Sunday Essay: Looking away

Sunday Essay Cartoon by John Gilbert Manantan
Sunday Essay Cartoon by John Gilbert Manantan

LOOKING away is easier than you think. That’s one thing retired journalists don’t tell you about leaving the newsroom. But it is.

Last Monday, for the first time in 20 years, I didn’t have to watch the live broadcast of the State of the Nation Address. I haven’t even watched any of the replays, which says something about my occasionally poor choices as a citizen, but I have to say it’s a choice that’s spared me from stress and frustration.

I did try to read some of the highlights on Twitter last Monday night but was surprised to see that thousands more were tweeting about the breakup of celebrities Bea Alonzo and Gerald Anderson, than those who shared what they thought of the Office of the President’s annual report. No, not surprised. Amused.

In my previous job as a newspaper editor, I might have tut-tutted at the way most citizens ignored what could be important policy announcements or at least a reminder of our priorities as a nation. The tut-tutting would have been obligatory. This year, I got it. Looking away is not only easy, it can be tremendous fun. Later, I read that I had missed an introspective (and for this President, out of character) moment where he said something about Filipinos being our own worst tormentors.

Would that have kept my attention more than trying to find out who was at fault in the whole Bea-Gerald-Julia-Joshua brouhaha? To describe how I felt about both news threads, let me share the name of one of my new favorite fonts: Glacial Indifference.

People don’t turn away from something because they don’t care about it. What makes us turn away is the view that as much as we might care about something (for instance, building a fairer and more humane society), there’s only a limited influence we can exert to make that outcome happen.

We’d rather pay more attention to what we can act on.

Consider this: in the last 10 days, 18 people have been shot and killed in the two Negros provinces. There is nothing I can do about this distressing fact, so looking away is the most tempting choice. But old habits take some time to peel away, so I looked for the reports from SunStar, Rappler, Inquirer, ABS-CBN and Dumaguete Metro Post, and plotted the few details available in an Excel sheet. (This was how most of our infographic projects in my previous job began.)

Don’t misunderstand: I know the act itself means nothing. It won’t make a difference in the families of the seven who were gunned down last July 25 alone, including that father and his one-year-old son whom the bullets found in San Jose, Sta. Catalina. That was around 8 p.m. last Thursday, when most of us were probably trying not to nod off after dinner or looking for something interesting to watch on TV.

Even after organizing their names and the details of their deaths on a very brief file, I still mix things up. Who was it who was walking home after a visit to the cockpit when the gunmen approached? Of the four shot and killed yesterday, July 27, who was the former mayor and who, the incumbent city councilor? How old were the four policemen who died in an ambush last July 18 in Ayungon?

I suddenly remembered an innkeeper and his wife whom I’d met two months ago while working on a documentation project that had led me to Negros. We were chatting at breakfast about the recent Senate elections when the man said he had voted for only one person, instead of 12. Which one? The one whom he believed was tough enough to make the terrible decision that the innkeeper thought had to be made: getting rid of the criminals who would otherwise pay their way out of the justice system, if anyone could be bothered to ask questions and press charges.

Breakfast ended without any objections being made. I could have asked, what if these faceless gunmen choose to kill your daughter or your son? The question slipped out of view before I could summon the nerve to ask it. This is what I did, what I continue to do: I said a silent prayer for the innkeeper and his wife, and for a country that, on some days, I no longer recognize.

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