Immunity to calamities

The memorable footage was taken by a GMA-7 crew that had sought shelter from the storm inside the church. To me, it dramatically captured the essential aspects of our traumatic encounters with Nature – our helplessness in the face of its frightening power, and our unshakable faith that, in spite of everything, we will be saved.

If we look a little more closely at what has just happened – based on the reports – we may find that the destruction of property has been immense. I am also aware that heavily populated Tacloban City in Leyte and Roxas City in Capiz have been badly hit.

Since power and communication lines in these provinces are still down as of this writing, we don’t know yet the full scale of the destruction caused by this 

monstrous typhoon and the exact number of lives lost. 

So powerful were Yolanda’s winds that, even as she made several landfalls, she went away as swiftly as she came – as though she were headed somewhere else and was only passing through. She stayed on track and didn’t linger. There were no other weather systems in the horizon to complicate her journey. She arrived not a minute sooner – not under cover of darkness, like other typhoons, but just as daylight was breaking. This meant that residents in the affected areas had every opportunity to find refuge in safe places. 

I would argue that, more than luck, it is practice founded on learning that spells the greatest difference between survival and tragedy, and between being crippled by crisis and being able to rise from it. We have gone through so many tough challenges, indeed perhaps more than our fair share of Nature’s catastrophic events, that our daily routines as a people have become, by themselves, survival drills. 

As a result, I think most Filipinos have mastered the art of suffering. Our personal psychology revolves around the virtue of overcoming adversity. We are generally unfazed by misfortune. 

Yet, as a country, we seem chronically unable to translate this gift into a source of collective strength. At best we internalise it within our respective families, but seldom do we cultivate it at the level of the local and national community. And so when we say we lack discipline as a people, what we are acknowledging is our inability to coordinate our efforts and move as a unified social system. We have clearly failed to develop those tools by which we may collectively manage Nature’s fury. 

Over the years, we have learned how to survive under very real exigencies. Slowly, we are learning to heed warnings and instructions, to prepare for disasters as communities, and shield ourselves from danger. 

We have become more conscious of new epidemics that come in the wake of natural calamities. We are learning to take stock of the collective resources at our disposal, and to offer spontaneous leadership and organisation when our formal institutions fail to respond. Most importantly, we are learning to befriend Nature.