Waiting for renaissance

The sun is out as I write this. Sweaty and out-of-breath joggers are running again. At night, the eerie, apocalypse-like silence in one’s barangay is gone, occasionally replaced by the rhythmic splattering sound of the rains of June. The traffic jams are back, too and jeepneys and buses are getting filled with commuters. And while the malls still look like ghost towns, a lot of people are already out on the streets, hustling and surviving.

It seems that slowly, little by little, the world is returning to normal, and this nation of 110 million is no exception.

Friends and family are getting vaccinated despite the still turtle-pace vaccine rollout.

I am finding glimmers of hope in these small victories.

After the dark ages, comes the renaissance

I hope we will, indeed, finally find ourselves trekking the road to recovery.

It’s not going to be a Noah’s Ark kind of day where we all wake up one morning and suddenly the great flood is over; neither is it going to be a cliffhanger moment where we can simply leave all of this behind.

We can only live with the virus and wait for herd immunity, when the majority of the population gets vaccinated. Along the way, we will need booster shots or face new variants. It’s not going to happen overnight. Polio, for instance, took decades to eradicate, only to come back in 2019.

But there is a lot to look forward to. After the dark ages, came the renaissance.

The Dark Ages were a difficult time. Urban life deteriorated and warfare was part of everyday life, history tells us so. It devastated Europe in the 1340s with the so-called Black Death or Bubonic plague killing an estimated 100 million to 200 million people. COVID-19 deaths worldwide at 3.7 million are nowhere near that but, as I always say, one death is one death too many.

The Renaissance came and gave birth to humanism, leading to a rebirth of the lost human spirit and wisdom, and enabling the possibility of new human thoughts and creation.

I hope our country will have its own renaissance of sorts, where we learn to think hard and remember the lessons of the pandemic.

It would be frightening to forget how our leaders, especially our health authorities, have failed us – big time. COVID-19 has shown us how important the Department of Health is; how inefficiency could lead to deaths and more deaths; and how PhilHealth could be IllHealth if mismanaged and corrupted.

In budget deliberations, I hope our lawmakers fulfill their responsibilities of ensuring that every peso in taxpayers’ money is well spent. The era of rubber-stamping whoever is in Malacañang should be over. A full accounting of the billions spent for COVID-19 response should, likewise, be put on record.

While we will one day bask in the sun again and savor the best possible return to normalcy that we can get, let us not look away and simply forget what happened. Let us continue to demand for accountability and good governance.

The May 2022 Elections circus is in town. Hopefully, this could be a way to change things. Let us not choose candidates with populist agenda or with the same names as our existing or past leaders but with a heart and capability to bring the country forward.

Campaign donors should place their bets wisely. It is time to help good candidates win for the sake of the country and not for your own agenda.

This is one way we can ensure that the dark ages will be over and we will indeed see the renaissance we deserve.

A string of misfortunes

The dark age we are seeing now, after all, befell not just nations, but everyone and everything – from corporations to individuals. Many have lost jobs and loved ones.

Speaking of the dark period, I can’t help but notice a string of misfortunes for this sprawling empire, made even worse when COVID-19 struck and the rumor mill has been busy chatting about it.

Some in the grapevine believe a Feng Shui expert must be consulted to wipe out the negative energy. That is, if the King and his Queen believe in the ancient Chinese practice.

There has been death after death after death for this empire – from the unexpected demise of a rook, to deaths of pawns and soldiers. But aside from lost lives, balance sheets, too, seem to be inflicted with a malady of sorts.

Among traditional Filipinos, when misfortunes befall a family, the elders would advise blood offerings by butchering a rooster to appease the gods of the dark underworld. It’s also similar to ancient Greece where the animals were sacrificed to the deities – earth mother Demeter was given pregnant sows while Hecate, goddess of darkness, often received dogs, guardians of the dead.

Perhaps it’s sheer bad luck or bad energy magnified in these difficult times. Or it could also be just coincidence.

Hopefully, the darkness passes soon for each and everyone of us and for the entire nation. After all, as I said and as history has shown, after the dark ages will come the renaissance period. 

I am fervently waiting and waiting still for the political and economic rebirth that our country truly deserves. 

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com