Demons
Demons
Updated 11:26pm (Mla time) Jan 03, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the January 4, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I NEVER much like exploding firecrackers on New Year's Eve. My apologies to the victims, but I've never sympathized with those who find themselves in hospitals screaming in pain from missing fingers or even hands in the worst cases from fooling around with the more dangerous varieties. It's completely self-inflicted. Indeed, unlike suicide, which harms only oneself, the injury is acquired in the course of posing harm to others.
For some reason, some people like to explode firecrackers days before New Year in places that are calculated to annoy others, and cause high blood pressure, if not heart attacks, among the elderly. Just for the fun of it.
I know it's tradition, and tradition says making that kind of racket on New Year's Eve helps to drive demons away. And no demons are worth more driving away than the ones that bedeviled not just this country but this whole planet last year. For reasons known only to them, they appeared to have chosen 2004 as the year to hold their plenary meeting in. The disasters last year, personal and social, minor and cataclysmic, were just too mind-boggling. I'm not particularly given to horoscopes and astrology, I know calendars are a human invention to measure time, but boy am I glad we're out of that year. Maybe the new one will bring better news.
But as I was saying, I know it is tradition, but traditions are always made to be broken, or changed. Something the resolutely tradition-bound Tevye of "Fiddler on the Roof" himself discovered. Traditions are only as good as the reasons for them remain alive and vital. Not so when they are dead and inert. Well before an apocalyptic earthquake/tsunami hit Sumatra and several Southeast and South Asian countries a week ago, I already wanted to write a column urging this country, particularly Metro Manila, to not explode firecrackers at the end of the year.
The reason for it was patent. The eastern seaboard of Luzon, particularly the Quezon part of it, had just been pummeled by three powerful storms coming one after the other. They left a world in shambles, mud covering houses, churches and fields; logs and the bodies of humans and animals washed up to shore, by themselves an obdurate statement about cause and effect; and whole communities robbed of their hopes and dreams, apart from families their loved ones. The folks there were dying from lack of food and water, and the first trucks loaded with relief goods that rumbled onto the place had to be protected by soldiers from riots. Dogs had gotten rabid.
Officials were saying it would take at least six months to merely start to rehabilitate the place. You saw the photographs, and you knew it was so.
Fr. Boy Makabenta, parish priest of Infanta, would tell me later Infanta was like a ghost town last Christmas. Most of the residents left for Manila to join their relatives and forget about their problems for a while. But the folks from the barrio trekked there full force to attend the Misa de Gallo and fall on their knees in thanksgiving for having been spared. For the first time, said Father Boy, they didn't have to wait for the parishioners to come to church on time. They were there at crack of dawn, filling the church to the rafters.
I couldn't imagine in light of this how any Filipino could wish to make merry by exploding firecrackers on New Year's Eve. Or indeed could wish to drive demons away in this way. There was a very real demon among us, which was Hunger or Deprivation, or whatever other names he goes by, and the only way he was going to be exorcised was for people to pitch in and lend a helping hand. It was almost criminal to see how we could allow money that could be spent to ease the plight of our brothers and sisters in Quezon to quite literally go up in smoke.
Then came the catastrophic events of a week ago, an earthquake of exceptional violence hitting Sumatra and sending the sea heaving onto the shores of several countries. The spectacle of grief and misery was there for everyone to see, in the grim images that flashed on TV screens from Banda Aceh, from Phuket, from the Maldives. I remember that Jamie Foxx's character in "Collateral" had a picture of Maldives on his taxi, his reminder that there was a paradise on earth. There was little left of paradise after the tsunami.
I was completely embarrassed when BBC reported on how the world celebrated New Year's Eve, which was that most of it did not celebrate it at all. On one hand, it showed Filipinos dancing in Ayala and exploding firecrackers in their homes. On the other it showed Indonesians, Thais, Sri Lankans, and even the peoples of countries who had not fallen victim to the earthquake and tsunami holding candles or prostrating themselves in temples in supplication or silent prayer for the dead. Sweden cancelled all traditional festivities and declared its intention to donate whatever money it could raise from it to the victims.
Tradition arises from common sense, it does not take the place of common sense. Are we so given to partying and having a good time we cannot forego it in the face of wretched tragedy? I am not saying we should lapse into depression, or joylessness, on New Year's Eve. I am saying we should be more sensitive to the sensibilities of others. There are ways to celebrate life or express thanksgiving without rubbing salt on other people's wounds. The only happy note last Friday was that the din wasn't as loud and as long as in previous New Year's Eves. But you still wonder how much rice and canned goods could have been bought by the money that went to that racket. Which doesn't drive demons away anyway, for one good reason:
The demons are not outside of us. They're right inside us.
Updated 11:26pm (Mla time) Jan 03, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the January 4, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I NEVER much like exploding firecrackers on New Year's Eve. My apologies to the victims, but I've never sympathized with those who find themselves in hospitals screaming in pain from missing fingers or even hands in the worst cases from fooling around with the more dangerous varieties. It's completely self-inflicted. Indeed, unlike suicide, which harms only oneself, the injury is acquired in the course of posing harm to others.
For some reason, some people like to explode firecrackers days before New Year in places that are calculated to annoy others, and cause high blood pressure, if not heart attacks, among the elderly. Just for the fun of it.
I know it's tradition, and tradition says making that kind of racket on New Year's Eve helps to drive demons away. And no demons are worth more driving away than the ones that bedeviled not just this country but this whole planet last year. For reasons known only to them, they appeared to have chosen 2004 as the year to hold their plenary meeting in. The disasters last year, personal and social, minor and cataclysmic, were just too mind-boggling. I'm not particularly given to horoscopes and astrology, I know calendars are a human invention to measure time, but boy am I glad we're out of that year. Maybe the new one will bring better news.
But as I was saying, I know it is tradition, but traditions are always made to be broken, or changed. Something the resolutely tradition-bound Tevye of "Fiddler on the Roof" himself discovered. Traditions are only as good as the reasons for them remain alive and vital. Not so when they are dead and inert. Well before an apocalyptic earthquake/tsunami hit Sumatra and several Southeast and South Asian countries a week ago, I already wanted to write a column urging this country, particularly Metro Manila, to not explode firecrackers at the end of the year.
The reason for it was patent. The eastern seaboard of Luzon, particularly the Quezon part of it, had just been pummeled by three powerful storms coming one after the other. They left a world in shambles, mud covering houses, churches and fields; logs and the bodies of humans and animals washed up to shore, by themselves an obdurate statement about cause and effect; and whole communities robbed of their hopes and dreams, apart from families their loved ones. The folks there were dying from lack of food and water, and the first trucks loaded with relief goods that rumbled onto the place had to be protected by soldiers from riots. Dogs had gotten rabid.
Officials were saying it would take at least six months to merely start to rehabilitate the place. You saw the photographs, and you knew it was so.
Fr. Boy Makabenta, parish priest of Infanta, would tell me later Infanta was like a ghost town last Christmas. Most of the residents left for Manila to join their relatives and forget about their problems for a while. But the folks from the barrio trekked there full force to attend the Misa de Gallo and fall on their knees in thanksgiving for having been spared. For the first time, said Father Boy, they didn't have to wait for the parishioners to come to church on time. They were there at crack of dawn, filling the church to the rafters.
I couldn't imagine in light of this how any Filipino could wish to make merry by exploding firecrackers on New Year's Eve. Or indeed could wish to drive demons away in this way. There was a very real demon among us, which was Hunger or Deprivation, or whatever other names he goes by, and the only way he was going to be exorcised was for people to pitch in and lend a helping hand. It was almost criminal to see how we could allow money that could be spent to ease the plight of our brothers and sisters in Quezon to quite literally go up in smoke.
Then came the catastrophic events of a week ago, an earthquake of exceptional violence hitting Sumatra and sending the sea heaving onto the shores of several countries. The spectacle of grief and misery was there for everyone to see, in the grim images that flashed on TV screens from Banda Aceh, from Phuket, from the Maldives. I remember that Jamie Foxx's character in "Collateral" had a picture of Maldives on his taxi, his reminder that there was a paradise on earth. There was little left of paradise after the tsunami.
I was completely embarrassed when BBC reported on how the world celebrated New Year's Eve, which was that most of it did not celebrate it at all. On one hand, it showed Filipinos dancing in Ayala and exploding firecrackers in their homes. On the other it showed Indonesians, Thais, Sri Lankans, and even the peoples of countries who had not fallen victim to the earthquake and tsunami holding candles or prostrating themselves in temples in supplication or silent prayer for the dead. Sweden cancelled all traditional festivities and declared its intention to donate whatever money it could raise from it to the victims.
Tradition arises from common sense, it does not take the place of common sense. Are we so given to partying and having a good time we cannot forego it in the face of wretched tragedy? I am not saying we should lapse into depression, or joylessness, on New Year's Eve. I am saying we should be more sensitive to the sensibilities of others. There are ways to celebrate life or express thanksgiving without rubbing salt on other people's wounds. The only happy note last Friday was that the din wasn't as loud and as long as in previous New Year's Eves. But you still wonder how much rice and canned goods could have been bought by the money that went to that racket. Which doesn't drive demons away anyway, for one good reason:
The demons are not outside of us. They're right inside us.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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