OK, and not so OK. What a week it has been.
This little business wants to reach out to the community and spend a day with one family. Call it food for thought just so it fits the agenda of my little corner store.
When one small part hurts, which is the family, the whole community hurts, the way a toothache affects the whole body. The smallest unit, the family, is vulnerable. It can be shaken by poverty, lack of education, drug addiction and violence. That’s why when someone hurts it, we should all go into action in correcting the wrong, as we do when we have a toothache.
We can’t be complacent and phlegmatic when it comes to a toothache, right? And neither should we when someone threatens the smallest unit of society. Speaking up is one way we can help.
The week has not been OK, with news pages spattered with the news about a hazing casualty.
No matter how hard people try to protect their families and guide them on the road to life, there will also be elements that disregard social cooperation and elements that think only of themselves. Society locks them up in jail if they are caught, prosecuted and convicted, but if they find a loophole in the law, a weak link in the procedures, or go in hiding like a fugitive, their sentence is suspended.
This little business of mine will take more time to mourn and reflect on what happened to Horacio “Atio” Castillo III, a freshman law student at University of Sto. Tomas. He died due to injuries he sustained in fraternity hazing initiation rites.
No words can assuage the anguish his parents feel and the pain at the possibility that the perpetrators might go scot-free, but let me tell you: There’s justice beyond this life, and in that next life they will get their just deserts, and “eat” it at leisure amid fire and brimstone.
In that place, they have no loopholes to slither through, no Big Dad’s to pull them out, no airplanes out of their misery, no weakest link to save them.
Take heart. There are thousands in this society that still believe in justice and that it will prevail. And thousands more who mourn with you.
Remember, the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.