Of different kinds of hunger
We all know that there more than 10 to 12 million Filipinos today who are living below the poverty line. Among them are the poorest of the poor who are jobless, homeless, and often hopeless. They are the people who beg for alms in the streets, by the doors of churches, and in marketplaces. Some of them are scavenging in the garbage for some bones and leftover food thrown away by fast food chains and restaurants. Others are peddling newspapers and iced water, candies, and cigarettes to earn a hundred pesos a day for rice, cheap viands, and other foods. There are even streetwalkers, child prostitutes being peddled by their own parents to be ravished by dirty old pedophiles who come here pretending to be tourists and businessmen. A number of the extremely poor Filipinos, just to survive from starvation, are selling their own bodies to foreign and local predators.
There are millions of Filipinos who do not even know where their next meal will come from. These are the people who just live in the sidewalks with their children and their old folks, sleeping at night with cardboard boxes and papers as their beddings and nothing else to protect them from the elements. Others are crowding themselves under the bridges or inside temporary shacks made of scrap on top of canals, rivers and esteros. They are surrounded by mud, pests, rodents, and foul smell. They do not have clean water and stay unwashed for many weeks, exposed to all kinds of infections and diseases. They often roam around looking for food from garbage bins, and hope that some kind souls would give them a few coins. They are often hungry for food and for physical nourishment. But this is not the kind of hunger that I am most worried about.
There is a more profound and deeper kind of hunger that ails the Filipinos, and it is more destructive and alarming. It is the hunger for meaning in their lives, and the purpose for living. Even the rich people who are living in their mansions inside exclusive villages and enclaves are afflicted with this more threatening kind of hunger. In fact, there is a somewhat serious phenomenon nowadays of millennials slashing their wrists, jumping from buildings, drinking poison, and harming themselves. They are driven to suicide by depression and anxiety. Broken homes and broken families, shattered marriages, annulments, separations, and divorces often inflict so much pain on the children. And no amount of money or luxuries can serve as an antidote to such pain and trauma that the young have to suffer.
Rich people who do not have spiritual life, or do not have a strong relationship with God, would often seek happiness and comfort in drugs, alcohol, sex, and gambling. They try to hide their inner hurts and anger via the power of chemical substances and hedonistic activities of the flesh. But these things could never assuage the anguish in their souls. They always end up more and more depressed, until the ultimate exit is suicide or crimes of passion. This is the hunger that can ruin the people and destroy the whole nation. The poor may be too hard-up but they always look forward to the next garbage bin to yield more food. They have faith in God and they have affection for each other. They are not actually the poorest of the poor.
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