If it's true that 'mo money, mo problems', then why is it that no one is screaming 'I don't want another million!'?

Yesterday while asking the Black Nazarene at the Quiapo church to help me carry my very own cross, I saw this man kneeling his way to the altar with eyes earnestly closed and hands tightly clasped. Though he wasn’t an unusual sight (In fact, he was just but one of the many who goes there everyday to beg the black Nazarene to help them with their own problem.), this man caught my attention.

What was the difference with him? I don’t exactly know.

Perhaps it was that he was a thin man with eyes that speak of sorrow and optimism who had white hair that contrasts with his dark sun-toasted skin. Or perhaps it was that he was a man, a rare man among the usual women on their knees. Or Perhaps it was that he was the one I saw when I looked up.

Whatever it was, the only thing that I know is that he was the one who got me to think.

These people, these devotees, believe that by their coming to church and kneeling & bruising their knees, the almighty will affirmatively respond to their prayers. They hope and trust Him to look favorably on them and grant their petitions no matter how impossible they may seem. They have such enormous faith that the almighty would see them through amidst the enormity of their problem.

This got me to think that such faith just doesnt go in one direction.

In return, the almighty also trusts them. He trusts them not to turn away from him even if He bestows them such heavy burdens. (He did say that He isn't going to give His people crosses that they couldn't bear.)

But as I was looking at the people who were kneeling their way to the altar, I couldnt help but ask if perhaps the problems that they were having were directly or indirecly related to money. May it be for the medicine that a loved one needs in order to live, or for the recruitment fee that they to pay in order to work abroad, or for that meal that they haven't eaten for the last twelve hours.

It may look as though I am being such a snotty prejudice bitch. Perhaps I am being one. But with our kind of economy where only 10% of the population enjoying 90% of the wealth, I would like to think that it was more of a logical assumption than pure snottyness on my part.

So I've been thinking, why is it that the almighty trusts most of us with the problem of poverty but not with the problem of wealth?

And I am not just pertaining to that of this country but that of the whole world in general. It seems to me that the whole world is just like one huge third world country where the wealth is only enjoyed by a few. While some are trying to stop stuffing their mouths with food, a huge lot are trying to find some in order to survive.

So the question remains.

WHY?

Is it because it's truly human nature to be greedy? If that is so, then it seems rational that only a few should hold much of the money. But then, why is it that only a few of those people who do have much of the money are generous enough to share it?

If life is supposed to be picture-perfect, could it also be motion-perfect?

As the famous film company kept banging into our heads that certain moments in your life are worth capturing, is it humanely possible that the whole of our lives be of the same perfection?

Do you think I can bribe the genie into using his old zip code?

It seems to me that setting the genie free from his lamp proved to be the dumbest idea ever. Lucky for Aladdin, he got that one-in-a-billion chance of absolutely be granted anything that he wished for. Unfortunately though, he robbed everybody else of the same opportunity.

Especially now when I could use a little bit of magic, myself.
It seems as though I have lost all of my luck. (If I ever did have some in the first place.) A potential employer has just turned me down or perhaps indeliberately cast me aside is more appropriate. A potential employer has yet to call me. And the object of my first full-blown infatuation is seeing someone else. They are still not a couple but its just a matter of time when they do become one.

Surely as luck might have it, I am just having a blast.

Are we genetically predisposed to fail as a people?

Last Good Friday, I and five of my male friends went about our annual hike up the mountains of Antipolo to the Church. In that three hour trek, our conversation steered towards a somewhat reflective albeit religiously-lacking nature.

It started when a friend mentioned that he and his girlfriend are planning, as most of people of this country do, to leave the country in search for greener pastures. I accused him of abandoning ship. He then asked me if there is actually any hope for a ship that is going under. I then countered that no matter what happens, it is our ship and it’s our duty to save it.

No matter the odds.

He argued that things will never change for us. What is wrong is seriously embedded in our blood. It is our culture, he argued, that is the culprit for the hell that we find ourselves in. He asks, “Why is it that when Filipinos are abroad they can be poster children for model citizenship but they couldn’t care less when they are in their own country?” I couldn’t think of an answer and so I just told him that if he wanted to change our culture, the only way to do that is mass genocide.

So that got me thinking, what exactly is wrong with us a people? And more importantly are we as hopeless as my friend thinks us to be. A couple of answers came to mind.

FIRST: The ‘Me First’ mentally stems from self-preservation instinct.

With the country’s economic situation, people are forced to turn to their self-preservation instinct to survive every single day. As things go worse year after year, it has become ingrained in their habits and in their thoughts. It had become a way of the life and thus had begun to be passed on to the next generation.

But then that got me thinking.

That can’t be true. Survival can’t be the answer for as I have recently read in a National Geographic Adventure magazine article entitled ‘The Cruelest Journey” by Dean King, even the cruel environment of the Sahara desert doesn’t turn its people into selfish beasts.
Rather it turns people into the most fascinating and bewildering version of themselves.

As King paraphrases Captain Riley’s account of the 1815 wreck of the brig Commerce on the northwestern African coast, he illustrates some of the bewildering things Captain Riley has witnessed.

“… As the camel’s blood simmered in a copper pot, Riley and Clark fed sticks and camel dung to the fire and savored the coming meal. But before they could eat, nomads came pouring over the dunes from all directions to share in the feast.
Hamet and Seid fended them off long enough for the captives to scoop down handfuls of the liver-like boiled blood. They were soon shoved aside as the nomads roasted and carved the beast. Riley looked on in bewilderment as the meat that was supposed to be dried for their journey was eaten while Hamet and Seid did nothing to stop it. To Riley, such depredations seemed pure thievery, but the two traders accepted the Arab tradition of sharing every scrap of food…. By the time they were ready to depart, almost every edible bit of the camel had been consumed.”

It clearly illustrates that sharing whatever you have is a way of life in that harsh bit of the world. The harshness of the desert is somewhat the driving factor that leads to the selflessness of its people. So why is it that with our more generous environment, we as a people can’t seem to give up much of our self-centeredness?

Later on, he reinforces it again with another instance.

King puts it,
“… They played tough when they had to, bullying a goatherd into trading them four goats for a lame camel they abandoned nearby, and robbing a lone, sleeping merchant of barley meal, an action Hamet justified in two ways: by the assumption that desert custom would have forced the man to share it with them anyway, and by the common notion that things not cared for properly were fair game for appropriation by others….”

One might say that Hamet took something without the consent of the owner due to his own need. This might appear to be a purely selfish act. But one must judge his action by their own culture and not ours. As Hamet clearly pointed out, what he did was within the ethical bounds of their culture. What might appear as something wrong in ours is more than acceptable in theirs.


SECOND: It must be in us. It must be in our bodies. It must be in our blood.

One close friend of mine read somewhere that laziness is a gene. So can it be that this ‘Me First’ mentality is genetically ingrained in all of us? I don’t want to think so but History can serve as a proof for such a claim.

One of my college history professors interestingly imparted to us that the Filipinos might have won the Filipino-American war if they only worked together as one people. He said that based on history that if only the Filipinos thought of themselves as one nation and didn’t preoccupy themselves with their own personal ambitions , we could have won the war and never be under the Americans. Now, isn’t that something worth mulling about?

But I would still like to be optimistic about things. I still hope that some day, we as a people will be able to get our acts together. For if that isn’t true, you might just as well get a gun and shoot me now.