The Faces of Humanity
Every morning at breakfast time, I check the news from around the world. Just part of staying informed. Same today. Doing so I felt that this has become an increasingly tough thing to do recently. Terrorist attacks, wars, natural disasters, they seem to be an almost daily occurrence nowadays - and in so many places. And then - all this hate... Hateful content in politics, society, sports... speech becoming more offensive and there seems to be an increasing propensity for violence... I started to feel a sense of despair.
Later in the day, I had to go and see a notary public to certify some documents for next year’s medical mission required by the Philippines’ authorities. This can be challenging as the lines are usually long, the notaries often overworked and unsure about how to certify these documents destined for abroad. I told the first notary what the documents were needed for, but she was unable to help me. She barely listened. So, I moved on to another. Again, I explained about our missions and that we will be doing 5 of them altogether next year in remote islands of a province called Palawan.
This time I got lucky. The lady who helped me listened attentively. She knew exactly what to do and took the time to help me with the paperwork. When all formalities were done and I got ready to pay for the services, she refused to accept my payment. Imagine my surprise. “Consider it my contribution to the voluntary work you do there to help the poor mothers”, she said, and “God bless you!” It literally brought me to tears. When looking at this lady I had come face to face with humanity.
This reminded me of one indisputable fact: there is so much goodness, there are so many good people around us. Only last week at our monthly LMI meeting we had so many new people interested in our charity work. Everyone is super motivated. All our volunteers spend their own time and resources to travel halfway around the world to help make a change to the most needy there. 3 nights ago, I received a request to bring our mission project to two additional island municipalities and beyond. It shows there is plenty of positivity and humanity in this world - one just needs to open one’s eyes, see it and reach out.
The daily news we get to hear or see rarely focuses on such positivity. “Positive” is considered the baseline. Only the deviation, the “negative” is considered newsworthy. We have to remember this when we want to find out what is going on in this world. Traveling helps to get a more balanced perspective. The news won’t report much of the good to us, we have to recognize it ourselves in our daily lives. It is there.
And we can do our part and add to it. How? By displaying our own humanity in our faces.