By: Iris P. Concepcion
There is only one way to dampen this clique of street outworkers conducting their ways of innovativeness in uninked communication.
There are a lot of things to uproot in the system and one of them is not even organizational in nature.
It is the psyche. This numbness to truthful insults and conscience-pricking visual modes---are normally the apt wake-up calls to rattle some hornet's prideful nest. It is sometimes difficult to get these messages across, especially when they are reached to 50 years old and above.
Age does not guarantee nor assure one of rightness, rank, nor title. Trying to knock down these walls is always an option to explore. This could not be disregarded.
What is wrong with our race then that we could not detach ourselves from the comforts of excess?
There are people who get it at the first ray of light. Upclose, they seem happier for it. I have seen them move on to other productive works that feel freer: loftier even. Once they start talking about the beauty slants on the lips of their children instead of their spreadsheets, I know from my gut, they have finally found their inner peace and calling.
And I am more than honored to have been the recipient of these various humanist confessions. I will not trade it (that proud, content face, the confidence of a free, breathing man) for a bungee jumping in whatever nook that lens may have followed at this point in time.
It is the psychological make-up. It is difficult to admit that we have sometimes trespassed the sanctity of selfhood for ego: all for what? Fear of rejection, fear of feedback, fear of crumbling image.
Filipinos tend to hold on to deteriorating things out of these: pride and ego. Those who had extracted themselves out from this constriction have learned it the hard way: freedom is sweeter when seized from within.
I have also observed that Filipinos do have huge ideas and concepts. Few, nonetheless, will take the brave, bold world to jump out from this realm of deadened "brainstorming."
We pay much more (figuratively and literally) to boardroom conceptualizations and reward ourselves in some outback adventure without following through projects that could materially redound to the larger sectors of society.
Lackluster performance in actual work becomes the name of the game. There is always a bogged down pipe somewhere in the middle just because there is a slack somewhere and nobody wants to pick up the scattered and shattering mess.
People who come in to remove these are always heroes before my eyes.
Lastly, we seem to be a rare breed of sore losers. We think of ourselves as infallible. It is more of pride than to a strong attachment of hardwon principles.
Everyone works for a common, noble cause: losing or winning is not even a consideration in these matters.
Simply put, one does or does not do, or join advocacies, to rise above one's self, much grander than your family's or friends' welfare. You do it for your country, you do it for the world.
Think of the millions who had been duped: this could include floating children amid heaps of floodwater.
Perhaps, with this in mind, decisions to correct things may be easier.