Last Monday, an earthquake literally shook the big pile of land that was China. With a magnitude of 7.9, the earthquake has killed 19,000 or so people in 3 days. The retrieval operation hasn’t finished yet, there are still more people being recovered, dead or alive. I learned this news only last night, Wednesday, when my mom texted me something about an earthquake passing through the Philippines that same night. Thankfully, the night had passed and there wasn’t any sign of the ground shaking. So as I searched in the net details about the false alarm of the earthquake in the Philippines, I read through this article about China. I didn’t immediately realize that the earthquake the article was talking about happened just a few days earlier. Due to the deprivation of a decent TV room, I haven’t fed myself with the latest news for weeks and to stumble upon this literally shocking article made me realize a number of things.
I remember writing in one of the countless surveys I answered was that dying in an accident was one of things I most feared. A few weeks ago, we were studying in sociology that acceptance of death still cannot be immediately acknowledged by everyone. It is a universal fear, death that is. To experience anxiety about death is normal among all men, but to accept it immediately is a rather rare case. I know I can’t, especially if death comes in an unprepared time when you have not rehearsed how you’d react to it. Moreover, I also fear just the fact to talk about death. It’s not one of my best subjects, because usually in topics like this, I end up reliving every painful memory I had with death. And obviously, with pain comes tears. The earthquake that killed thousands reiterated how death can just surprise you anytime and that you really cannot avoid it, more so prepare for its coming. It will happen, it will come, sooner or later. I pray to God that if ever there would be death, I hope people can somehow be given the time to thank everyone, to pray for the ones they’ll leave behind, to make amends to whomever they’ve hurt, and to be calm and accepting until that time comes. But I know my request cannot be granted for everyone, not all have the luxury of time to have death wait before these souls have finished packing their bags and getting ready to go. Not all are as lucky as I currently am.
Also, with the increasing number of deaths retrieved, I realized how divided people can be and how dehumanizing most of us are right now. This is coming from someone who does not have any connection to the news other than the Internet, but I wonder how come nobody in my school even opened up the topic of the number of people who died in that earthquake? 19,000 is no joke. Sure China has a problem with overpopulation, but to lose that big number of people easily is not something we criticize or joke about. There goes the US mocking China of its lack of safety precautions, where is morality there? Should the other governments be sending out their social workers and helping China with the tragedy it has not prepared itself for, more so wished for? People should talk about it. They shouldn’t point their blame-yourself arrow to China, they should be helping each other. We have been so preoccupied with the thought of outwitting one another that we leave behind the important fact that we are human. And as humans, we should and are supposed to care. It is in my greatest belief a human being’s greatest ability – to show that we care, that we remember each other. I am aware of the human rights violations China as the government has committed, but what about the Chinese people? Did they wish for themselves to die? To kill someone in order to compensate for the other’s mistake is as we all know (hopefully) is immoral. But sadly, morality doesn’t seem to exist in most of us anymore. Nobody no longer cares that more 19,000 people died because of an accident that they never wished nor took knowledge of before it occurred.
And so probably, with death comes morality. There seems to be a very strong connection between these two entities. Death helps us realize the moral side of the story. When it comes, it will only be then that people come to know that morality may have existed in some parts of their lives, but most of the time, it will be too late for them to see the connection. Sadly, there are times when people can never realize it.
No comments:
Post a Comment