It Bothers Me

These days it has become quite customary for media to feature images of abject poverty among our people. I mention this because it makes me feel uncomfortable every time I see the utter hardship and dire need that supposedly afflict the great majority of the nation. It bothers me because I am neither a politician nor a top government official and, thus, should not be bothered by such problem at all.

Television and the newspapers regularly show footage or pictures of homeless and hungry people. The poorest of the poor, they call them. They call them, too, as "the new Filipino ruling class, but only in a numerical sense", and that their numbers are consistently on the rise.

Citizens who have comfortable homes to live in, with refrigerators stuffed almost to bursting with food, should indeed be reminded that there are people in the same country as theirs that don't have a single fleck of the blessings they have. I don't belong to the blessed sector and, therefore, should be absolved from any responsibility. The only poverty that I have to worry about is my own; my neighbors' neediness should not be my burden.

Some people are poor and hungry because they have been fired from their jobs or because they are ill or elderly. Oftentimes, it's not their fault. On the other hand, there are people who are in miserable conditions simply because they never try to do any significant positive contribution to the community they are part of.

Of course, the media don't directly blame anyone for the widespread indigence in society. Except perhaps the rich and high-ranking public officials, everybody's favorite pet peeves. Personally, however, these stories on the poor often leave me feeling that it's my fault, your fault, the businessmen's fault, or the system's fault.

To be honest, when I come upon a report on the plight of poor people, I can't help but begin to think that it may be actually their own fault, too. Please don't think that I'm lacking in compassion or cruel; my own poor family will vouch that I'm not.

Years ago I was commissioned by a certain organization to make a film documentary on the city's street children, those young people who practically lived on the city streets. That's when I came to know their real story. What I uncovered was quite disturbing.

A nun from the sponsoring group brought me to meet a family living in a kariton (improvised wooden pushcart). It was rather an awkward first meeting. We found the teenage couple in their intimate private moment inside their box-size home by the wayside, in broad daylight.

Upon the nun's calling the young husband peeked out from the cover of flattened used cartons. Apparently embarrassed, he grinned shyly and told us it was their only leisure. They couldn't afford to watch movies in the nearby cinema houses, he said, and they didn't have TV. The wife didn't show her face and pretended to busy herself with the three little kids sleeping beside them. 

The kariton was also the family's main livelihood tool. The young couple used it to go around the city scavenging garbage bins for anything still useful or could be sold. The little ones, barely a year apart in ages, always had a joyride to everywhere aboard the three-wheeled contraption. When darkness would fall, the father would park their mobile home by the street side.

The family had a small shanty in an interior barangay. But, the husband said, it was too cumbersome to be going home there since their livelihood was in the downtown area. So he decided to bring his whole family along.

The wife later butted in and told us the full story. Her husband used to work in a machine shop. But they were always having fights when he would arrive home from work. It was his jealousy, she said; he suspected that she was having another man while he was away.

The couple admitted that living on the streets was more peaceful for them. And a lot easier, too.  There were no electricity and water bills to worry about. Plus, the concrete floors and sturdy canopies of the downtown buildings provided them better shelter than their former ramshackle dwelling, with its leaking nipa roof and disintegrating bamboo flooring.

That encounter had since boggled my mind with questions:  Can people who are not very smart and can't take care of their own lives any more or less deserving of happiness than people who are capable? Do people who cheat or steal - like many public officials and some businessmen - have as much right to be happy as those who are honest?

I like to think that everyone has the same right to be happy. I like to think, too, that every wrongdoer will pay a price for his fraudulent deeds. And that, in fact, everyone will reap the consequences of his actions, bad or good.

It's a kind act to be looking after people who can't or won't take care of themselves, no matter what or who they are. I don't know why it feels like the right thing to do, but that's what it feels to me. I know many people feel the same way too, even without being conscious of the moral dimension of the issue. 

However, people - no matter how poor or deprived - need to be made aware that they are responsible for themselves, too. If they can't take care of themselves, they deserve help. If they won't take care of themselves, they deserve help just the same. But they must understand that it won't work in the long run to be relying on others for the quality of their own lives, especially that in this poor country most of these others are poor people too.

It's difficult to draw the line between where our obligation for others starts and where it ends. I think the government's social welfare efforts shall be also aimed at making irresponsible people learn to take responsibility for themselves. This is not a new concept. Many centuries ago Confucius had said: "Give a man a fish and he will have fish for a meal. Teach a man to fish and he can have fish all his life."

I certainly don't mind occasionally giving away a part of the meager resources I have, which my own family so needs, for the sake of the truly poor and deprived. But sometimes I feel like my little contribution will not change anything, that my help will not make them any better off or any happier anyway. That's when I think that the real solution must come from these people themselves.

It bothers me if anyone is being less happy than I am. But if one is less happy because of his own irresponsibility, I think the best help I can give is to make him see that he is the problem himself. And it will bother me all the more if the poor guy becomes all the more less happy thinking that I'm just making up excuses and don't really want to help him.

(E-MAIL: [email protected])