YOU'VE seen it in the movies... those scenes when in extreme danger that forces a group of people to hide for some time and one of these people will soon lose it and risk everything just to get out? In the Ice Age franchise, Sid the Sloth (he's a megalonyx, by the way) was the most likely to lose it. That's just how it is. There will always be those who have lesser control over their emotions. That's the very reason why depression has become a global concern.
Which brings us to depression and all the dark emotions there is in man. Can you imagine how many are being eaten up by all these uncertainties and yet are forced to suck it in because you don't go to the hospital for depression... How much longer will these people be able to hang on? We really do not know. We are stuck in our own homes unsure what's really going on out there in the depths of the people's consciousness.
We do get a hint through social media. There is anger, a lot of anger. There are those hitting the slowness of the barangay councils to distribute relief goods, there are others who have made it their daily existence to blame everything on the President or on the Filipino or on just about everybody except themselves. And then there are the peacemakers...
Onto our fifth week of quarantine, I have a better hold of where this anger is coming from. It's from where everything else is coming from -- fear. With fear eating up the hearts of just about everybody, people react from what is deep inside them and there are more fearful people than those who have been able to tap the love in their hearts before all this broke out.
For indeed, when pushed into a corner - in our case into our homes - man will react according to what is lodged in his heart and there can only be either fear or love. Those hitting back in anger have fear - the fear of the uncertainties now facing all of us. Those who hoarded long before we were told to stay home and supermarkets limited the number of essential items we can buy, they too were ruled by fear - the fear of going hungry or having to do without. Check every negative emotion you have seen on social media and you will realize that at the bottom of it all is fear - the rallies, the taunts, the rants, even depression, all of them.
Then, there is love. The stories that touched our hearts and made us shed a tear, the prayers that lifted our sagging spirits, the encouragement we got from random followers and friends.
Bottomline: Under extreme situations, our reaction reflects what is inside us and there can only be two, nothing else: Fear or love.
Forced to retreat with no real assurance of when we can have that sense of stability back in our lives, let us use some of this time to reach deep down into our very being, recognize the fear that hides there, and resolve to move forward in love instead, never in fear. That's the only way forward. How? The Bible, The Qur'an, the Teachings of Buddha, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad Gita can help, we have the time.
(saestremera@gmail.com)