Rain

If I blogged about how Sunday went, it would contain a single word: RAIN. I slept through most part of the day, making up for the week's tiresome activities (meaning I had to wake up early on consecutive days). I finally understood why people wanted to stay in bed when it rains. It's nice. And the rain makes Mama cook a lot of soup. We had Molo yesterday and Sopas today.

The TV is filled with news about the typhoon. And another ship sank. When will these people learn? Common knowledge: if the sea isn't calm, just stay on shore.

I went to hear mass today and the priest was saying something about being a Christian? He said that it is dfficult to be a Christian if people abuse you. True. You are donating to some foundation that turns out to be the largest shabu factory in the country. Or that you are giving a beggar some change which he/she will use to buy rugby. Then he/she will run amok and stab somebody, perhaps even you. Anyway, the priest focused on the ZTE scandal and how the government turned the people's eyes away from it. The rice crisis, the power crisis, the fuel crisis. All these just to get a billion pesos. If you compute how much it takes to live comfortably, a billion pesos is an indecently large amount to spend. A lot of people suffer just to make a couple of people ridiculously rich. And to think that other people abuse these crises just to get more comfortable than others. I heard that some people sell the rice cards which were supposed to be free for the poorest of the poor. It enables them to buy cheap rice from the government. And now, these wicked people sell them.

It's easy to judge other people hurting (in varied ways) other people. But we realize that we are part of the system. We unconsciously participate in making the poor poorer or the comfortable guilty even if they did not have to be. We can point our fingers to the President, the Senate, the police or our city mayors, but sometimes, a lot of these things are only partially their fault. Yeah, they can be greedy but the system enables them to be.

There is a feeling of being trapped. We can't be good because there will be people who will abuse us. That is why, perhaps, change needs to come as a common thing. Change the system and all. And then perhaps the rain will stop. And we can wake up from our long slumber.