“In this time when everyone is literally a victim, helping others is not only an act of compassion but also a virtue”
MIRACLES indeed happen in the most unexpected moments and spaces as we both see the good and bad sides of people during the lockdown.
The emergence of faceless Good Samaritans amongst us is one of these miracles. An ordinary guy from Cagayan de Oro bought a few plane tickets for local stranded individuals near the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and ended up buying a hundred more tickets for them from unknown donors of his impromptu cause.
To name just a few, celebrities like Angel Locsin and Anne Curtis joined forces to sell their chic wares for charity and to support medical front liners. Lowly military and police personnel shred a month or two of their hard-earned salaries for the pandemic response. They are not the ones who paid for the “Mañanita” party of their boss. A group of women in Tacloban collected scraps of cloth from their members and donated face masks for the front liners and the poor in their community.
Moreover, a Filipino community provided food, water and basic medical supplies to hundreds of stranded fellow overseas Filipino workers of an aluminum factory in Riyadh because of the lockdown. They are yet to be repatriated together with some 30,000 to 40,000 OFWs spread throughout the globe in the next few weeks, a situation that will challenge further the resiliency of our already depleted fiscal system.
In this time when everyone is literally a victim, helping others is not only an act of compassion but also a virtue. Surely many of these Good Samaritans are anonymous and their deeds are unreported. They want to remain it that way. Christian values teach people not to let their right hand show what the left hand is doing. For after all, it is not the value of the material things that is more important, but the intention of the heart the gives it.
But this is not a domain exclusive for Filipinos. Other nationalities, races and colors have the same virtue as well because of the inherent goodness of people. Every Christmas, school children in Austria make a week-long round of caroling to collect money to donate in children-related projects in developing countries. Both Catholic parishioners and protestant church members in Germany give part of their tax to Misereor and Brot fur der Welt, respectively, to fund small social development projects around the world as well because of this innate goodness in humans.
Conversely, the bad side of people may not be entirely because of the lockdown. Some people will do their wicked ways because of many factors like their upbringing and the environment. President Rody Duterte censured the Cebuanos for their hardheadedness and for not following the minimum health standards against the pandemic during his latest public address in the palace.
The president who is a Cebuano by heart knows this. Visayan people in general boast for their recalcitrant tradition, starting from the battle of Mactan waged by the local warriors led by Lapu-lapu to press freedom. Aside from Lapu-lapu, there were Visayan heroes and heroines like General Francisco Dagohoy of the Katipunan who was from Inabanga, Bohol; Pantaleon Villegas, the hero of the Cebuano revolt; Pedro and Benigna Cui, hero for the aged; Gardeopatra Quijano, hero for women’s rights; Vicente Rama, hero for the Cebuano people; and, Vicente Sotto, hero for press freedom.
But Cebuanos are not hopeless. They just want to be assured the national government is with them in this time of the pandemic. Many of them have Good Samaritan spirit as well.
