5 million disabled (among them more than 300,000 children), and there were 7.5 million refugees. More than 14,000 villages were destroyed. During the US military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, over 100,000 Afghans died, and many were disabled.
As the Taliban ruled, female education was forbidden while severing of hands and execution
were prescribed as punishment for petty crimes. Fear permeated every household and poverty struck hard as children beg for food or are forced to work. Yet through it all, we bear witness to the Afghans’ resiliency. Men with severed legs still gleefully walk in crutches. Businessmotivated families put up souvenir shops, as well as beauty parlors where women finally get dolled up without their burkha. Men, women, and children get educated in training centers established by the World Bank and other organizations like the Aschiana Drop-in Center. Zardou, the orphaned kid, can now read, write and draw, and wears a smile each day. The Afghan people won’t simply give up as they dream and hope and wake up each day clothed with dignity and positive anticipation. As to how long they can maintain this admirable posture, whose eyes and ears have long seen and heard of bombings and execution, it remains to be seen as the Taliban has taken over the reins from the Us-installed government in Afghanistan.
Many of people focus only on what we can see. We are fixated to the pain and struggle of our loved ones stricken with an illness. We focus on the hardships of children who roam the streets of Metro Manila begging for food and money. We only see how friends physically struggle as they find work to put food on the table. We witness the sorrow and grief of those who lost a loved one due to Covid-19. W hat our eyes fail to catch is the sight of the resolute spirit of these people, who, despite their physical suffering, are “gifted” with the enduring acceptance to move on. While some may have seen the loss of Manny Pacquiao against Yordenis Ugas as a shameful and distressing loss for the greatest Filipino boxer, others have seen the loss as a display of the “indomitable spirit of the man, his incurable love for the sport, and the raw courage to conquer fear itself”—to borrow a friend’s statement. To me, such is the beauty that only a few can see, which outweighs the struggles that most are accustomed to seeing.
Like an iceberg, most people are often familiar with that white and insignificant piece of ice floating in the ocean. Since icebergs are generally 90 percent submerged, we only see the “tip of the iceberg,” barely 10 percent of their total mass. Amazing and rare photos, taken by filmmaker Alex Cornell, which captured the underside of an iceberg, revealed an irregularly shaped crystalline blue matter like that of the ocean! As if it were alive, water could be seen flowing inside the submerged portion of the iceberg! Such photo was touted as one of the rare treasures of photography, as rare as the flipping over of the iceberg itself.
Knowing that what we see in an iceberg is far smaller than what we don’t see, what we can see in a suffering person is definitely less significant than what we don’t see, unless we use a different lens like the underwater camera used by Alex Cornell when he took a photo of an inverted iceberg. Therefore, let’s refrain from judging a person’s suffering. Lurking beneath the surface of such affliction can be a fighting spirit that can make the person stronger, if not closer to God. With a different perspective, let’s embrace any pain, not just as a fact, but more for its underlying and precious value, in keeping with what the Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 1:9—“it felt like we had a death sentence written upon our hearts, and we still feel it to this day. It has taught us to lose all faith in ourselves and to place all of our trust in the God who raises the dead.”
Believers might doubt and ask why suffering takes place—in Afghanistan or anywhere in the world. This superfluity of struggles that beset our country—pandemic, hunger, unemployment, injury, and even death, allow us to refocus our vision on the unconquerable spirit of every Filipino! We always have this stubborn resolve to survive despite many losses and that intoxicating kindness to help those in need, and that indefatigable courage to take any pain as it comes. Believers can always look at suffering as something disruptive yet profitable. Our suffering can be seen as a form of discipline or encouragement to help others who are on the same boat!
Still beset with sporadic pain albeit on the road to recovery, I am confident for “The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.”(habbakuk 3:19). Let’s all discover the beauty and strength of an “inverted iceberg” within us! We can see things differently only by way of an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and not by any encounter with a glacier of false truths. It’s time to break away from that glacier and flip over. Rare, but possible.