Ever been hungry your entire life? Ever had your stomach nag and grumble for food? Ever felt dizzy because of hunger?
A normal person in state of hunger doesn't process things too well. He fumbles, she becomes light headed. A job done on a hungry stomach is a job not done with thought and quality. If you're hungry, you don't process things too well, you can't think clearly. That's just the start and this only happens when you haven't eaten once out of three (or five) times that you are supposed to eat in a day.
However, if you're poor AND going hungry for days are normal for you, the effects of hunger happening are 100 times worse. You let certain aspects like standards slide when you're desperate for food, and before you know it, heavy issues like healthcare or education doesn't matter anymore. You don't think about your future, you think about NOW, what you can eat for NOW. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as you eat. We go into survival mode, desperate times seeks desperate measures, and out of extreme hunger and lack of concentration, so out goes logic, of thinking about things like of children's education, and of standards.
Welcome to the Philippines, in the era where our state of hunger is so acute, it makes people dumb and willing to live on substandard. A different kind of hunger is among us in our country. it goes beyond the nagging grumbling of the stomach. The quality of life you wanted no longer matters if you are too desperate to let the hunger pass just for one night. At first, you'll eat discarded food from trash, refry the leftover flesh from chicken from leftover frying oil. Soon enough, your standards for everything else flies off the window. Soon enough, you would take whatever lousy entertainment you find and laugh at every crap joke made on tv.
Everything in this country has been so dumbed down lately, our standards have lowered down so much because of this hunger. This hunger that enabled us (yes, US, because we are ONE) to vote without standards, to be entertained without standards, to live without standards. Every decision the country has made lately was due to this kind of hunger, of this feeling that we don't really know what we want.
Poor families in these desperate times have lost the audacity to aspire for a better future. Now they don't have time nor the mindset to think of education, but to react due to circumstances.They just react according to their need. you need to eat first, think later. no time to think about consequences, just appease the loud grumble of the stomach. It's not a matter of wrong or right, but as long as this someone can offer them money for food, they would let their children work, sell them to crime syndicates to work on scamming people off their money by begging, or worse, sell their innocence to a pedophile.
When it comes to seeking what's good for the country, who really seeks it? When a large number of people are too desperate for food in their stomachs, they can't stand up for themselves and demand for things like better education, or better access to healthcare. You gotta get out of dying of hunger first before you think of those things.
So we the middle class people do it for them, and for us, too. Us who already have our basic needs more or less secure. Us with access and time to aspire for better things. Us who still has the luxury of standards, and sticking to it. Us who frequent the blogs and Facebook to voice out our opinions for their sake. Us who belong to churches, schools, businesses, and NGOs who are the pockets of hope in this country. This is our cross to bear, we must be their voice.
But our voices are in danger too, we also aspire and hunger for something better, and if is not here in our beloved Philippines, we have the option to leave for greener pastures if we grow too tired of sticking up for what's right in our country. More and more of us entertain the notion of leaving, in our exasperation and disgust, to escape this sinking ship.
There is a far-reaching hunger that not only afflicts the masses. We are now hungry as well. We are hungry and weary, and ALL of us live in hunger. We hunger for understanding, not hate. We hunger for openness, not self-righteousness. We hunger for intelligence, not the dumbing down of society. We hunger for true justice, not vendetta towards the few. We hunger for a TRULY WORKING GOVERNMENT, not a government of grandstanding politicians.
Most of all, we hunger for sincere and truthful love for country. Not the kind love because this is where we get to be rich and powerful, or that there's a status quo here that we need to protect and secure. We hunger for true values, not values or beliefs that burdens us and gives a negative impact to us as a country.
This is what the Filipino is hungry for.
