Learning patience
“This crisis has been going on for too long, don’t you think?” That was the question asked to me by a colleague in the local government sector. We were exchanging text messages. We wanted to find out how our respective local communities were coping with the challenge of restarting the economy while staving off a major upsurge in COVID19 infections.
There was exasperation in my colleague’s voice. I tried to give him some comfort by responding in jest.
“Not too long compared to what our grandparents had to go through during the Second World War,” I texted back.
It took some time before my colleague replied. Then, he texted back:
“You have a point there.”
He got the point even if the intention was just to lighten up the mood of the exchange of text messages. The point is this: Compared to the adversities that previous generations of Filipinos had to go through, our current situation may not be the worst that this country had ever seen.
The worst within recent memory must have been our grandparents and greatgrandparents’ experience of the invasion and occupation of our country by what was then known as the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War.
That period of major adversity took place not in a matter of three months – more like, more than three years.
The invaders, according to history, landed in Philippine soil in December of 1941, just days after the infamous bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The occupation ended with the surrender of the Imperial Forces in September of 1945.
Historians say the number of Filipinos who lost their lives – both soldiers and civilians – as a result of that bloody war was more than half-a-million.
There were about 28,000 Filipino soldiers who were killed by the invading forces.
Another 140,000-plus Filipinos were massacred. About 23,000 died working at labor camps, and about 350,000 died as a result of the ensuing famine.
Our elders also told us that the population of the country was on a sustained decline after that war because people kept dying from diseases they contracted during the occupation period.
Millions lost their homes and their livelihood. They were often on the run, trying to escape enemy fire, crossfires, and the prospect of being abused and tortured by a
cruel invader. There was massive evacuation and a sense of fear that pervaded the atmosphere.
During that time, no face mask or face shield, no protective gear or hand-washing could protect our grandparents and great-grandparents from the possibility of being killed.
They could not talk about an “old normal” or of a “new normal.” For that generation, the way life was lived was an aberration. They learned that the cruelty of men against their fellowmen was far more vicious than the deadliness of a new virus.
Deadly virus enters our systems when we chance upon them as they float in the air or land in a surface. Human enemies, on the other hand, hunt their prey. We can try to run away from them but they can always mount a chase, catch up with us and inflict pain and death.
Viruses don’t chase victims. We contract them at a chance encounter. It can also be said that because of our carelessness, we end up chasing the virus.
What is there to learn from the generation that had to go through the terrifying experience of the Second World War?
I once asked this question from an elder of Rizal province.
Her answer was this: Patience. “Kailangan ng maraming pasensiya, kundi mababaliw ka (you need to have a lot of patience; if not, you could lose your sanity),” I remember her telling me with a smile on her face.
She said they learned to “live by the day.” “When we survived one day, we would be very grateful and would look forward to the next day,” she explained.
She also said, “it is important not to lose your sense
of joy.”
“Even as we hid in the mountains of Tanay, we found time to play, to tell stories and to exchange jokes,” she added.
“After years of thanking God for each day that we survived, we woke up one morning to be told that the war had ended and that the enemy had surrendered,” she recalled, beaming with pride for the resilience of her generation.
Learning patience entails learning to live in the present tense. Somehow, the current crisis has taught us all to focus on the “now” and to believe “that tomorrow will take care of itself.”
Today, we focus on preserving and protecting our health and well-being. We focus on making ends meet and on making sure that our families would have food at our table – at least for the day.
Learning patience requires that we also learn to hope, to look forward to the coming of the day of “freedom” – be it freedom from foreign domination or freedom from the fear of a deadly virus.
We are one in the hope that the prevention and cure we are praying for would one day come. In the meantime, we wait for patience and attend to the tasks that the present calls for.
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Greetings to all the great fathers on this special day! Happy Fathers’ Day!
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